On August 28, Palestinians in Hebron took to the streets to protest a newly-extended fence that divides the road leading to the Ibrahim Mosque in half; two-thirds of the street is divided off and allocated to the Israeli settlers, with the remaining third left for the Palestinian community. Ella Hattey writes, “The segregation fence of Salayma makes life intolerable for its residents, it imprisons a community guilty of no crime-except that of being born Palestinian.”
Eight-year-old Palestinian girl Aseel Abu ‘Oun was killed Saturday by an Israeli settler who drove his car near where she lived in the Foroush Beit Dajan village, in the Nablus district. She was buried Sunday, and her family said the announcement of an investigation by Israel of the killing is likely meaningless, meant to quell public anger.
The never-ending deathbed vigil for the two-state solution has reached a new stage. The Trump administration’s refusal to commit to the two-state solution is horrifying liberal Zionists who fear threats to the Jewish state, but Netanyahu is overjoyed. He celebrated the settlements this week: “This is the inheritance of our forefathers, this is our country… We came back here to stay forever. There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the Land of Israel.”
Suha and Yafa Jarrar have come to accept that their family is never safe. Being the daughters of Khalida Jarrar, a well-known leftist lawmaker in the occupied Palestinian territory, brought its challenges, but the young women are proud of their parents for their involvement. “No matter how hard it has been, we could never fault our mother for her involvement in politics, even if it can be dangerous, it is something she is passionate about and she always encouraged us to follow our passion,” Suha says. “So we will always support her in hers.”
American Jews have “tremendous power” over the government of Israel, but they should never criticize the Netanyahu government on its policies toward Palestinians, just “stand up for” Israel in the U.S., says American-born Israeli politician Dov Lipman, at the American Jewish Committee forum in June.
Jordan BDS thanks the private and public companies in Jordan that have discontinued their contracts with the security company G4S in response to a global boycott call against the company for its role in the Israeli occupation.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu is the Rabbi of the town of Safed, and is one of the most notoriously racist rabbis in Israel. He has publicly said he will not condemn “price tag” attacks by settlers on Palestinians, saying “if the government won’t act, then the public should” and his most notorious act was signing a petition demanding no Jew rent or sell apartments to a non-Jew in his town of Safed; 300 rabbis joined the call. Now, an Israeli blogger exposed an old ruling (from 2002) of Eliyahu allowing rape during war. Says the rabbi, “When lives are on the line, you do not educate the soldiers to morality.”
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett made a genius triple breakthrough in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and sociology on Friday, offering a new term for the old idea of Jewish self-hatred: “Auto-anti-Semitism is a social-psychological phenomenon in which a Jew develops obsessive contempt and hostility towards Jewish tradition, customs, and observant Jews,” he wrote.
Forward editor Jane Eisner argues that Israel, and the Jewish people, have a right “to maintain the hegemony of the dominant class” – privileging Jews over Palestinians, at the same time she decries the discrimination and occupation that resulted from such hegemony. The rest of us have a right to label such an order exclusionary and racist.
Scholar David Gerald Fincham says historical Palestine is too small to be divided. It must be one sovereign state, but it must include two nations, with an open border. The model is Scotland and England, which became Britain in the 1700s. But this time, plant a million olive trees.