A new infographic from Visualizing Palestine using data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics shows how European Zionists began establishing population centers in Palestine in the 1870s, with British imperial support and how from 1967 to present, Israel has continuously engaged with impunity in the construction and expansion of settlements defined as illegal under International Law.
Do not come to a small southern town and be rude and expect it to be taken lightly. This lesson was made clear recently when four Knesset members were guests at an April 11 town council meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and were greeted by pointed questions about Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.
New heights of propaganda for Israel on its independence day: Netanyahu calls for military parades, a US columnist says an Israeli general should be fired for comparing the society to Nazi Germany, and the liberal Zionist group New Israel Fund celebrates Israelis’ “happiness” and “temperament” and says, “No country is perfect.”
“Najawa: A Story of Palestine” is a 45-foot “street comic,” composed of eight large panels, which tells the story of a Palestinian woman’s life over the course of eight decades, beginning with the Nakba of 1948. It was created by Vermont artist Michelle Sayles, in collaboration with artist and educator Jen Berger, and Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel.
Nada Elia writes, “This year, as we commemorate al Nakba yet one more time, as we remind the world that our catastrophe is ongoing, let us also act upon the belief that merely speaking out against injustice is not enough. ‘Demonstrations’ are not enough. BDS is a means to an end: liberation, the abolition of apartheid, the return of the refugees. We are approaching this end, and must look beyond it.”
Wednesday night 70 Jewish students at Brown and RISD held a discussion of the Palestinian Nakba inside the Hillel, featuring films by Zochrot, in defiance of Hillel official standards on appropriate programming. Organizer Sophie Kasakove says, “In order for Hillel to maintain its integrity as a pluralistic Jewish space, the community must embrace Jews who currently feel excluded from mainstream Jewish discourse and who seek to question dominant narratives about Israel.”
The Freedom of Religion Act introduced Wednesday in the House of Representatives tries to stop Donald Trump’s “temporary’” ban on Muslims entering the country. The act expands the age-old prohibition on religious tests on public office, a previously uncontroversial part of the Constitution, to prohibit religious tests that would bar entry into the country based on a person’s faith. “It is unthinkable that in the 21st century a religion bar would be considered. Virtually every American believes there can be no religious test or exclusion of an immigrant to our country. That was the very first principle and it’s time we put that very first principle into law.” said D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, one of the co-sponsors of the bill.
Michael Ratner, the late radical lawyer, was the opposite of big talk. He was all action, and his obituaries are at a loss to name his main achievement. When he saw the Israeli occupation in all its misery and theft he abandoned the Zionism of his youth and helped to lead a struggle for justice.
If all Jews must be identified by an inevitable connection to Israel, as the state seeks, then it may be that Israel, and its actions in the eyes of the world, will become their greatest peril.
According to a report released on Sunday by al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, the power crisis in Gaza has led to the death of 29 Palestinians, mostly children, since 2010. All those victims either burned alive or suffocated to death by thick smoke after they used unsafe alternative means to light their homes as a result of prolonged power outages.