What happened in Washington DC this week has changed the course of activism in the nation’s capital on the issue of Palestine. Josh Ruebner, policy director for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, says, “We made it quite clear that it is unacceptable to be ‘progressive except for Palestine’ [PEP] any longer. It is imperative that organizations continue to deny legitimacy to Israeli policies in progressive circles.”
Jemima Pierre writes, “As a Black anthropologist with cultural, political, and research concerns in communities of African descent, I know too well the ways that global structures of race and power operate to control, destroy, debase, punish, and dehumanize. I understand that anti-Blackness in Israel is but a symptom of the broader culture and practice of Palestinian disenfranchisement.”
On October 10, 2015 Amin Husain was denied entry into Palestine while returning to be with family and friends. He was deported by Israel after 15 hours of detention, interrogation, a strip search and a body cavity search, the offical reason given was for the “prevention of illegal immigration” and “public security or public safety or public order consideration.” Husain writes, “I am not the first Palestinian to be denied entry into their homeland nor will I be the last. But it is clear that Israel has escalated this practice and we should discover effective ways to fight back.”
A chorus of NYT readers say they used to support Israel but policies of endless colonization and discrimination have turned them against Israeli policies. Readers comments signal a sea change in US opinion.
Early Wednesday morning, an undercover Israeli special forces unit disguised as Palestinian civilians accompanying a pregnant woman inside a Hebron hospital killed one man and arrested another while holding doctors at gunpoint.
Neocon David Makovsky wants Israel to annex portions of the West Bank to save itself from becoming a binational state. And Jane Eisner, a liberal Zionist, endorses the plan. That’s because they’re both Zionists committed to the need for a Jewish state
On October 16th, a large crowd of Palestinians near the northern West Bank city of Nablus surrounded the religious site of Joseph’s Tomb and proceeded to light the shrine on fire. The attack elicited widespread outrage and for Israelis it seemed to indicate yet again that Palestinian violence is motivated by anti-Jewish hatred. The reality, however, is far different than the Israeli narrative would seem to suggest. The attack had almost nothing to do with religion, but instead how the Israeli military and settlement movement have used religion to expand their control over Palestinian land and holy places.
Bruce Kovner of American Enterprise Institute says that only multi-ethnic coalitions are stable. Right, that’s why Israel is unstable. But Kovner can’t tell his friend Netanyahu that.
Parody remix of Center for American Progress conversation between Netanyahu and CAP president Neera Tanden shows Tanden giggling for 70 seconds– even as CAP article explodes Netanyahu falsehoods
Michael Lesher writes: “Another anniversary of Kristallnacht has come and gone. And for me, as a Jew, what is there to do but grieve? Part of what I feel records what happened on that long night in 1938 when Nazi hooligans ransacked and destroyed Jewish shops, homes, schools and synagogues. Of course it does. But another part, more immediate and more painful, is a grief born of rage: grief over the complicity of my fellow Jews in a present and continuing crime, eerily similar to what the Nazis did on Kristallnacht. A crime for which, I fear, ordinary Jews bear more responsibility today than did ordinary Germans 77 years ago.”