Eric Alterman warns CUNY grad students not to vote for academic boycott of Israel because they’d be as controversial as the Brooklyn students who barred Jews from attending a pro-Palestinian event. But that never happened.
Samantha Brotman shares her remarks from an event called “Zionism & The New McCarthyism: A Conversation with Bruce Robbins” that took place in Champaign-Urbana. It was a canceled University of Illinois event that was rescheduled as an independent event, without university support. Bruce Robbins’s short documentary, Some of My Best Friends are Zionists, interviews influential Jews such as Judith Butler and Tony Kushner who discuss the repression of anti-Zionist viewpoints. His talk addressed the rise of a “new McCarthyism” on college campuses which threatens to shut down criticism of Israel in the guise of “civility.” Brotman was a respondent along with Jodi Byrd (Professor in American Indian Studies) and Bruce Levine (Professor of History).
Chomsky on pro-Israel fanatics: In years gone by, police would insist on walking me back to my car because of threats they had picked up. Meetings were broken up, and so on. That’s all gone.
Ilan Pappe reviews “Jaffa Forever” by Adly Massoud Derhally: “This elegantly bi-lingual book will be an important part in our struggle to remember and rebuild what was lost in the past.”
Katie Miranda reflects on some of the appalling ironies of U.S. and Israeli policy towards Gaza. The Obama administration is paying to both destroy and rebuild the war torn strip, and Israeli companies are now promoting their military equipment worldwide using a sales pitch of having been tested during “Operation Protective Edge.”
Lara Kiswani writes about the rationale behind the Block the Boat movement: “Because it’s time to disrupt Israeli business as usual. It has been time since 1948. And the summer of 2014 only served us a reminder to the world that the Palestinian struggle for liberation is calling on us to join them in their fight to end colonialism.”
Wednesday’s hit-and-run, where Abd al-Rahman al-Shaludi, 21, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, rammed his car onto pedestrians waiting at a Jerusalem light rail stop killing a three-month old Chaya Zissel Braun became the latest outburst between Israelis and Palestinians since summer’s start. Following the crash, al-Shaludi sprinted from the scene. He was then gunned down by an undercover police officer in the area.
Todd Gitlin says he called for divestment from apartheid South Africa and fossil fuel companies because they have no right to exist. But Israel– that’s a different story!
Hannah Friedstein writes a primer on Birthright to demystify its themes and its objectives based on her experience in the program. Her goal is that Birthright participants gain a new and critical perspective on the program which she believes is anything but neutral.
On the evening of October 7, after a basketball game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Israeli team Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Palestinian-American Nerdeen Kiswani was attacked by a group of Maccabi Electra fans. The 20-year-old Hunter College student was punched in the stomach, and a Palestinian flag was torn from her hands. Among her attackers was Leonard Petlakh, a professor of Jewish history at her own school. After he and his accomplices assaulted the young Palestinian woman, Petlakh later told police that he himself was allegedly assaulted in a hate crime. He falsely accused 25-year-old journalist and Palestinian solidarity organizer Shawn Carrié of punching him for being Jewish.