The First Amendment and organizers of a year-long campaign to uphold the right to boycott won an important victory in Massachusetts when the state legislative committee considering an “anti-BDS” bill refused to advance it to the floor, ending its chances of being passed this session. Here’s how grassroots organizing beat the bill.
The New York Times has published an exhaustive front-page article about Gaza’s misery that is a manifesto from Hasbara Central– the Israeli propaganda arm– explaining the worsening tragedy as the product of Palestinian infighting. An Israeli general is quoted at length by reporter David Halbfinger, U.N. and human rights officials not at all. Hamas is alleged to have started three wars, when Israel initiated them.
The civil rights organization Dream Defenders, along with leading entertainers and civil rights icons including Danny Glover, Rosario Dawson, and Grey’s Anatomy star Jesse Williams, issue a statement in support of Ahed Tamimi: “The Tamimi family stands up to Israel’s brutality because they believe Palestinians, like ALL people, should be free. Dream Defenders stands with them and all Palestinians in their righteous struggle. Now, and always, we commit to building a more just and loving world for us all.”
Amos Schocken, publisher of Haaretz, bashes US ambassador David Friedman for perpetuating “apartheid” in the West Bank, and meantime former Israeli security official Charles Freilich says that Jewish “intermarriage” in the U.S. is threatening Israel’s support because assimilating Jews don’t see the “supreme ideological importance” of the settlements as an “existential” issue for Israel.
Many Israelis and others believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promoting regional armed conflict, air war over Syria, to distract attention from corruption probes that are zeroing in on him and his wife, Sara. But a NY Times report leaves this angle out completely.
In their manhunt for the Palestinian teen suspected of stabbing and killing an Israeli settler on Monday, Israeli forces raided Nablus on Wednesday and injured 110 Palestinians, including one man run over by a Jeep. A Palestinian youth, Khaled Walid Tayeh, 22, was killed, one of three Palestinians killed this week by Israeli forces.
Nathan Englander is a superb storyteller in his new novel Dinner at the Center of the Earth. And the spiritual portrait of the Israelis is grim. It’s not a happy country. Everyone is narcotized or unconscious or belligerent. The book’s central character is a young American who was deluded by his beautiful Hebrew school teacher to believe that Israel was his birthright, and so he made aliyah, and became a black-ops warrior, only to find that Israel was committing indiscriminate massacres.
The nomination of Kenneth Marcus, President Trump’s choice for the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, will go to a vote next week, and he is expected to be shooed in, on a straight party line vote. If he is confirmed, he will likely become the latest member of a growing list of politicians threatening academic freedom generally, as well our civil rights as women, immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people. Nada Elia writes, “As more faculty, and students, come under attack, it is imperative that we grow our support networks, and that we make it clear we are many, and will not be intimidated.”
Rabbi Susan Silverman describes Israel as a place of refuge in a NYT piece denouncing plans to deport thousands of African refugees. But the piece never mentions Palestinian refugees. “We are the people who expelled over three quarters of a million people in our war of conquest in 1948,” Joseph Levine writes.
As most of you by now know, Facebook has recently made big changes to how users see content from publishers like Mondoweiss. The changes are expected to dramatically lower the “reach” our material enjoys, but here are some easy steps you can take to ensure that you’ll continue to see our most important stories.