The money the US gives to UNRWA is not ‘aid.’ It is an infinitesimal downpayment on restitution owed Palestinians. The US remains Israel’s principal benefactor, and underwriter of Israel’s anti-Palestinian terror. US “aid” to Israel enables it to keep five million once-productive people destitute, leading lost lives in the squalor of scattered refugee camps, because they are the wrong ethnicity.
The well-being of millions of Palestinian refugees is now being used as a weapon in the Trump administration’s political assault on Palestinians. Reduced U.S. funding to UNRWA, the U.N. agency responsible for offering services to Palestinian refugees, will result in direct cuts to education, healthcare, social services, infrastructure, microfinance, and emergency assistance. Mohamed Mohamed says, “It is no exaggeration to say that without these services, I might not be alive today.”
A theme of a New York Times article on the nomination of Kenneth Marcus to be civil rights director in the Education Department is that the BDS movement against Israel pits “Jews” on the nation’s campuses against “students of color.” But there are many Jews who support BDS, who are invisible here; while Zionism is conflated with Judaism.
A peek at the archives of the Israeli Labor Party confirms that its founders and early political figures prepared the ground for Israel’s current slide into fascism. David Ben-Gurion and other leaders vacillated between relating to Palestinian citizens as dogs or as donkeys. Moshe Dayan looked forward to the opportunity of expelling the remaining 170,000 Palestinians, and Ben-Gurion said if differences between the people were eliminated, “the Jewish people” would be eradicated.
Approximately 3,500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip depend on fishing to make a living, supporting families of often eight or more people each. Many risk their lives and their boats every time they sail out any distance, due to almost daily attacks by the Israeli navy—with the most recent one on Jan. 9, when five Gaza fishermen were detained and their two boats confiscated. A team from We Are Not Numbers goes out on a night-time fishing run to experience first-hand both the joys and the risks of the profession.
A new documentary on the conflict, In the Land of Pomegranates, suggests that Israelis and Palestinians only need to understand the other’s narratives of victimization to overcome their differences and get along. But its portraits of young Palestinians and Israelis scarred by violence shows that only outside pressure and structural political change will allow the two peoples to get along, and the film’s politics are meaningless.
In a sign that the United States is ratcheting up pressure on Palestinian leadership, the Trump administration sent notice to the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) that it is withholding over half of this year’s annual commitment, paying $60 million and freezing another $65 million. The move indicates the U.S. is leveraging its financial support to pressure Palestinian officials into acquiescing to its vision for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Palestinian-American business owner Amer Othman al Adi has been in the country nearly 40 years. Today the 57-year-old sits in the Geauga County jail awaiting deportation — the first time Adi has seen the inside of a jail cell, and a shock to his congressman and wife and family, who had been cooperating with immigration authorities.
An Israeli military court ruled today to keep 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman in prison until the end of their trial. “I expect the worst from the occupation,” Ahed’s father Bassem told Mondoweiss. “This is life under occupation. I think we represent and show the real suffering of Palestinians under occupation. This is the real image.”
Ahed Tamimi, 16, has been held in an Israeli prison for nearly a month since her arrest last December 19 for slapping a soldier. Today a military court in Ofer prison inside occupied territory extended her detention indefinitely, till she is tried.