When it comes to the profession of liberal values in Hollywood, Israel is still the exception. Pharrell Williams and Gerard Butler support the Israeli army– and dis Trump and Saudi Arabia. Producer Jason Blum appears at a Sheldon Adelson-sponsored event, but trashes Trump.
After seeing the effort by UCLA to ban the conference of Students for Justice in Palestine, Nada Elia couldn’t help but marvel at how some administrators bend over backwards to accommodate any representatives and requests from Zionist organizations, while also bending over backwards to censor and criminalize any representatives and requests from pro-Palestine rights organizations. Justice for Palestine? OMG, what a heinous crime!
Eight Democratic women of color newly elected to Congress appear to epitomize the progressive base’s ambivalence on Israel. Deb Haaland of New Mexico condemned the “murder” of Palestinians last March. Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts backs a bill to withdraw US funds from Israeli detention of children.
On Thursday, Moshe Feiglin, a rightwing political figure in Israel, went on television and explained his plan for the Gaza Strip: ethnically cleansing it, and those who survive the IDF can then ask for refugee status in the EU. Yossi Gurvitz has written to the government’s counsel demanding an investigation under the law of preventing or punishing the crime of genocide.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on water & sanitation crisis in Gaza, increase in Israeli settler violence. “97 per cent of ground water extracted in Gaza is unfit for human consumption, generating the risk of a waterborne disease outbreak.”
Bari Weiss’s said last night “you better believe” that the insurgent leftwing non-Zionist Jewish group IfNotNow welcomed rightwing Israeli officials flying in to Pittsburgh to express condolences in the wake of the Oct. 27 massacre at the synagogue because they were expressing the spirit of “Am Yisrael,” the people of Israel. Nothing could be further from the case.
A lot of drama is ostensibly playing out in Israel – Defense Minister Lieberman resigned because he opposed a ceasefire and being soft on Hamas. But this drama is more about politics than actual security – it is about Israel’s upcoming elections
Academics and activists say anti-Semitism conference at University of Vienna is promoting speakers who are “an embarrassing mistake, or as an attempt to promote the broadest possible academic discussion, but the co-sponsorship of the event by the Israeli Embassy, and the choice of an embassy official for the opening address are simply unacceptable.”
Israeli forces prevented students and teachers from entering a school in the center of Hebron City, after demanding to take their pictures before crossing the al-Shuhada Street checkpoint, according to Ma’an news agency. The Palestinians refused to be humiliated, and were forced to wait an hour at the checkpoint.
After Aisha al-Raibi, 48, was killed by rocks hurled through a car windshield evidently by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank on Oct. 12, her husband Yaqoub was summoned back to the scene to answer many questions about the crime. But Israeli authorities have arrested no one in the case, though the al-Raibi family says that cameras at Tapuah checkpoint surely captured information about the killer.