Liberal pro-Israel conference in DC featured hawkish statements on Syria. Susan Rice said Trump should have been “demonstrably unpredictable” with Assad to gain advantage. “For all our handwringing about President Trump’s temperament, he could have played those concerns to our advantage.” While Nancy Soderberg, a Clinton security aide running for Congress, said Trump had handed Syria to Iran “on a silver platter.”
The young Jewish group IfNotNow has seen 37 members arrested protesting Jewish leaders silence on Israeli killings of unarmed Palestinian protesters. The statement it helped elicit from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, urging both sides to end violence, was sadly reminiscent of Donald Trump blaming both sides for the alt-right killing at Charlottesville protests.
Einat Weizman explains how her documentary play, “Prisoners of the Occupation,” about the lives of Palestinian prisoners, became the focal point of a cultural and political battleground in Israel.
BDS movement: “Their Independence is our Nakba. The ethnic cleansing of 750,000 to one million indigenous Palestinians 70 years ago and turning them into refugees to establish a Jewish-majority state in Palestine is no cause for celebration.”
Barnard and Columbia University administrations have often targeted Palestinian solidarity and censored Palestinian voices on campus, but yesterday Barnard students voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling on the university to divest from companies complicit in Palestinian human rights violations. With 1,153 total votes cast, yesterday’s turnout was the largest in Barnard’s history according to the Student Government Association. The final vote 64.3% in favor and just 35.7% opposed.
A photo essay of homemade gas masks demonstrates the creativity and resilience of Palestinian protesters demanding their rights in Gaza.
As the Great March of Return enters its fourth week, Nabeel Diab of the National Commission to Break the Siege of Gaza tells Mondoweiss: “The Palestinian people are eager to achieve their freedom, their independence, and their right to return to the villages where they were forced out of 70 years ago.” Diab is a member of a grassroots organization of activists who helped plan the march. He says that Israeli government claims that the protests are Hamas-led “are lies, and are defamatory statements that have no basis in reality.” Diab tells Mondoweiss: “This march is the embodiment of popular action involving children, women, and involving all the Palestinians that refuse to accept the occupation of our land.”
Underneath all that Israel does lies a central notion – that of the ‘Jewish nation’. It informs all that Israel does, and sits at the core of all its violations. Jonathan Ofir writes, this is the central myth that needs to be dismantled.
The shame of the Jewish establishment: Rep. Jan Schakowsky says she never used the word “occupation” before last year, while Jeremy Burton of a leading Boston Jewish organization brags of a policy of refusing to debate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), even with other Jews. These people have their heads in the sand (or worse) and young Jews want none of it.
On the eve of a divestment vote by George Washington University’s student senate, multiple students witnessed two men who they say clearly did not attend the university, posting flyers around campus attacking the student group responsible for the resolution, as well as Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Student Association Senators. The vote was cancelled due to safety concerns and rescheduled for April 23.