UN Special Rapporteur S. Michael Lynk tells an audience in New York, “annexation trends in the occupied territories, particularly with respect to the West Bank, are quickening, and annexation is in the air, and formal annexation may be occurring sooner than we are thinking.” The Israeli right has been creative, but the human rights activists give him hope.
Israels nation state of the Jewish people has been denounced for making Palestinians less than second-class citizens. But Sara Greenberg, Netanyahus adviser told American Jews the law shows the “strength” of Israeli democracy because worse clauses were removed from the bill before it passed.
David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, seems to think of himself as an ambassador for Zionist Jews only. In a speech today in Tel Aviv, he described Israel as the “land of our national history,” and distinguished between the “country of our citizenship,” the U.S., and the country “we love so much,” Israel. He never mentioned Palestinians, nor the Christians and Muslims who feel a connection to Jerusalem.
Shahd Abusalama writes, “Palestinians’ legitimate claims continue to be silenced at the expense of sustaining Israel’s longstanding myths of being the safe haven for world Jewry and a democracy with the world’s most moral army. As if we are not as worthy as the children of Holocaust survivors of freedom, security, justice and dignity.”
Would Lara Alqasem’s liberal Zionist supporters have defended her right to enter her homeland if she had wanted to attend Bir Zeit University instead of Hebrew University? Nada Elia writes that there is much more to Alqasem’s case that needs to be examined, hinging on her identity and her choices, as well as how these were perceived, or intentionally ignored, by some of her defenders.
Trump is beginning to turn against Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed Bin Salman, but liberal Zionists in Israel are suggesting we go easy on him.
In a rare televised interview senior White House advisor and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner explained yesterday how he plans to move forward with his Middle East peace plan, despite collapsed relations with the Palestinian negotiations team.
In taking on Donald Trump today, Bill Kristol has been tweeting about the dangers of nationalism, and quoting George Orwell’s great essay of 1945, “Notes on Nationalism.” He should be careful quoting from this essay. Orwell several times criticizes Zionism and the idea of Jewish superiority in his effort to counter nationalist thinking in English politics.
NYU Student groups pledge to boycott NYU’s Tel Aviv campus over Israel’s targeting of Arab & Muslim students and academic freedom in the US.
Human Rights Watch reports arbitrary detention and systematic abuse in Palestinian jails, prisons and interrogation sites across the West Bank and Gaza.