Americans on the 2020 Census might have the option of filling out “Middle East and North Africa” (MENA) as their ethnicity, having lacked such a specific category on previous census forms. Some Arab Americans seek the change, while others fear it will provide information to forces who want to discriminate against them.
Sheldon Adelson, the pillar of the rightwing Israel lobby, says “the most important program of my lifetime” is Birthright, because the free trips to Israel nearly double the rate of US Jewish intermarriage, and block assimilation of secular Jews.
Thirteen women including several parliamentarians, an Olympic athlete, Nobel Laureate, Mairead Maguire and former US Diplomat, Ann Wright are days away from breaking the Israeli blockade by reaching Gaza shores. Sources indicate that the Israel navy has been given orders to intercept the boat.
“When Sa’id ‘Awad spotted the first pomegranate saplings popping up on his fields, he should have seen it coming. A part of him perhaps already understood that the long process threatening his land was nearing its logical conclusion; that the handful of tender trees would yield the poisoned fruit of dispossession.” Yigal Bronner reports on the the Kafkaesque tribulations of a Palestinian farmer in Area C of the West Bank.
Osama Abu Arab, a well-known official at the Palestinian Authority’s military liaison office, was arrested by PA forces on Saturday after publically criticizing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to attend Shimon Peres’s funeral. Hours after Abu Arab’s arrest, an Abbas administration official said in an Israeli Radio interview that Abbas had “no regrets” in his decision to attend the funeral. In Beit Jibrin refugee camp, one young man, who asked to remain anonymous, told Mondoweiss that Abbas’ attendance at Peres funeral was just another indicator that the Palestinian President was “not on the side of the people.”
A Palestinian from Gaza writes a letter to African-Americans pointing out the many similarities share as oppressed peoples: “I do not have to be black to understand the words of Marin Luther King Jr. when he said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I am a Palestinian who is extending his arms in brotherhood to another people who know and live my legacy of oppression.”
Amanda Taub’s piece in the New York Times saying there are no villains in Yemen– because our ally Saudi Arabia is killing children — is an instant Orwellian classic
Kim Jensen interviews Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka about Israel/Palestine, and the broader Arab world. Baraka says a Green Party administration would offer a reset on US/Israel relations: “We have to let this ally Israel know that it is a new day: that a real motion toward resolving this conflict has to unfold. We are not going to support the settlement process. We are not going to provide political cover for obvious criminal behavior. Support from the US is not going to be sustained if Israel continues to deny the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.”
An Israeli water conference in Venice is aimed at keeping the country in European spaces, but it was distinctly under-attended, and organizers inflated the numbers by putting fake names in a conference registry: Aaron Aaron, Tina Tina, Jeffy Jeffy and Yaw Yaw.
Efraim Halevy, former Israeli spy chief, defies Israeli government by saying that apartheid South Africa had no choice but to negotiate with Mandela, even though he was imprisoned for violent activity and the same holds for Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned Palestinian leader charged with terrorism.