Following Hillary Clinton’s vow to fight BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), Speaker Paul Ryan calls BDS “ridiculous shenanigan” and anti-Semitic to boot, on a trip to Israel. He sure looks like he’s running for President!
At a Trump rally in Bethpage, Long Island last week, about 10,000 people from across the tri-state came to hear the Donald speak on a windy, grey Wednesday evening. Wilson Dizard asked attendees if they would support reinstituting the draft to take on ISIS. Diane Ammar, 62, from Long Island, offered an alternative, “I’d bomb the whole place. Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and ISIS”.
Jodi Rudoren and Ethan Bronner, former NYT Jerusalem bureau chiefs, fall over one another trying to explain away the term “Zionist” when they’re asked whether they’d describe themselves that way. Meantime NYT’s Diaa Hadid gets the third degree over her phase of Palestinian activism.
Hundreds of military checkpoints scattered around the occupied Palestinian territory are prone to arbitrarily closure without prior warning, restricting the freedom of movement for Palestinians whose daily lives are already defined by a sense of chaos, temporariness and unpredictability. However, a new smartphone app Azmeh – which translates to mean ‘traffic jam’ in Arabic – has been designed to tackle this very problem.
Palestinians have given the world many terms. “Nakba,” the Palestinian catastrophe, and “Intifada,” the “shaking off” of an oppressive system are two examples. Another term is “Sumoud,” the persistence of the Palestinian people, despite close to a century of a denial of their right to exist. As attacks on BDS, and BDS organizers, are intensifying globally, Nada Elia says, “Now is the time for sumoud not just in the homeland, but in activist communities worldwide. Just as Palestinians refuse to surrender their rights to freedom, dignity, self-determination, activists will not give up our right to organize for justice.”
Wilson Dizard reports on Bernie Sanders barnstorming through New York City and says Brooklyn is the Jerusalem that works. Unlike any other campaign this year, Sanders’ bid for the presidency has brought together and proved a powerful political common cause for American Muslims and Jews, who now volunteer side-by-side for his campaign. One young hasidic Sanders supporters tells Dizard, “Trump is a bigot. He says he wants to ban all Muslims, but I believe he wants to execute all Muslims. That’s not what Brooklyn is about.”
Palestinians on Saturday marked the 68th anniversary of the massacre of more than 100 Palestinian civilians carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948 prior to the establishment of Israel. Deir Yassin has long been a symbol of Israeli violence for Palestinians because of the particularly gruesome nature of the slaughter, which targeted men, women, children, and the elderly in the small village west of Jerusalem.
Legendary protest singer Phil Ochs, who died 40 years ago, updated “Love Me I’m A Liberal” in 1971 to call out “the arming of Israel.”
Tamam Abdul, 60, sells Israeli goods in her West Bank supermarket, but she would rather not. “All of the products we receive are Israeli, unfortunately,” she said Saturday outside of Ramallah at a fifth conference about the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, otherwise known by the acronym BDS.
North Carolina should double down on its anti-LGBTQ legislation and declare itself a “heterosexual state.” Then invade South Carolina, transfer North Carolinians there, and when any one objects, call them a terrorist. Guess who the role model is?