Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi explores the roots of Puerto Rican-Palestinian solidarity, beginning with movements in the 1970s, “Palestinian Puerto Rican solidarity is extensive and includes various organizations and individuals in multiple locations and during different time periods. In Chicago for example, the solidarity expressed by the embrace of the two freed political prisoners, Rasmea Odeh and Oscar López Rivera goes back to the 1970s. The late Palestinian community leader Samir Odeh was instrumental in forging those ties of solidarity. In fact, leaders who accompanied Oscar López to the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York remembered Samir as one of their comrades from “back in the days.” In New York, even before Palestinian and Arab students began to organize themselves within the Organization of Arab Students (OAS), the Young Lords Party had already declared support for the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. During the 2011 delegation to Palestine in which Angela Davis participated, former Young Lords Party and Puerto Rican Student Union member and long-time anti-war and trade union organizer Jaime Veve, recalled how, as a young student involved in the Oceanhill-Brownsville struggle for community control, he had two posters on his wall, Angela Davis and Leila Khaled.”

“Israel is in gravest danger from within, from its own actions… The proposed legislation before you has its origins in the right-wing Israeli government … and comes out of a well-funded campaign” — Howard Horowitz urges Westchester County Board of Legislators to turn down a resolution against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Israeli authorities on Friday rescinded 250,000 Israel entry permits from Palestinians hours after a deadly…

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has shut down at least 11 news websites from being accessed in the occupied West Bank, all of which are reportedly affiliated with either the Hamas movement or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah rival, Mohammed Dahlan. Several sites said they were trying to work around the blockage issues to reach readers.

Journalist Aaron Cantú has written about policing, propaganda, drugs, and politics for Mondoweiss, The Intercept, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, and many other publications. He was arrested while covering a protest on the morning of Donald Trump’s inauguration and now faces up to 70 years in jail on charges of felony rioting, conspiracy to riot and destruction of property. Julie Ann Grimm, Cantú’s editor at the Santa Fe Reporter, says, “His arrest was scary, the threat of being imprisoned for the rest of your life for just doing your job and observing a protest is … I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. But we’re really not going to let this action by the federal government or by the prosecutors in Washington, D.C. slow him down or to put a muzzle on his voice as a journalist.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports Israeli soldiers detained Baraa Kanan, 19, and abused him for seven hours, before dumping him on the side of the road at night to find his own way home. From Ma’an News Agency: “‘They didn’t let up. I was terrified that they were taking me to some lonely spot so that they could murder me and no one would find me.’ Kanan added that soldiers finally stopped, at which point one said to Kanan ‘You’re a big-time terrorist. I’m going to shoot you.’ Kanan said that he heard the soldier load his gun and felt the gun be placed on his head. ‘I was sure he was going to kill me,’ he said. Kanan said that the soldiers then beat him again, and ‘covered his legs with earth and then removed it.’ According to B’Tselem, he was also transferred to a tent and made to sit on the floor. The soldiers’ removed his blindfold and forced him to say ‘Muhammad is pig’ and ‘Muhammad is a dog’, and snipped off bits of his hair with scissors.”

How is it possible for Hadassah to mount a panel on Feminism and Zionism, with absolutely no Palestinian perspective, when Palestinians are always pressured to include a Zionist perspective–for “balance”– when they organize panels at US institutions? Nada Elia mulls the damage from a June 9 event in New York.

Israeli and US officials are in the process of jointly pre-empting Donald Trump’s supposed “ultimate deal” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They hope to demote the Palestinian issue to a footnote in international diplomacy. The conspiracy – a real one – was much in evidence last week during a visit to the region by Nikki Haley, Washington’s envoy to the United Nations. Her escort was Danny Danon, her Israeli counterpart and a fervent opponent of Palestinian statehood.

On Monday June 12, 2017, Palestinian Christians of the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine issued an open letter to the World Council of Churches ahead of their upcoming gathering in occupied Bethlehem, “We need you and we need you now more than ever. We need your costly solidarity. We need brave women and men who are willing to stand in the forefront. This is no time for shallow diplomacy Christians…Things are beyond urgent.”

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi says the Palestinian cause is often pushed to the margins, but not at this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade where organizers invited a Palestinian contingent: “We were not only invited to march in New York City, usually a hands-off-Palestine site despite the advances made by the movement for justice in Palestine. We were also asked to bring Palestinian flags with us, “many, many flags” and invited to move closer to the front right behind the leading line of Indigenous Taino people, where Oscar López, riding in the float saw us, raised his fist for Palestine and placed it on his heart.”