Before a downtown NY audience, photographer Eman Mohammed spoke of Palestinian families “wiped off the planet” last summer in Gaza, and happily neither Avner Gvaryahu of Breaking the Silence nor Peter Beinart offered a defense of Zionism
Essrea Cherin writes that growing up in Upstate New York in a progressive Reform Jewish family she absorbed the understanding that Arabs hate Jews. Years later, this belief was challenged when Cherin visited the Middle East to see it for herself: “Looking back on time in the Middle East, I recognize this as a transformational period. I now understand quite viscerally how fear can distort one’s view of the world. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to experience Arab culture for myself and have replaced mental images of monsters with real live people. Until that experience, I was unaware of the magnitude of the fear I had been clinging to. What a relief to let it go.”
The Israeli embassy in the Netherlands says a Dutch travel warning about “violent” Jewish “colonists” in the West Bank “besmirches” an entire segment of Israeli society in an unfair way
Jeffrey Goldberg says that Israel is destroying Israel, Obama isn’t doing that, in an interview with David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy marred by Jewish narcissism
The New York Times once again serves as a pipeline for Israeli propaganda. An article about suffering in Gaza leaves Israel’s role till the 14th paragraph, when it states that the blockade is justified for military reasons.
Basil Farraj writes an heartrending diary of what it is like for a Palestinian family to visit a loved one in Israeli prisons: “Smiling behind the bulletproof glass are our loved ones. Their faces are full of happiness and joy. Silently, your loved one taps the bulletproof glass and you do so in return. Everyone seems to be doing the same thing. The glass (and the occupation) stands in the way of any possible physical touch between the prisoner and the visitor.”
Over the past two days Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken his most aggressive—and outlandish—tone yet on critics by accusing them of anti-Semitic tropes, following a collapsed effort to sanction Israel at the international soccer association, FIFA. Speaking to Knesset today Netanyahu said his country’s “actions are being twisted,” telling his parliament those who speak against Israel are initiating “false libels.”
Billionaires Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson oppose one another as “mega-donors” in the presidential process, but they’re teaming up to host desperate pro-Israel groups trying to save the country from growing international isolation.
Describing Palestinians as a “demographic” threat to Israel’s existence is widely considered racist, but the New York Times does so in an article saying that Palestinian refugees pose a “demographic death warrant” to the Jewish state.
The Canary Mission is a covert group of Israel supporters whose mission is to release the private information of supporters of Palestinian human rights, international law, and the peaceful Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in an explicit effort to prevent them from getting jobs. Many commentators have accused the Canary Mission of “McCarthyist tactics” and “open racism” and have described the furtive group as “neo-McCarthyist” but parts of the mainstream media is downplaying the threat to free speech.