The top stories of 2018

In 2018, Mondoweiss published more than 2,250,000 words across 1,254 articles. These articles sparked more than 28,000 comments. Below are the ten most read articles in 2018. Some of them were published in previous years but continued to draw readers.

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Most read articles in 2018

#10 – The remarkable disappearing act of Israel’s car-bombing campaign in Lebanon or: What we (do not) talk about when we talk about ‘terrorism’

Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations tells that story of how from 1979 to 1983 very senior Israeli officials conducted a large-scale campaign of car-bombings that killed hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese, most of them civilians. While the book has received the highest praise from reviewers, this secret operation has not been mentioned once. Remi Brulin writes this is a perfect illustration of the political discourse on terrorism: The secret car-bombing operation Israeli officials conducted in Lebanon in the early 1980s represents a remarkable historical example of such “silences,” and of the “rules” that underlie the discourse on “terrorism” and ensure that certain things simply “cannot be said,” certain facts simply aren’t ever mentioned.

#9 – Ocasio-Cortez hedges criticisms of Israel– ‘I may not use the right words’

Phil Weiss filed this report: Rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, soon to go to Congress from NY, all but apologized for using words massacre and occupation about Israel, saying she spoke as an activist, and she is no expert on the Middle East and is willing to learn and evolve.

#8 – Canadian doctor: Israeli soldiers shot me in both legs as I was treating injured protesters in Gaza

Canadian physician Dr. Tarek Loubani was shot in both legs by Israeli soldiers while treating Palestinians injured during the Great March of Return on Monday: “One paramedic, Musa Abuhassanin, was killed while attempting a victim rescue under fire. One hour before he was shot in the thorax and killed, Musa was one of my rescuers when I was shot by live ammunition.”

#7 – Examining ‘Ten Myths about Israel’, by Ilan Pappe

Palestine was not empty. The Jewish people are not a nation with a homeland in the Middle East. Palestine was not “redeemed”, it was colonized. Its people did not flee, they were ethnically cleansed. Jews are not all Zionists. These are some of the myths that scholar Ilan Pappe exposes in his new book.

#6 – How Zionism helped create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

[Note: This article was published in 2016, but found new interest following the brutal murder of Saudi Arabian dissident journalist Jamal Khoshoggi.] The covert alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel should be no surprise to any student of British imperialism. The British Empire’s drive to impose Zionism in Palestine is embedded in the geographical DNA of contemporary Saudi Arabia.

#5 – 10-year-old girl blinded in Shu’fat, 11-year-old boy blinded in Issawiya

[Note: This article is part of our regular Today In Palestine news roundup. It was published in 2014, but continues to be widely read. This roundup, like all of them, offer a harsh glimpse of the daily reality living under Israeli occupation.] The persecution of East Jerusalem neighborhoods continues with Israeli attacks that severely injured an 11 year old boy in Issawiya and a 10 year old girl in Shu’fat.

#4 – Israel just lost American Jews

The silence of Jeffrey Goldberg, Bill Kristol, and Jennifer Rubin over Israel’s indefensible slaughter of Palestinian protesters on March 30, and the outspokenness against the atrocity of Bernie Sanders, David Rothkopf, Ayman Mohyeldin, and Chris Hayes, shows that the center has at last shifted in US discourse. American Jews have had it holding the bag for Israeli massacres.

#3 – Fact Check: MSNBC’s Palestinian loss of land map

[Note: This article was published in 2015 by our friends at the Institute for Middle East Understanding.] Last week, MSNBC aired a map showing the loss of Palestinian land to Zionist settlers and then to Israel from 1946 to the present. Following criticism from Israelis and their supporters, MSNBC apologized and stated that the map was incorrect. But was it? Here is a fact check of MSNBC’s map and the criticisms of it.

#2 – Dear Natalie Portman: I too was once a liberal Zionist

In refusing to attend a prize ceremony in Israel, Natalie Portman says the problem with Israel is Netanyahu. But the problem is Zionism, Robert Cohen writes to Portman. “If you continue to see Zionism as essentially liberal and progressive you will never understand why it creates in your own words: ‘violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power’. The current Israeli government is not an aberration. When Netanyahu falls, Zionism with all of its violence, corruption and inequality will stay put.”

#1 – ‘Ali is on the grill!’ Israeli settlers celebrate burning of Palestinian baby

Jonathan Ofir’s painful article on Israeli settlers celebrating the heinous assault on a young Palestinian boy was the most read article Mondoweiss published in 2018: There’s something particularly disturbing about celebrating the burning alive of a baby. Israeli Jewish settlers did just that yesterday, taunting a survivor of the Dawabshe family arson attack in 2015. Ali is on the grill! they shouted, in reference to the 18-month Palestinian baby killed in the attack.