The White House plan to expand the Border Patrol and ICE gives Bannon and Trump a growing armed wing that is independent of local police, that can conduct raids anywhere in the United States, and that showed its enthusiasm for Trump by endorsing him well before before the election.
Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, faces the possibility of eight years in prison for “incitement” and support to a terror organization – for a Youtube poetry video and two Facebook posts.
Palestinian students in Gaza call on students across the world to get involved in Israeli Apartheid Week this year and grow the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on campuses.
In three months the American Jewish community is going to hit an iceberg called the Jubilee, the 50th anniversary of the occupation/Six Day War. The collision is going to change the Jewish establishment. The fractures that have been developing for years over Israel are going to break out in public agony. The anniversay will change the American Jewish relationship to Israel forever, as the Six Day War did 50 years go.
On the 75th anniversary of the American Council for Judaism, Allan C. Brownfeld writes about how the group has challenged the Zionist philosophy which holds that Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews. He explains how the group advanced the philosophy of Judaism as a religion of universal values, not a nationality, and has maintained that Americans of Jewish faith are American by nationality and Jews by religion — just as other Americans are Protestants, Catholics or Muslims.
“It is sad that such a bright scientific light dims a tad at its moral and philosophical edges.” Hatim Kanaaneh reviews Noga Kadman’s ‘Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948.’
Last week, Israeli medic-soldier Elor Azarya was given an excessively lenient sentence of 1.5 years in prison for killing Abdel Fattah Al Sharif in Hebron. The military court based its conclusion in part on Azarya’s “positive personality and his being a normative person”. Yet this was the same person who wrote “kill them all” on social media as Israel considered a ceasefire with Hamas during the 2014 Gaza onslaught. This may seem to be a contradiction, but Jonathan Ofir writes the Azarya case cannot be seen as disconnected from the overall genocidal vein within Israeli society that he and his actions represent.
Palestinian barber Ramadan Edwan styles hair with fire in Gaza. Power shortages prevent him from using a blow dryer.
Palestinian activists say life in Hebron has become unbearable, and that international intervention is the only hope to ease the daily tensions and violence carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the city. “We are fighting a just cause, we are trying to end the occupation and get our human rights, our city, and our country back and bring the occupation government to justice for their illegal actions and crimes, but we need international support,” activist Farid al-Atrash tells Mondoweiss.
An 18-month prison sentence for an Israeli soldier who shot dead a wounded Palestinian assailant is an “unacceptable” punishment for “an apparent extra-judicial killing”, the UN said Friday.