When Batya Ungar-Sargon of the Forward landed on Rep. Ilhan Omar for an alleged anti-Semitic “trope” in calling out the Israel lobby’s use of money to influence politicians, she joined the army of slanderers ready to assign any criticism of Israel to one alleged anti-Semitic prejudice or another.
After Israeli anchorwoman Oshrat Kotler had the temerity to say that the “occupation” had turned Israeli soldiers into “human animals,” she faced a wave of condemnation from Israeli leaders right up to the Prime Minister. Her violation was even talking about “occupation.” The Israeli right commands the discourse.
As the international community divides over who to back for leader of Venezuela—President Nicolás Maduro or opposition legislator Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself the rightful head of government—the Palestinians of Gaza see an unsettling similarity to their own history. “There is a similarity between the Palestinian people and the Venezuelan people,” observes Nisreen Abu Amra, a member of Gaza’s Central Committee for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. “We are in the same trench, facing a reactionary, imperialist conspiracy led by the United States of America and Israel.”
Israeli police forcibly evicted a Palestinian family from their home in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday, immediately replacing them with a group of Israeli settlers. The Abu Asab family, who live in the Muslim Quarter of the city, had been handed an eviction notice by the Israeli Supreme Court, ordering them to vacate the property by February 28th. The court ruled that Jewish settlers were the “rightful owners” of the property under the pretext that Jewish residents lived in the home pre-1948. Video footage of the eviction shows Israeli forces shoving and assaulting members of the Abu Asab family as they removed them from the home. According to local sources, the family were forced to leave without clearing the home of their furniture and other possessions.
What is it like to go from a tenured professorship to an hourly wage driving buses? Steven Salaita tries to make sense of an unusual transition.
A Palestinian teen, Hassan Nabil Ahmed Nofal, 17, died on Tuesday in Gaza, four days after he was struck in the head by a teargas canister fired by Israeli soldiers during the Friday protests for the Great March of Return.
Former AIPAC official M.J. Rosenberg has confirmed that Ilhan Omar’s description of AIPAC as being “all about the Benjamins” is actually right. He describes how AIPAC manages to handle money without it being official. We should thank Rep. Ilhan Omar for keying the debate.
Vice President Mike Pence accused “the murderous revolutionary regime” of Iran of calling for “another Holocaust” during a two-day summit in Warsaw yesterday where the Trump administration is rallying support for action against the Islamic Republic.
In the US, just as in Israel, Palestinian suffering is silenced, and any mainstream discussion of Palestinian pain immediately gets redirected towards sympathy with Israel, and gets recast as an act of bad faith. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is the latest public figure to be smeared with such false accusations of antisemitism by Zionists who are alarmed at the growing support for Palestinians in Congress. We can’t let this happen.
On a wintery Friday night in Washington DC the Palestinian electronic debke band 47Soul plays a sold-out club show at the Tropicalia. Kim Jensen interviewed the band about their music that fuses elements of electronic dance, trance, reggae, and rock with Palestinian percussion and the mijwiz—a traditional Arab reed instrument—driving the vibe. “That sound deserves to be international,” guitarist and vocalist Hamza Arnaout tells Jensen. “I want it to be part of our music. Maybe later on it will contribute to the bigger pool of consciousness in pop music.”