In his memoir The World As It Is, Ben Rhodes documents that Netanyahu and his American friends had access to President Obama at every turn. Rahm Emanuel nicknamed Rhodes “Hamas” for advocating for Palestinians, and after Netanyahu humiliated Obama in the Oval Office lecture of 2011, Rhodes had to call “leading Jewish donors” to assure them Obama still supported Israel.
When EU ministers met in Vienna, BDS Austria was there to protest millions of Euros in research grants to Israeli scientific institutions. While the EU’s rules state that these grants must be for “civilian” programs, many are supporting companies that participate in the repression, surveillance, and exploitation of the Palestinian population.
A video taken by Breaking the Silence activist Achiya Schats shows a Palestinian child forced to climb an Israeli military fence to be able to access her home in the West Bank city of Hebron. Schatz shared the video on Twitter with the caption, “a girl tries to go home, just like yours, except that she was born in Hebron.”
Next week the UK Labour Party’s governing body, the National Executive Committee (NEC), will be voting on whether to adopt examples of antisemitism put forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in its definition of antisemitism. Pete Gregson wrote to all 26 NEC candidates to seek their views on the vote. Of the 12 responses that came back, 5 were for adopting the full IHRA definition and examples, 6 were for no change, and 1 was unsure. Of those in favor, he posed the question “If it’s passed and I said Israel is a racist state, would I get expelled?”
Earlier this month, health officials in Gaza announced that they would be stopping chemotherapy treatments for cancer patients due to a shortage of medicine. As a result, the lives of thousands of cancer patients were thrown into uncertainty. Doctors, rights groups, and the patients themselves have pointed chiefly to the more than decade-long Israeli blockade of Gaza as a reason for the shortages.
After the illegal Jewish outpost of Havat Gilad was established on a West Bank hilltop in 2002, “our entire world collapsed,” says Palestinian farmer Ibrahim Salah, 65. He has been denied access to his livelihood, his olive trees, and the Israeli government has officially recognized the settlement as it colonizes the West Bank.
This April, the Durham, NC City Council unanimously passed a policy that made it the first city to bar its police from engaging in international military-style training. This past Sunday, the Jewish Federation of Durham-Chapel Hill hosted an event called “Durham City Council Statement Singling out Israel: Jewish Community Responses” which ignored Jewish support for the policy and when Esther Mack and Abby Weaver tried to share their perspective they were removed by police. Mack and Weaver write, “Cops may have removed us from the Jewish Community Center, but we cannot be removed from the Jewish community. Whether our community leaders are ready to acknowledge and accept us is up to them.”
According to multiple reports, in early September the Trump administration will issue a report recognizing no more than half a million Palestinian refugees, will reject any right of return, and ominously will ask Israel to ‘reconsider’ UNRWA’s mandate to operate in the West Bank. Marilyn Garson writes, “Trump and those around him have spent the year trying to obviate – rather than solve – Palestinian claims. Now they wish to deny the refugee status of 90% of Palestinians. If Trump has his way, only a few elderly refugees will remain. The Right of Return will be moot. It would not exist now, he says, if UNRWA didn’t keep it alive. He will make the right disappear by de-funding UNRWA and de-registering its five million phantom refugees. The realization of Palestinian rights may be a marathon, but right now, it is also a sprint. The race is on, to be made to vanish or to be seen and heard.”
Trump’s ‘Century Deal’ and Israel’s new Jewish-state law combine to end Palestinian state and to restore the claim, “A land without a people for a people without a land,” says Palestinian member of Knesset Aida Touma-Sliman, on a visit to NY in which she discussed international resistance to an illegal act.
Jerry Merriman reviews the case of the Holy Land Five – five Palestinian-American men convicted in November 2008 of giving humanitarian aid to Palestinians that indirectly benefited Hamas – and writes, “Not one of the five humanitarians should have spent a single day in prison. Their good names must be cleared, and they must be released from prison. It cannot happen too soon.”