Smacked with a travel ban after Israel denied permits to leave Gaza through the northern Erez crossing, the musical group Dawaween performed a protest concert on the strip’s border with a windswept demilitarized buffer zone and chain-linked fence in the background.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton participated in a public forum with veterans on Wednesday night, describing how they’d defeat Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Although they diverged on the methods their answers were the same — more war in the middle east. Clinton is playing the role of Ego in American foreign policy, rationalizing unethical decisions, owning up to some questionable decisions (Iraq) but not others (Libya). Meanwhile, Trump is the remorseless Id, the base impulse of empire to seize land and resources through the promise of deadly force. The Id knows colonialism isn’t about bringing the blessings of civilization to conquered, it’s about exploiting them and their resources. Trump seems to understand that in a way Clinton doesn’t, or at least won’t admit.
The two sides of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement squared off in New York’s City Hall on Thursday, with BDS activists disrupting a hearing where city council members discussed a resolution condemning BDS. “New York City Council should stay out of the business of condemning non-violent human rights movements,” Radhika Sainath, staff attorney with Palestine Legal, said in a statement. “By passing this resolution, New York City Council will chill the speech of New Yorkers eager to be part of an international human rights movement.”
Cadiz, provincial capital in the autonomous community of Andalusia in the Spanish state, has become the latest municipality to pass a motion supporting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights and declaring itself an Israeli “Apartheid Free Zone”. Cadiz joins more than 50 cities and towns across the Spanish state which have voted to declare themselves spaces free from Israeli apartheid.
Warnings of a civil war among Jews in Israel reflect the divide over the manslaughter trial of Elor Azaria, with Israeli generals determined to prosecute the medic. The generals want Benjamin Netanyahu gone; and a comment by Jeffrey Goldberg indicates that the Prime Minister may have lost an important American ally.
Jeffrey Goldberg says that Netanyahu’s “manipulations” worked on President Barack Obama. He means that Netanyahu used the Israel lobby to stymie Obama’s initiatives on Israel.
Israeli bulldozers demolished a house in occupied Al Aqaba in the Jordan Valley early today on just one day’s notice and despite repeated appeals to the US government from Mayor Haj Sami Sadeq
Israeli intelligence on Tuesday informed the family of Mustafa Nimir, who was shot dead by Israeli forces on Monday during a military raid on the Shu‘fat refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem, that the 27-year-old was “killed by mistake.”
Segregation is a state whereby people are separated and isolated by race or ethnicity. When separation is the outcome of decades of systematic policies and practices, segregation can surely be considered involuntary. In Israel, segregation determines the Zionist class system and goes largely unquestioned. The challenge at the forefront of civil rights is how to rewrite Israel’s racial space divisions as something other than a foregone conclusion.
Over the summer, one of the founding villages of the Palestinian non-violent movement, Nabi Saleh, decided to stop holding the weekly Friday demonstrations that brought the small West Bank town international attention. The move comes following scores of arrests and a general fatigue among protesters. “The tear gas is inside the village, the clashes are inside of the homes, and it’s a small village which makes it difficult for the people to continue,” said Bassem Tamimi, a leader in Nabi Saleh who helped organize weekly marches over the past six years. He estimates that more than 350 people from his 600 person town have been injured in clashes with the army since 2010, and 50 were left physically disabled.