Brad Schneider, Illinois congressman who once worked for AIPAC, rescinds endorsement of State Senator Dan Biss for Illinois governor because his running mate, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, supports BDS. Biss is Jewish, and the news is evidence of the growing American Jewish divide over rightwing Israel.
Palestinian forces on Monday evening arrested Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro for a Facebook post he published condemning the Palestinian Authority (PA) for detaining journalist and radio director Ayman Quwasmeh the day previously. “It is outrageous that a prominent human rights defender has been arrested simply for voicing his opinion online. Criticizing the authorities should not be a criminal offence. Issa Amro’s arrest is the latest evidence that the Palestinian authorities are determined to continue with their repressive campaign against free speech,” Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said.
A young Palestinian photographer in Gaza exhibited his work last week in a location that highlights both the ancestral food cultures of the Strip as well as the daily threat posed by Israeli siege and occupation – a Palestinian fishing boat in Gaza City’s harbor. Khalid Hashem Abu al-Jedian’s photographs were taken as he accompanied the fishermen of Gaza on their hazardous daily journeys into the sea, where Gaza’s traditional fishery is boxed in on all sides by Israeli siege, enforced by gunships.
At a Princeton conference on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Phil Weiss meets British philosophy fellow Brian Klug, who describes his decision to become a vegetarian 30 years ago, which he wrote about in his book Being Jewish and Doing Justice. On a subsequent visit to Jerusalem, Phil makes a similar decision, out of a sense of personal responsibility.
When white nationalist Richard Spencer said there was a lot to admire in Zionism, he held up a mirror to Jewish nationalism’s contempt for Palestinian rights. Naomi Dann of Jewish Voice for Peace was right to seize on the affinity as a reflection on Zionism, as lived. While Jane Eisner of the Forward and Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL are in denial about what their ideology has become.
An Israeli military order granting official administrative status to Jewish settlers in Hebron violates the 20-year-old Hebron agreement struck between Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu. “This order is against everything we’ve made here, it’s against all the agreements, all the treaties and older orders we have worked hard to slowly establish,” Bassam Shweiki, a Palestinian leader, says.
Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, refers to an “alleged occupation” in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, and says settlements pose no real obstacle to peace but Palestinians’ “culture of hate” does. Once again, the White House acts as Israel’s lawyer.
Israeli forces raided the occupied village of Beit Rima overnight and detained popular wedding singer Muhammad Barghouthi for song glorifying Omar al-Abed, who allegedly killed three settlers. Two members of Barghouthi’s band were also detained.
The discussion over the essential racism of Zionism is in the open. Israeli Justice minister Ayelet Shaked made it clear, and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy thanks her for her candidness. Levy published a column in Haaretz yesterday that all but says Zionism is racism. He calls it a movement that “contradicts human rights, and is thus indeed an ultranationalist, colonialist and perhaps even racist movement, as proponents of justice worldwide maintain”.
Israeli education minister Naftali Bennett coined a better word for “self-hating Jew” — “auto-anti-Semite.” We come up with a checklist of 10 signs for Jews that you are showing insufficient love of the Jewish people and need to get deprogrammed, beginning with, “You don’t look at old movies and tell your partner, You know, his real name was Julius Garfinkle!”