A play in Washington based on the testimonies of Israeli soldiers in the peace group Breaking the Silence demonstrates that the occupation is now a permanent feature of Israeli society. Israel now claims not to be an occupier; and world governments often support it, because there is a Palestine Exception to international law. But a peaceful resolution will not occur till Israel dismantles this oppressive regime, argues Zeina Azzam.
Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian poet and citizen of Israel, was arrested in 2015 for posting a poem on Facebook. Tatour was charged with “incitement”, imprisoned for months and then kept under house arrest while awaiting trial. Transcripts from her trial were recently published and reveal the Israeli state’s inquiry into the nature of poetry: What is a poem? And what makes one a poet? Those were some of the questions raised by the state prosecutor in a tribunal that seems somewhere between an academic conference and a Stalinist show trial.
On Sunday Israel’s minister of communication Ayoub Kara said he is banning Al Jazeera from broadcast, shutting its Jerusalem bureau, and revoking press credentials for reporters with the Doha-based network, citing the media outlet as a “tool for the Islamic State” and creating biased content when covering recent demonstrations regarding the al-Aqsa mosque. But, commentators have raised the point that Israel is unable to pass sweeping bans and the network and its journalists will likely continue to work in the country.
Hip-hop artist Abu Rahss reports he was denied entry into the West Bank, unable to return to be a camp counselor for a second year at a skateboarding summer program: “After going up to the window and presenting my passport like all travelers, I was questioned for 15 minutes after which my passport was taken and I was told to sit and wait, as I had been expecting. Palestinians have to sit and wait while Europeans, Americans, and other international travelers pass through without any problem 95 percent of the time. After two hours of waiting, I was finally called to be questioned. It was unpleasant and antagonistic from the start and I was questioned for about 30 minutes about my family history, who I know in the West Bank, if I attend protests in the U.S., if I attend protests in Palestine, and much more. My phone was taken and looked through for five minutes (a young woman looked through my Instagram account thoroughly but seemed upset that she couldn’t find whatever it was she was looking for).”
In town hall at a Portland high school, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden is put on the defensive by questions and heckling over his support for Anti-Israel Boycott Act, and says law is necessary because boycott movement has “grown” and the law could apply to boycotts recommended by the United Nations. The pushback is further evidence of decreasing support for Israel inside the Democratic Party base.
Many have appraised Israel’s 1967 occupation as ‘Apartheid’. But it goes beyond 1967, and beyond Apartheid, to genocidal actions over 7 decades of the state’s existence. The actions are so egregious that many can hardly fathom them, and so they recoil to an apologetics that amounts to: “Don’t exaggerate.”
The West Bank village of Al-Walaja is stuck in the “seam zone” between by Israel’s separation wall to the east and the Green Line to the west. The only one road in or out of the village is shared by the illegal Israeli settlement of Gilo and looks more like a prison compound that a residential community. There are currently 28 homes in al-Walaja with Israeli demolition orders issued, but local activists are working to find a way to help protect the homes under threat. “We are a small village yes, but if they think that means they can kick us out and empty Palestinians from this land in order to connect their settlements, then they are wrong,” Khader al-Araj, head of the Al Walaja village council, tells Mondoweiss. “We will fight this, we aren’t going anywhere.”
Palestinians can no longer carry laptops and certain other electronics through the pedestrian Erez crossing from Gaza into Israel, according to the Israeli NGO Gisha. While cuts of Gaza electricity are threatening the work of Gaza’s many internet entrepreneurs, Electronic Intifada reports.
Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky agree on almost nothing politically but both say that anti-Semitism was deeply rooted at Harvard in the 30s through the 60s. Chomsky says it is a reason that MIT emerged as a major university, because it hired people like Norbert Wiener, when Harvard discriminated against Jewish faculty.
The movement for Israel Palestine should be built around a very simple program. Equal rights. A principle Jews honor in the west. If you say that Zionism is a “noble and integral part of Judaism”, then, I can’t work with you. If you can’t acknowledge that Israel/Palestine is an asymmetrical conflict in which one side has power, and a state apparatus, and a standing army, and is maintaining an illegal occupation with the backing of the world’s super power, you’re in denial.