Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and hundreds of others were injured during the “Great March of Return” protest alongside the eastern borders of the Gaza Strip on Friday. The dead were a 14-year-old, Yasser Abu al-Najja, and Muhammad Fawzi Muhammad al-Hamaydeh, 24.
Israelis flip out after a group of five young American Jewish women on Birthright, their free propaganda trip to Israel, kept demanding information about the occupation, and yesterday at last left the trip to join a tour of occupied Hebron by the Israeli dissident group Breaking the Silence. Their Israeli guide berated them for not having a “clear heart” for Israel and warned them about possible threats to their lives.
Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, on the popular resistance in Gaza, the Trump administration’s policy toward Palestine, and Palestinian options to chart a new course. “This is a watershed moment in Palestinian history,” Juma’ says, “Since Trump took office, US policy fully adopted the Zionist project and embarked on a process of liquidating the Palestinian cause, of eliminating it. It is clear program.”
Hop Wechsler took the Israel’s High Court of Justice decision approving the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar and the forcible transfer of its residents, members of the Bedouin Jahalin tribe, and turned it into a poem. The resulting verse illuminates the court’s thinking on Israel’s ongoing violation of Palestinian rights.
“The fight in America is the fight in Israel,” labor leader Randi Weingarten says. The idea that Trump has screwed up America the way Netanyahu has screwed up Israel is a theme among liberal Zionists, from Tammy Zandberg to Jeremy Ben-Ami to Dahlia Scheindlin.
After 28 years gone from the World Cup, Egypt came back and flared out quickly. Then Ahmad Saad was let down by Nigeria and Senegal. But there’s always Mexico! And what a way to piss off Donald Trump!
When kids are brown does anyone care? The “tender age detention centers” for immigrant children in the U.S. are parallel to detention by Israel of Palestinian children. The arrests are highly dangerous and traumatizing, leading to epidemics of bed wetting, anxiety, depression, PTSD, agitation, and dropping out of school.
The detention of Palestinian legislator and feminist Khalida Jarrar is, in many ways, unexceptional. In Israel, where mainstream political discourse is decidedly anti-democratic, the detention of Palestinians, including lawmakers, without charge or trial is an everyday occurrence. No evidence has been brought against Jarrar, and yet there is every chance that she could spend the rest of her life in the Israeli military detention system.
Tom Friedman once gave me permission to believe in Israel and believe it wanted peace with Palestinians. That liberal Zionist world is over, and Friedman needs to grapple with the fact that liberalism stands not just against Trump but for Palestinian human rights, Liz Rose writes.
Today a group of Israeli activists hung photographs of Palestinians who were killed while protesting during the Great March of Return on the the fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip.