An Israeli soldier who shot a wounded Palestinian assailant to death in Hebron on March 24 was charged with manslaughter on Monday.
It’s crunch time in California as the ongoing legislative assault against BDS intensifies. The latest incarnation in California’s anti-BDS attack is AB 2844 “California Combating the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel Act of 2016,” which is set for a hearing by California’s Judiciary Committee tomorrow, Tuesday, April 19.
By bashing Netanyahu and living to do it again, Bernie Sanders has transformed the US discourse on Israel. And his leftwing base made him do it, as JJ Goldberg of the Forward explained in Washington last night.
At a moment of growing resistance to state violence and injustice the world over, a delegation including former U.S.-held political prisoners and social prisoners, former Black Panther Party members, prison abolitionists, trade unionists and university professors traveled to Palestine in March 2016. On April 17, the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners, the delegates have released a statement that reads in part, “We express our support for the struggle for a free Palestine as a central struggle in the worldwide movement against U.S. imperialism. We are committed to employing a variety of tactics in solidarity with Palestine, including Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and we condemn Israeli and Zionist attacks against advocates for justice for/in Palestine in our communities and on our campuses. We connect prisoner and labor movements across the borders; and apply the spirit of sumud to all our struggles for liberation within the United States.”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of England says that anti-Zionism is an effort to scapegoat Zionists for Jews. But anti-Zionists are focused on a group that has obviously committed human rights violations. So the claim is a fallacy.
Today’s Israel lobby is no longer the third rail of American politics, and everyone knows it. That’s what Bernie Sanders’s obvious but unprecedented comments about “justice” in Palestine signaled on Thursday night.
BDS makes big strides at American schools. University of Chicago student council overwhelmingly supported divestment from 10 companies doing business with “apartheid,” while the CUNY grad doctoral students’ council voted by a similar margin for academic boycott of Israel.
During a performance of Israeli right wing talking points in Thursday night’s debate in New York, Hillary Clinton’s response on Camp David summit simply fell short of being true.