Notes for Ian Fisher, NYT Jerusalem bureau chief: Biased reporting from Israel/Palestine is not only the fault of reporters. Your editors must be ready to resist the Israeli propaganda machine.
Five of Europe’s largest pension funds have — against EU directives — invested up to €7.5 billion ($8.09 billion) in businesses linked to illegal Israeli settlements, Danish investigative news team Danwatch, reported on Tuesday.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world,” said Anne Frank, German writer, Holocaust victim.
Last Wednesday Mohammed Jahalin and his family were ordered out of their houses in the Jahalin Tribe Bedouin encampment west of Jericho and watched as the metal blades of Israeli bulldozers smashed through their homes. In 2016, Israeli forces demolished homes, particularly Bedouin homes, in record numbers and in the first 23 days of 2017, Israeli forces demolished 119 Palestinian-owned structures, leaving 177 Palestinians displaced. “They keep tearing down our homes, and it’s so expensive to rebuild,” he said. “But we don’t know what else to do, we are refugees, we don’t own land, we have nowhere else to go. Tell us where to go where we can continue our way of life and we can do that, but right now we have nowhere else to go, this is our home,” Jahalin says.
The Quebec mosque shooter who killed 6 Muslim worshipers appears to be a white-nationalist, with anti-Muslim and anti-immigration beliefs. He was also pro-Zionist. The media ought to mention the sympathy, because it is relevant to reaching an understanding of such actions.
US President Donald Trump’s first week in office far exceeded our worst fears. Nevertheless, as the orders came in, millions of Americans were ready. When, barely a week in office, Trump issued his Muslim Ban, cities and smaller towns across the nation erupted again in rallies and marches. One of the chants heard at the protests was “From Mexico to Palestine, All Walls Will Fall.” It is a chant that indicates an awareness of our connected struggle. And just as “Gaza to Ferguson” has entered and taken hold of American consciousness, expanding our understanding of solidarity and intersectionality, so “No Ban No Wall” and “All Walls Will Fall” must and will become part of American resistance.
What the mainstream press leaves out: January 8 killings of four soldiers in Jerusalem were likely result of a young Palestinian man losing all hope as well as the ability to cope in an increasingly oppressive situation, targeting the people who have made his life a misery, writes Alice Rothchild.
Former US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro speculates Trump extracted shocking endorsement of his immigration policies from Israeli PM Netanyahu in exchange — for what? Allowing settlement expansion, or killing Iran deal, or moving embassy to Jerusalem, Shapiro speculates
Noushin Framke was born in Iran in 1960 into a family where politics was ubiquitous and permeated every layer of life. Her father was a political prisoner under the last Shah’s regime; he had been rounded up with many writers and intellectuals after the 1953 CIA coup. Now, she reflects on President Trump’s executive order banning immigration from Iran and how a family that has always been obsessed with politics is coping.
Some 10,000 protesters gathered in Battery Square Park in lower Manhattan, to listen to an array of speakers; from grassroots organizers Linda Sarsour of Mpower Change and Steven Choi of the New York Immigration Coalition to New York State Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.