A 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Ramzi Abu Ajamiyeh, was reported to be in dire condition in Ofer Prison after being taken from his home in a refugee camp on Tuesday, a month after Israeli forces shot him in both legs.
Shadowy Israeli intelligence officer “Captain Nativ” tours American Jewish spaces and tells a bunch of Upper West Side Jews that Israel was “really close to opening a war against Hezbollah” in 2015. Who knew!
The Daniel S. Abraham Center for Peace, a prominent liberal Zionist lobbying group run by former Democratic Florida congressman Robert Wexler, purchased a full-page newspaper advertisement in Friday’s edition of the New York Times, calling for the immediate separation of Israelis and Palestinians into separate countries to keep Israel as a Jewish majority state. “It’s Time for Separation,” the advertisement explains. “Separation today means a Jewish majority, State of Israel now and for Generations ahead.” Or, as Alabama Gov. George Wallace put it: “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”
“Nakba denial beats denial of the Holocaust,” Gideon Levy says, while Mahmoud Abbas calls on the world to acknowledge the expulsion 68 years later. But American denial of the Nakba remains as strong as ever.
For Arab travelers through Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, it is common knowledge that lengthy questioning and strip searches come before boarding. As it turns out, forcing passengers into airport back rooms and requiring them to remove clothing is illegal under Israeli law, says legal rights group Adalah.
Skylar Lindsay reports from Jisr al-Zarqa, the only town on the coast of Israel today with an entirely Arab population. Despite being on the Mediterranean, Jisr al-Zarqa is trapped. Fourteen thousand residents occupy a little 1.5 square kilometer strip of coastline where 80 percent of families live below the poverty line. The town is pushed up against the sea by Highway 2 and squeezed from the north by a kibbutz and on the south by Caesarea, the luxurious suburb Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu calls home. “Have you seen Netanyahu’s house?” Palestinian fisherman Khalid Jurban asks, jokingly. “See? Here there are Palestinians and Israelis living right beside.”
President Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in New York on the sideline of the UN General Assembly and there was more talk about the president playing golf in Israel and visiting the country in his post-presidency than there was about the vaunted two-state solution.
A Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor analysis of UN data show that a recent surge in reports of deportations of individuals attempting to transit through Israel to work with Palestinians is apparently the result of an official strategy implemented by the Israeli government beginning in January of this year.
Last November Israeli soldiers killed 24-year old Rasha Ahmad Hamed ‘Oweissi at a roadblock, as she approached with a knife. Yesterday a soldier shot her 13-year-old niece Baraa Ramadan ‘Oweissi at a nearby checkpoint. She was unarmed.
Today, September 21st, is International Day of Peace. In a world of conflict, we have quarantined its solution to a single day, a day of peace. As Americans, peace is something we volunteer to achieve in our spare time, but for a Palestinian, peace is the only hope of a future life.