In last weekend’s New York Times, columnist Roger Cohen in Jerusalem offers a bleak prediction from novelist Amos Oz: “There is a growing sense that Israel is becoming an isolated ghetto, which is exactly what the founding fathers and mothers hoped to leave behind them forever when they created the state of Israel.” But Oz’s pessimism is soon dashed. In his effort to revive Zionism as a liberal ideology, NYT’s Roger Cohen says and can oust Netanyahu, who is leading the country into an abyss.
Israeli activists came out last week to protest Mayor Nir Barkat’s ritual Chanukah candle lighting in Jerusalem and to bring a message that holiday cheer should not mask the fact that Palestinians in East Jerusalem are suffering due to his policies. While Barkat spoke to a crowd of about 80 Israelis across from the Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, protesters stood on the side holding signs that read “There’s no sanctity in an occupied city”, “Stop the ‘quiet transfer policy'” and two people stood behind Barkat’s platform and unfurled a large banner that said “STOP EAST JERUSALEM HOUSE DEMOLITIONS.”
Israeli soldiers carried out raids across the West Bank, abducting ten Palestinians this weekend, including one man in the Jerusalem village of Silwan, which is resisting the takeover of its houses by religious settlers
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The release of the Senate’s CIA torture report was an American moment of accountability. Can we dare to imagine, that, through the exercise of creative resistance, we can bring our nation in similar fashion to question the legality and rightness of our financial and diplomatic support for Israel’s illegal activities? Mark Braverman asks
The Gaza slaughter has divided the Jewish community, with mainstream orgs doubling down for Israel; that is why the DC Jewish Community Center fired Ari Roth, theater director and dissident
The very-well-connected Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, simultaneously a friend of rightwinger Sheldon Adelson and of Obama’s ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, taunts anti-occupation demonstrators in New York over the weekend. He breaks off shouting, “Down with Palestinian–” when he sees he’s being video’d.
Ben Carson, retired surgeon, is considering a run for president as a rightwing Republican. First stop, Israel!
President Obama should not veto Palestine’s U.N. Security Council resolution to set a deadline to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. An abstention would represent a serious challenge to the Israel lobby’s political power.
On a day when a rocket fired from Gaza landed in southern Israel, Israeli forces shot six protesters in the northern Gaza strip, attacked Palestinian fishermen, and struck a Hamas installation, as one official described a “ticking clock” till the next offensive