Ra’ed Khalil Abu Teir, 19, had been shot in the leg last Friday April 26 at the Gaza return protests. Yesterday he was far from the fence when he was shot in the head and killed, according to Palestinian reports. A 31-year-old Gaza man was also killed, while Israeli forces wounded 82, including three medics and two journalists.
Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem in the first four months of 2019 have already exceeded the number in 2018, the UN reports, and 193 Palestinians have been displaced. On April 29th alone, 31 structures were demolished. The next day another four. On Friday, UN officials called on Israel to ‘immediately halt’ the policy.
Marc Lamont Hill seems emboldened by his firing by CNN last year for daring to imagine equal rights in Israel and Palestine. On Wednesday night, he spoke of “Gettin’ rid of the settler colonial project altogether” and mocked the term, “liberal Zionist, whatever that is.” He will appear on a star-studded panel about Palestine on Saturday May 4 at UMass Amherst.
Meet May Golan, the new Likud Knesset member who has declared she is “proud to be a racist.” She’s the new darling of the Likud party despite, or perhaps because of, her racism.
This spring, eight years after the world watched brave unarmed civilians face down riot police on the bridges leading to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, there has been a new set of popular uprisings in northern Africa, from Algeria to Morocco, to Sudan. Rebecca Gordon says let’s hope they have more lasting success than Egypt’s Arab Spring.
On Thursday evening Jared Kushner avoided confirming if his plan, which has been kept secret, will include a Palestinian state but spoke at length about an “economic visions for the region” and a “business plan” to address “what’s been holding” Palestinians “back economically.”
Citing faculty and students who were denied entry into Israel, New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis passes a resolution that pledges non-cooperation with the university’s study abroad program in Tel Aviv.
Joe Biden has bragged of raising money from the Israel lobby group AIPAC, declared “Israel…the single greatest strength America has in the Middle East,” professed, “I’m a Zionist,” and in 2014 said he had told Netanyahu, “I love you. Read an overview of Biden’s remarks on Jews and Israel, including his belief that efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state, or even to protest the 2014 Gaza onslaught, are anti-Semitic.
About 50 protesters in Amman oppose Jordan’s multi-billion-dollar pipeline deal with Israel in a demonstration at the Parliament, observed by Alice Rothchild. One sign: “The gas of our enemy [Israel] is occupation.” But police soon move in to scatter the demonstration.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon is now claiming the bible as proof to Israel’s fundamental right to all of Palestine. During his speech at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, Danon held up a bible at for all the ambassadors present to see and said, “This is our deed to our land.” Jonathan Ofir says this is just an indication of Israel’s desperation for legitimacy.