Jeffrey Gettleman, a New York Times reporter who covered Africa for a decade, accidentally reveals why much mainstream coverage is so bad. There is a focus on violence and “ooga-booga” stories, ones that satisfy western prejudice, rather than relating the real struggles and achievements of Africans.
This year, Mondoweiss is spending well over $100,000 to recruit, translate, edit and pay freelance journalists in Palestine who take risks to share the truth with you and the world. We are almost halfway to our summer fundraising goal and Mondoweiss will need hundreds more gifts in the coming days to keep paying brave reporters in the field for the news only they can deliver. Mondoweiss is able to publish news only because of contributions from people like you — help support fearless journalism from Palestine today.
Amith Gupta writes, “The use of LGBT discourse to pinkwash Israeli state violence–and A Wider Bridge’s slanderous allegations against those who do not comply–are simply one part of an ugly trend to turn pride events from a commemoration of the sacrifices of marginalized peoples into an effort to sanitize their marginalization.”
Palestinian political leadership has reacted with outrage over the detention of feminist, human rights activist, and Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member Khalida Jarrar, detained by Israeli forces from her home in Ramallah during a predawn military raid on Sunday. In June 2016 she was released after being detained by Israel for 14 months.
“This demand to stop payment to prisoners is a condition by Israel to avoid making any peace treaties with the Palestinians,” says Akram Atallah of Palestinian Authority’s detainees commission. “People want to talk about settlements and borders and water issues, [and] Israel wants to make this issue with prisoners the crux of a deal to make peace?”
Peace Now says the number of settlement tenders already approved for 2017, which will not be affected by Netanyahu’s reported freeze, are higher than the total number of new tenders approved per year in more than 15 years, while the number of individual housing units approved so far in 2017 is more than any year since 1992.
Israeli security services responded to Palestinian knife attacks by surveilling social media and using an algorithm to predict who will commit violence. On this basis more than 400 Palestinians have been detained without having committed any criminal act. Though when they need a charge, Israelis say, Incitement.
The double standard of American Jewish political power for Zionists: American Jews should back the Israeli occupation unquestioningly and fight the boycott movement against Israel over Palestinian human rights, but when it comes to freedom of Jewish worship in Jerusalem, US Jews should use that boycott power to bring the Netanyahu government to its knees.
Jesse Rubin reports on the latest break in virtual pro-Israel advocacy, an online hasbara app that Israel’s strategic affairs minister calls the “Iron Dome of Truth”: “Combining military-language with an advanced technology sector—two things which Israel prides itself on—users can choose from a long list of ‘missions’ and receive points upon completion. The tasks can be as simple as liking a Facebook page called ‘Uncovering Bias and Real Human Rights Abuses at the UN’ or sharing a tweeted photo of Mariah Carey landing in Israel.”
Cal State Fresno shuts down search for Middle East professorship after all 4 finalists are Palestinians and/or Arab Americans. Friends of a foreign government have silenced debate and made us all dumber, writes one finalist, who remains anonymous lest they beomce “another name on the Israeli lobby’s effective but untraceable blacklist.”