The fancy mostly-Jewish DC-area golf club President Obama wants to join after he leaves office is divided about accepting him because of his stand on Israel at the United Nations in December, the New York Post reports.
Russia intervened in Syria to prevent ISIS from toppling the Assad government, John Kerry said on a leaked tape. And the US watched ISIS rise and thought “we could probably manage.” Without meaning to, Kerry made the case against US intervention in the war.
The United Kingdom has Brexit. The United States, an incoming president Trump. And Israel now has Elor Azaria. It may not have the same ring, but ultimately the turning point could prove as decisive. Jonathan Cook writes, “The soldier’s trial, far from proof of the rule of law, was the last gasp of a dying order.”
One of the major questions facing the incoming Trump administration is whether it will move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Commentators agree it could have far-reaching consequences and embolden Israel’s right-wing. What may come as a surprise is that it could also end up further isolating Israel. “It increases the possibility that other countries—specifically the Europeans—that simply tag along behind the United States are going to have to start to make policy [decisions] for themselves…where they exact some form of consequence on Israel,” Ali Abunimah tells Mondoweiss.
Donald Trump has now named his son-in-law Jared Kushner as a senior adviser, notably on Middle East and Israel issues. Ten years ago, Kushner fired Philip Weiss from the New York Observer after Weiss started reporting on the Israeli occupation. Weiss reflects on his experience with Kushner and what it could mean for his upcoming White House role.
“We in Jerusalem have just experienced an unprovoked terrorist attack, a murderous attack that claimed the lives of four young Israelis and wounded others”, said Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement right after the car ramming attack in East Jerusalem two days ago. But is an attack on military personnel in occupied territory a terror attack? Jonathan Ofir writes, “By such rhetoric, Netanyahu blurs the distinction between military and civilian targets, a principle which is very important in the distinctions concerning terror. When we sum up the whole of the setting, what we actually have is a Palestinian under occupation, targeting a gathering which is rather exclusively manned by soldiers, military representatives of the army that is occupying him. All this falls, prima facie, within the distinctions regarding legitimate resistance to occupation. It does not matter how ugly it looks, we cannot without critical appraisal of the context just call it ‘terror.'”
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to Netanyahu three or four times as often as to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to former State Dep’t aide David Makovsky
Progressive Except Palestine–PEP. A term many of us know and have used to describe someone who has a commitment to progressive causes—civil rights, human rights, movements for justice–except when it comes to Palestine and Israel. But Donna Nevel believes one can’t be progressive except Palestine: “Being Progressive except Palestine not only means supporting Israeli brutality—it really does mean that—but it also means supporting US imperialism. If you support Israel, then you also support US financial and military support for Israel. It goes together. That is anything but progressive.”
Max Ajl reviews ‘Revolutionary Yiddishland’, by Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg, a history of European Jewish radicalism. Their oral history – a history from below – seeks to capture the lives of struggle of Jewish dissidents, communists, Bundists, working-class militants, martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. Ajl writes, “As we lurch into another moment when more and more may feel the jackboot of the state, one can hope also the message of this book can inspire many to again look to that horizon to which the people of lost Yiddishland looked, too, and find something there worth struggling for.”
Israeli forces raided homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabbir on Sunday and detained at least five relatives of Fadi Ahmad Hamdan al-Qunbar, a Palestinian who was killed earlier in the day after carrying out a deadly vehicular attack. Israel is also withholding his body, denying family reunification requests, and planning demolition of his house.