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July 2019

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White progressives in the Democratic Party are turning against Israel. They snapped during the 2014 assault on Gaza, and they are joining what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls a “generational” shift for progressives to criticize Israel. “Young Jews are sick of this.”

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi and SFSU Students

Aiming to expose and loosen the influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. campuses, Palestinian-born professor Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi has sued San Francisco State University (SFSU) in federal court for illegal retaliation for her political speech, and in state court for breach of contract and employment discrimination.   Her supporters have issued a call for donations to a fund to cover necessary expenses of the litigation.

Democrats are all for two states as an article of faith. But their Israeli counterparts can’t use the phrase, instead talking about “divorcing” Palestinians or “separating” from Palestinians. So maybe we should pay more attention to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who says, “separate but unequal” didn’t work in the U.S. and it won’t work over there.

Ayanna Pressley at a rally for Elizabeth Warren in Cambridge, MA (Photo: Flickr)

Nada Elia on Ayanna Pressley’s dangerous talking points on Palestine: “One cannot speak of the pain on ‘both sides’ of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people without being a normalizer of violent settler-colonialism that hinges on racism. It is tantamount to Trump’s claim that ‘there are fine people on both sides’ of rallies promoting white supremacy, and the protests against these displays of hatred.”

Palestinians flee with their belongings from the Shejaiya neighborhood of the Gaza Strip, on August 19, 2014. (Photo: Ezz al-Zanoun/APA Images)

Five years on Hamza Abu al-Tarabeesh remembers the 2014 war in Gaza when he was a young journalist. That summer one of his senior editors was killed in an Israeli airstrike, and photojournalist he worked alongside lost a brother. “At the moment of impact the electricity cut, smoke and dust covered the office, and I heard shrapnel hitting the exterior. One of my colleagues started sobbing.”