The Jewish establishment in the UK has only one issue: Israel, and how best to protect it from criticism. On this basis they are willing to brand the main opposition party in Britain as irredeemably antisemitic under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. And that’s what makes Robert Cohen fear where we could be heading.
After eight months in Israeli prison, 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi returned home on Sunday morning to a hero’s welcome in her village of Nabi Saleh, in the central occupied West Bank. Arm in arm with her father Bassem and mother Nariman, who was also released on Sunday along with her daughter, the teenager broke down in tears as she was embraced by her younger brothers, extended family, and fellow residents of Nabi Saleh.
Israeli border police arrested a Palestinian man and two Italian artists next to the Israeli separation wall in occupied Bethlehem on Saturday. The artists had been painting a heroic mural of imprisoned Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who is set to be released back to her home tomorrow after serving eight months in prison for slapping an Israeli soldier.
The Band’s Visit uses its Arab characters and culture as far as it can to serve Israeli characters and an Israeli narrative, and then sends them on their way. Imagine setting such a show in South Africa under apartheid. It’s no wonder that normalization projects are so important; they normalize the unacceptable. A review by Noushin Framke.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has reported that Mo’men Fathi al-Hams, 17, died, on Saturday morning, from serious wounds he suffered by Israeli army fire on Friday. In addition to two other killings Friday, one of a child, the death toll for the Great Return March is now 155.
Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is to be sentenced for incitement for her Facebook posts on July 31. The case began with a mistaken arrest, but her conviction was no mistake, reflecting Israel’s need to punish any proud Palestinian. “Terrorists are always everywhere in Israeli consciousness wherever Palestinian resistance is mentioned,” writes Yoav Haifawi.
Head of the US Union for Reform Judaism calls deportation by Israel of Ariel Gold “disgraceful”. US religious leaders are trying to delay the day when they will have to say that Israel is disgraceful, though they never want to say that about Zionism.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may not know enough about Palestine, but she needs to hear from real progressives, not from the various shades of Zionism that have long held the Democratic Party hostage. She needs to understand that whereas Palestine may not be a regular topic of conversation around the kitchen table in a Porto Rican house, it is nevertheless an issue of national import.
The state of Israel has always been an apartheid state. Its founding was based on denying and destroying Palestinian collective life on the land, while encouraging Jewish immigration and participation in a settler-colony, itself based on a classed racial hierarchy among Jews. –International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network response to Israel’s new nation-state of the Jews basic law.
An anti-colonial protest group beamed the phrases, “Fallen heroes” and “Great March of Return” on to high rises across the street from the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC’s office, and an Israeli bank in New York last week– the latest project of the activist-artist collective, Decolonize This Place or the DTP Crew.