Donald Johnson punctures the melodrama over the latest report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Nothing the Russians did even comes remotely close to the lies and misinformation and deceptive reporting that Americans inflict on each other. The Russians aren’t the ones who persuaded many Americans that global warming is a hoax. The Russians aren’t dividing our society.
The Israeli Knesset passed on Wednesday the first reading of a bill to forcibly transfer families of Palestinians involved in attacks against Israelis, despite heavy opposition from intelligence and army officials. If passed into law, it would see that within a week of an attack or attempted attack, the Israeli army’s central command would be permitted to expel the relatives of the Palestinian assailants from their hometowns to other areas of the West Bank.
Pitzer College alumna Diane Shammas tells Pitzer President Melvin Oliver “the time is overdue” for American institutions to take a stance against discrimination against Palestinians by Israel. The Pitzer faculty has voted to suspend a year-abroad program at Haifa University. Oliver said doing so would be a “blow” to the college’s reputation.
B.D.S. has “gathered steam despite bitter opposition from the Israeli government,” a New York Times editorial says, warning that Israel and its friends are attacking “bedrock” US principles of dissent in pushing anti-boycott legislation as part of the federal spending bill. An ACLU lawsuit against a similar law in Texas is publicizing the Israel lobby’s efforts to curb American free speech.
When I was searching for news stories for my family to explain what was happening in Palestine, Mondoweiss was the perfect solution: concise, well-written and authoritative stories that brought home the tragedy of home demolitions, and the unspeakable brutality and inhumanity of the occupation. That’s why I support Mondoweiss, and why I am asking you today to support it as well. We need that voice, that relentless spotlight on injustice to keep us all sane, and to keep us focused on justice.
By colluding with antisemites worldwide and weaponizing the term “antisemitism” to inappropriately include anti-Zionism, Zionists have transformed a very real and ongoing threat to Jews into a political tool that serves their own settler colonialist goals.
Israel had its worst week in a long time in the US discourse. The two-state consensus is now in a complete shambles, with many Americans on both right and left beginning to advocate for one democratic state in Israel and Palestine, which of course would mean the end of what Benjamin Netanyahu calls “the one and only Jewish state.”
The UN warns Gaza is showing early warning signs of a coming “unprecedented” humanitarian crisis, Israel is still mulling the death penalty, and the World Health Organization examines Palestinians rights to health under the Israeli occupation in this edition of JVP’s month health advisory.
It has been very hard to understands what Airbnb’s actual policy concerning illegal Israeli settlement listings is. A statement in Hebrew was issued saying it halted the ban policy, and was later contradicted by another saying it had not changed, and that this is all “incredibly complex and emotional.”
Airbnb is denying claims by an Israeli minister that the company was going to reverse its November decision to remove listings in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a Facebook post on Monday that following meetings with Israeli government officials, Airbnb would not be implementing its November decision.