Rabbi Brant Rosen responds to Jewish community leaders who praised Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s win in the Democratic primary but chastised her for tweeting about a “massacre” in Gaza: “I’m also troubled that you chose not to respond to her actual words, opting instead to give her a tutorial on the history of Zionism.”
i24 reports: “The controversial scheduled demolition of a Bedouin village in a strategic area in the West Bank was pushed back on Monday after Israel’s High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction preventing the state from carrying on with its plan to evacuate residents from the village.”
First they came for me in Martha’s Vineyard,
But I was in Nantucket.
Then they came for me in Nantucket,
But I was in Cape Cod. . . .
Norman Finkelstein offers his support for Alan Dershowitz as he has become a social refugee in elite resorts across the Northeast due to his support for the Trump Administration.
Hasbara has died. The era of Israel being able to “explain” its actions to the world is over. The fair-minded have all made up their minds; Trump’s embrace of the country and its massacres have seen to that. So Israeli explanations are reserved for hard-core supporters. The hasbara is pure propaganda, aimed at rallying the base.
On May 16, 2018, Guatemala followed the U.S.’s example by moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing the city as Israel’s capital to almost unanimous criticism from the international community. Guatemala’s long-standing alliance with Israel was widely mentioned at the time, but little attention was given to the reaction of its own large Palestinian population. In a bid to overturn the embassy move Guatemalans of Palestinian origin have brought a case to Guatemala’s constitutional court.
The New Yorker says Obama saw the light about the Israeli settlement process because of a “map that was never seen before” 2015 depicting disconnected islands of Palestinian population surrounded by Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. And that’s why Obama let a settlement resolution go through at the UN. But any activist and anyone familiar with Oslo has seen this map or one similar before.
The Israel issue is heating up in American politics, with ABC News publishing a report that progressive Democrats are increasingly willing to criticize Israel and may “reap political rewards” by doing so. Those progressives include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NY, Scott Wallace in PA, Leslie Cockburn in VA, and Ilhan Omar running for Keith Ellison’s seat in MN.
At an Israeli Ministry of Education conference, Moshe Zar, a former Jewish terrorist, brags, “I am known for saying ‘Build a house, it’s like you wiped out a hundred Arabs. Build a settlement, it’s like you wiped out tens of thousands of goyim. That’s the truth.” The ministry does damage control, but Zar’s ideology is widely held.
Israel finally built an access road to the West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar last week, after half a century of delays. But the only vehicles allowed along it are the bulldozers scheduled to sweep away its 200 inhabitants’ homes. As Bedouin resident Ibrahim Abu Dawoud observed: “For us, leaving the desert is death.”
Assimilation is decimating the diaspora, Miriam Adelson warns young American Jews in Israel. They should become “more committed Jews, have Jewish babies,” and become “soldiers” for Israel, lobbying governments and swaying public opinion “in favor of Israel.”