Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer lobbied on Capitol Hill against President Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement. Yesterday Obama kissed up to him at the Israel embassy. The Israel lobby is alive and well
Two weeks ago a right-wing Israeli group called Ad Kan released an undercover video that claimed leftist Israeli activists were a driving force behind Palestinian violence. After the footage was aired on a major local news station three people were arrested on charges of conspiracy—one Palestinian and two Israelis. Now Ad Kan has released a second video, this time targeting the organization Anarchists Against the Wall as so-called “extremist Israeli activists” who “have a clear goal: to injure and kill IDF soldiers and police officers.”
John Soos traveled to Gaza with a delegation from Physicians for Social Responsibility to address the secondary trauma that mental health professionals there are struggling with. He writes, “Post traumatic stress disorder, as a clinical term, barely touches the enormity of the disabling psychological distress that permeates the reality of daily life here. There is nothing ‘post’ about a continual, unrelenting, multifaceted catastrophe.”
“Opposition leader” Isaac Herzog posts on Facebook setting out his vision for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “Why [doesn’t the Netanyahu government] implement an effective separation? Why don’t they erect a wall? What’s the point of a fence if one can hop over or crawl under it? We don’t need a livestock fence. We need real separation that will truly block the terrorists. We can erect a real fence, topped with electrified barbed wire, one that can’t be traversed. Any weaker solution is wantonness that this government is responsible for. We need a fence that’ll deter murderers and defend civilians. We can do that and defend our civilians from terrorism and murder. That’s part of my separation plan.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t like U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speech to the Security Council criticizing the Israeli occupation, as Carlos Latuff illustrates.
At a Zionist summer camp in Michigan in the 1980s, author Liz Rose and other young Jews felt comfortable exploring their sexuality together and looked forward to taking that experience to Israel. It took her years to understand that her community was eroticizing the land of Israel and leaving out the Palestinian story.
Another US foreign policy blunder, this one in Haiti. Does Obama stumble partly because he spends too much time on Israel?
In his last year as UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon gives a landmark speech saying it is only human nature for Palestinians to respond to 50 years of occupation and illegal settlement activity with violence, but the media are quick to swamp the story with Israeli PM Netanyahu’s reaction
Even George Bush kowtowed to anti-Israel forces in the executive branch when he claimed that the Palestinian issue was a real problem for the U.S., says Israel’s lawyer Dennis Ross. And only Bill Clinton stamped down those forces
Muhanned Qafesha, a resident of Tel Rumeida in Hebron, takes Mondoweiss through the arduous journey residents of the city have been subjected to since Israel made the town a closed military zone in November. Israeli soldiers detain and harass filmmakers Sheren Khalel and Abed Al Qaisi as they attempt to report Qafesha’s story.