Finally, after lying through their teeth that they have “defeated” or “buried” the BDS movement, Israel’s far-right government and its lobby groups in the west are now admitting that they have failed to stop the impressive growth of the BDS movement.
The 100-year old father of Yacoub Abu al-Qee‘an [or al-Qi‘an] died Thursday morning after succumbing to shock over the death of his son, who was killed by Israeli police while defending his village of Umm al-Hiran from eviction. Israeli authorities are in the process of razing and expelling the Palestinian-Bedouin residents of Umm al-Hiran, in order to establish a Jewish-Israeli community in the same location.
Israeli forces stormed Aida refugee camp on Wednesday, arresting Ali Jawarish, a 14-year-old disabled Palestinian boy, who as of today is still being held in Israeli detention. The arrest was caught on video by youth from the camp, and depicts Israeli forces tearing off the boy’s shirt, and violently throwing him into the back of a military jeep. Jawarish was supposed to have a court hearing on Friday, but Israeli authorities told his family that the hearing had been postponed to an unscheduled date. “It’s not right what happens here to children, there needs to be a way to stop these kinds of crimes committed by the occupation,” says Jawarish’s cousin, Rana Musafana. “They are only children — Ali is a child, he needs to have a childhood — all the children should be able to have a childhood.”
In the latest instance of Israel’s demolition campaign in the Negev region of southern Israel, homes were demolished in two unrecognized Bedouin villages on Wednesday, while Israeli police surrounded the village of Umm al-Hiran. Among those left homeless, a 100-year old Palestinian woman and her 60-year old daughter, both of whom are unable to walk due to health issues.
The Washington D.C.-based music collective, FHTMG (Jefe, PacMan Slim, and Nine Five) releases a music video inspired by Jefe’s interrogation at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport.
In an incident caught on video yesterday, a group of Israeli settlers rode a red ATV into a densely populated Palestinian area in the West Bank city of Hebron to taunt and threaten locals. “If war breaks out the Jews will come here and evict and kill you all,” one settler yells.
From the grassroots to the upper levels of government, the national conversation today reflects a new development in the U.S. where resistance is widespread, diverse, and aboveground. As we march and strike to denounce this country’s multiple wrongs now is the time for an intentional revisiting of how we can organize to win. Nada Elia says the leadership of this new movement are the perfect leaders for this moment, “The leaders of national and transnational resistance movements are mostly young, overwhelmingly gender non-conforming women of color, with a critical understanding of violence encompassing intimate as well as institutional, state-sanctioned violence. It’s a leadership grounded in an experiential understanding of intersectionality.”
For years Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel had funneled millions of tax-exempt American dollars into a hardline West Bank settlement through a U.S. charity. Now newly uncovered documents show his money will continue to pay for settlements in the future.
Yesterday, New Israel Fund exec Jennifer Gorovitz was detained and questioned at Ben Gurion airport for 90 minutes when she arrived in Israel. NIF CEO Daniel Sokatch sent out an email to supporters calling the incident “an act of political targeting” and reports Gorovitz told officers that she is a Jew and a Zionist.
“Every time someone says– and people say it all the time, I get it on twitter all the time– ‘There’s no such thing as a Palestinian,’ or ‘There was nobody there when the Zionists arrived’– these are genocidal statements,” Ben Ehrenreich says at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies.