“In this God forsaken place, Tension clings to everything, doors, windows, stair steps, people’s eyes and mouths, their hands and their necks. Tension roams the streets at night praying on young men and women’s dreams. Licking his fingers as the sun rises in the east, it sinks into the soil, into the water, and into the skins of those whose dreams it devoured.”
We are very excited to announce the second publication in our series Mondoweiss in Print: Reading Maimonides in Gaza, by Marilyn Garson. Between 2011 and 2015, Garson lived through two wars as she worked for Mercy Corps and UNRWA in Gaza. Reading Maimonides In Gaza is her incredible memoir of that tumultuous time. An expanded 25-page version of Garson’s story Mondoweiss originally published online last March, the book includes exclusive new content and provides an intimate and harrowing look at the life-saving work aid organizations did in Gaza during two Israeli attacks. Mixed in with this reporting is Garson’s own process of coming to understand her connection to Judaism while under fire from Israeli warplanes. A portion of the proceeds from Reading Maimonides In Gaza will go to support We Are Not Numbers, a Gaza-based writing project for Palestinian youth.
At the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington DC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a bleak image of expanding Iranian influence in the Middle East set against a thriving Israel united with the United States. In true Netanyahu fashion the speech was more upbeat than stern, and of course it included props.
The AIPAC policy conference has featured one prominent Democrat after another seeking to outflank the Trump administration in expressions of love for Israel. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer took the prize by slinging mud at Palestinians and Arabs as the reason there is no end to the conflict. Schumer said the problem is the Palestinians “don’t believe in the Torah. So that’s the reason there is not peace.”
Emmett Gulley, the Quaker who was the first to head up American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Gaza unit in 1949 arrived when the Nakba was still underway. Nearly 70 years later, AFSC is still working in Gaza. Now, there are many more people living there, and the air is filled with drones and surveillance balloons, but the situation, and conclusions, are fundamentally the same: it’s time to end the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of Palestine.
In an attempt to salvage liberal Democrats view of Israel AIPAC made a point to reach out to progressives. As part of this effort during the lobby group’s annual conference, former Democratic Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm made the case that Israel is a “progressive paradise.” Hamzah Raza writes that Granhold’s Israel fable is contrary to realities on the ground, and in response offers a list of nine reasons why Israel is actually just the opposite of what Granhold claims.
Once the ideology of a unitary Jewish people was accepted, the cause of Zionism became a madness in Jewish life, Abba Solomon writes. And today the state of Israel is a Jewish project; and organized Jewry must confront its collective responsibility for the discriminatory regime it has created.
Are Texas and Arizona banning free speech on campus? The University of Houston and Arizona State University are forcing speakers to disavow boycotts against Israel in order to speak at events on campus.
War with Iran could “perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become,” Col. Lawrence Wilkerson warns, but Israel is trying to “suck” America in to such a conflict, with Senator Chris Coons of Delaware providing militarist propaganda worthy of the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.
It is has been a very bad week for those claiming Israel has the most moral army in the world. Here’s a small sample of abuses of Palestinians in recent days in which the Israeli army was caught lying.