If Georgia congressman Hank Johnson had not been criticizing the Israeli occupation when he likened Israeli settlements to “termites,” no one would have noticed. The smearing of Johnson as an alleged anti-Semite is vicious and contradicts the Torah.
Residents of Bil’in village were joined in solidarity by international and Israeli activists, including several activists from the Black Lives Matter movement. Two protesters were arrested as the demonstration was dispersed.
The forces that tore apart the Democrats in 1968 were arrayed in Philadelphia, but the party and the police (the establishment!) were determined to defuse the destructive energies this time round. It’s not working so far.
On the heels of the Israeli government announcing 1500+ illegal settlement tenders since Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a strongly worded statement, available in Arabic only, that said in part, “as long as these countries’ bilateral relations with Israel are treated separately from the occupation all Palestinian land will be annexed in the not too-distant future, relieving these countries from the trouble of circulating their useless condemnations.”
Wilson Dizard talks to Mark, a Democratic Party consultant in Philadelphia for the DNC, about U.S. responsibility to the Palestinian people given decades of support for the Israeli occupation. “I feel for them. Palestinian Americans, great. They’re Americans. But Palestinians not my problem. We have things to deal with here,” Mark explains.
During his speech to the DNC Bill Clinton said, “If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together, we want you.” Imraan Siddiqi responds: “The DNC is presenting itself as a more tolerant, open option in comparison to what the RNC has to offer. If we look a little deeper, however – it seems as though there is still much work to do. Bill Clinton’s comments were just a glimpse of this looming beneath the surface.”
Nesma Seyam shares a diary entry written during Israel’s 51 day attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014: “I have finally realized that what I have experienced was truly a dream and why it had occurred that night. My soul was aching, and my lust for sweets was an attempt to sooth the bitterness in my heart. But all the sweets in the world would still not be enough to erase the cruelty, strife, and bitterness in our hearts.”
The Israeli army states that a commander wasn’t lying when he said he fired rubber bullets at Palestinian youths; but an x-ray clearly shows a bullet in the skull of one of the victims.
The broadcast of Mahmoud Darwish’s famous poem, ‘ID Card’, by the Israel Army Radio made the country’s far-right defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman equate the poem to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee writes “Israel would do well to ignore its propagandists and allow that contrary voice of the Palestinian poet to be heard. Or else only the deaf and the deafening will be left to prolong this endlessly bitter saga of violence.”
Wilson Dizard reports from Philadelphia on day three of the Democratic National Convention: “The Academy Awards of Democratic Party politics continued into its fourth day on Thursday after Hillary Clinton clinched the nomination from the party of the people on Tuesday. Protests outside the Wells Fargo Center continue, and sometimes include dissident Bernie Sanders’ delegates who have come to feel the Democratic party doesn’t want them around, and that security confiscates their signs. ‘The DNC has its reps ripping up signs that support Palestinian rights so ppl can’t take them out of the trash,’ tweeted journalist Rania Khalek.”