It appears the Genesis Prize released a statement on behalf of Natalie Portman to make her look like a BDS supporter, and avert embarrassment for Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli Supreme Court OK’d a plan to remove Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin community of 183 people in the West Bank whose lands are targeted by adjoining Jewish settlements. The human rights group B’Tselem calls the plan a “war crime.” While 74 Congresspeople have urged the Israeli prime minister to respect human rights and not evict the Palestinians.
Hamza Abu Al-Tarabeesh writes, “For many of us who are Palestinians, we fight and sacrifice for those things we have yet to touch, experience, or see. In the 27 years of my life I have never smelled or gazed upon land that was once Palestinian and now part of Israel. Therefore it is through the eyes of others that I tell this story. Recently some friends managed to obtain much coveted permits to visit Israel, which in Gaza is commonly referred to as ‘our occupied lands.'”
Mara Ahmed attended a lecture by Amos Oz in late April and was interested to see how the liberal Zionist icon would frame his presentation in the context of the weekly Israeli attacks on defenseless protestors in Gaza: “He held up Jews as consummate rebels, whose anarchist gene forces them to doubt, argue, and perpetually reexamine the truth. Yet when I looked around the room, that’s hardly what I saw.”
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak hints at his intentions to lead the country again – by offering the “shooting and crying” alternative to the merciless treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. “No one is happy with 60 people killed,” he said.
Israel is provoking the latest violent escalation in and around Gaza, but the ‘NY Times’ covers it up. The Times article fails to report that during months of murderous Israeli aggression against Gazan civilians, the Palestinians until now have not launched a single rocket. The Times breathlessly recounts Israeli anxiety over the limited attacks.
Last week the 21-year-old Fathi Harb extinguished his life in an inferno of flames in central Gaza. He had no hope of finding work and could not afford a home for his young family. But self-immolation is more than suicide, it is protest. Jonathan Cook writes: “Harb understood only too well the West’s hypocrisy in denying Palestinians any right to meaningfully resist Israel’s campaign of destruction. The flames that engulfed him were intended also to consume us with guilt and shame. Can the West be shamed into action?”
For a first time since 1967, two wooden boats set off from Gaza heading to Cyprus on Tuesday, charting their course in protest of Israel’s decade long siege. The vessels carried students attempting to attend university, patients seeking medical treatment abroad, and protesters from the Great March of Return who were wounded with live-fire. Five hours after leaving the dock, the Israeli Navy intercepted the boats arresting 17 passengers while they were 9 nautical miles off the shores of Gaza. “This bid is a scream to the whole world that the Gaza seaport should again carry passengers and goods to Haifa and Jaffa, it is a scream again that the Gaza’s people will not afford the life under blockade,” said Adham Abu Selmeyeh, a spokesman for the International Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza.
Israeli Jews justify the Gaza slaughter with cultlike talking points — “We were gentle” — and wave Israeli flags in Palestinian territory in defiance of the non-Jewish population and have frankly chosen apartheid over democracy. These attitudes have produced great suffering for Palestinians, but there is no joy in Israel either. Phil Weiss reports on his latest visit.
Trump once laughed at the efforts of the Republican Jewish Coalition, rightwing supporters of the Netanyahu government, to “control” politicians. But 2-and-1/2 years later the group has emerged as a hub for fundraising for Trump and for setting his foreign policy agenda on Middle East issues. A former board member, Elliott Broidy, shows up in the Mueller probe, working with Israel lobby groups and the UAE to punish Hamas.