The Iran nuclear deal and the war in Syria are bringing together unexpected bedfellows: Saudi Arabia and Israel. On May 5 in Washington DC Prince Turki bin Faisal and retired Israeli Defense Forces Major General Yaakov Amidror will meet under the auspices of the AIPAC-affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy, signaling a new era of normalization by the official sponsor of the Arab Peace Initiative.
Indiana’s vote for Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, Hillary Clinton’s path to the Democratic nomination remains all but guaranteed. For the defenders of Palestinian rights who have flocked to Sanders, this is grim news. But in terms of actual U.S. policy in the Holy Land, does it really matter? Is there really a fundamental difference between Clinton and Sanders on this issue? Sandy Tolan says yes. And no. And maybe. In that order.
The episode since Israeli medic-soldier Elor Azarya was filmed summarily executing Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sharif in Hebron has been a sobering reminder of the right-wing’s total and long-standing dominance in Israel. Dan Cohen explains what the aftermath of the murder tells us about Israeli society and what we can expect next.
The lead suspect of a gruesome kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian teen two summers ago was sentenced today by a Jerusalem district court to life in prison, plus 20 years for additional crimes, ending a lengthy criminal trial that shook Palestinian communities across Israel and the occupied territory. After the sentencing was announced the victim’s cousin Ansam Abu Khdeir told Mondoweiss the punishment was not enough, “he deserves more than he got, more than he will get,” she said.
The recent remarks of the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone has ignited a debate on the extent of anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party. In support of another British Labour politician, Naz Shah, Livingstone felt compelled to remind people that certain Zionists in 1930’s Nazi Germany came into an agreement with elements in the Nazi regime to transfer German Jews to Palestine. Why he needed to drag this minor episode of European Zionist history, the Haavara agreement, into the mix in a supposed defense of Shah is bewildering. More bewildering when one considers the fact that British imperialism was the most consequential partner to the Zionist colonial settler project in Palestine in the inter-war period.
Britain’s Labour Party is embroiled in a controversy over anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism that is sure to cross the pond. But it is not anti-Semitic to say, as many Palestinian supporters do, that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.
A poem by Aida Qasim about Dima al-Wawi, a 12-year-old Palestinian girl who was recently released from Israeli prison.
Hillary Clinton was “swayed” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in seeking to set back the Iran negotiations in 2012 when Secretary of State John Kerry was willing to take risks to achieve the deal, according to a New York Times investigation by Mark Landler, published too late for most Democratic voters.
Harvard conference on science and politics, sponsored by The Israel Institute and Tel-Aviv University, turns blind eye to Palestinians and Israeli occupation.
To escape accusations of anti-Semitism, Labour supporters of Palestinians should remember not to put Zionism and Nazism in the same sentence, avoid sloganizing about Zionism, and resist conspiracy theories of Zionist control