Student members of the Palestine Solidarity Alliance at Hunter College recently made public their proposed ‘Resolution Demanding CUNY to Adopt a Socially Responsible Investment Policy,’ a landmark first step towards pressuring the City University of New York to end its ties with US companies complicit in Israel’s ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights.
In 2011, Israel passed the ‘Boycott Law’ which made Israeli citizens legally liable if they boycott, or encourage a boycott of an Israeli product, company, or institution. A new amendment to the law seeks to raise the possible fine to boycott supporters a possible 300% and reinstate a controversial clause that says there is no need to prove a causal link between a boycott and the damages to a company for a boycott advocate to be found guilty. The organization Boycott from Within says: “We are not deterred, and we ask the international community to continue demanding accountability, by enacting boycotting, divesting from, and employing sanctions against Israel, in accordance with Palestinian civil society’s BDS call, until Israel abides by international law and respects the Palestinian people’s demands for justice, freedom, and equality.”
A conversation about Israel at a dinner party of liberal media folks reflects conventional wisdom: support for the existence of a Jewish state and concern about women’s rights in Arab societies.
The simple truth about John Bolton’s appointment to national security adviser is that the Republicans need Sheldon Adelson’s money in order to be competitive in the coming midterms, and John Bolton is a tool of Sheldon Adelson. And Adelson cares about one thing, Israel. But only alternative media will connect these rather obvious dots.
David Muial, an Israeli who took part in the bloody lynching of Eritrean refugee Habtom Zarhum in October 2015, got a sentence of community service this week for “abusing the helpless”, even as Ahed Tamimi, the 17-year-old Palestinian who slapped an Israeli soldier, got 8 months in prison.
Earlier this month, Israeli police forces dressed in civilian clothes broke into the Palestinian al-Mujahidin cemetery and destroyed the tombstones of seven Palestinians killed by Israel.
A Jewish Israeli man was sentenced on Tuesday to 400 hours of community service and a $2,200 fine after participating in a group assault on a Palestinian man returning home from work. Daniel Cohen Shor, along with five others, attacked a 45-year-old Palestinian, hitting him in the ribs and left ear, before beating him as he lay on the ground and racially abusing him. The Jerusalem District Court judge justified the light sentence “because of the man’s personal circumstances and because he accepted responsibility for his actions”.
Trump’s next national security adviser, the Islamophobic warmonger John Bolton, is realistic in declaring that the two-state solution is dead. Though his solution to the Israel Palestine conflict is not. It is for pieces of the West Bank to be deeded to Jordan and Gaza to be deeded to Egypt, on the theory that Palestine is “bits and pieces” of the former Ottoman Empire.
Marilyn Garson reflects on the recent news that the Trump administration is cutting aid to UNRWA as the World Bank and UN Special Rapporteur warn of an imminent collapse of Gaza society.
Many of the Eda Haredit, an ultra-Orthodox group in Jerusalem, are descendants of the Old Yishuv, Jews who resided in historic Palestine under Ottoman and then British rule. The group opposes the Israeli state and any attempts at assimilating them into the larger Israeli society. The cloistered neighborhood of Mea Shearim has become a symbol for the group and outside many Eda Haredit homes hangs a sign that reads: “Here lives a non-Zionist Jew.”