Yossi Gurvitz on what the surrender of the Meretz party to Ehud Barak means for the upcoming Israel elections, and to the Israeli left as a whole.

The last five years have witnessed unprecedented change in the struggle for justice in Palestine. These changes offer opportunities that our movement needs to act on, particularly during the 2020 election cycle. 

The Orientalist bias is in the first sentence of this ‘NY Times’ report. Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grandmother apparently prays to ‘Allah,’ not to ‘God.’ This is how the press other-izes Arabs.

A ‘New York Times’ analysis of the Israeli government’s refusal to allow two American congresswomen to visit the West Bank embraces a central claim of the Israel lobby, that bipartisan support for Israel is critical to US national security, and leaves out Trump’s largest donors, the Adelsons, for whom Israel is the overriding issue.

By banning Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel has created a political upheaval in the U.S., with many Americans now favoring cutting aid to the country. One thing achieved this result: The women support BDS, and they have demonstrated the power of the nonviolent campaign.

The Israeli Minister of the Interior says that Rashida Tlaib doesn’t love her grandmother as much as she hates Israel, a charge that goes back to the famous hasbara claim that there will only be peace when Palestinians “love their children more than they hate us.”

Ala Khader al-Hreimi, 26. a former Palestinian political prisoner who was previously shot by Israeli soldiers, was killed Friday after he reportedly deliberately rammed two Israeli colonists with his car near Etzion, an illegal settlement.

The long term political ramifications of Netanyahu’s decision to deny entry to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar remain to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the latest efforts by the Israeli premier to quash the growing BDS movement have backfired.

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman vilified the BDS campaign on PBS News Hour last night: “leaders of the BDS movement are trying — not the try to get Israel to change this or that policy, but to try to remove every Jew from the Middle East. Just as Hitler wanted a Jewish-free Europe.” Host Amna Nawaz allowed the false characterization to stand, and also echoed a characterization of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as anti-Semites.

The Netanyahu government barred Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar over their support for BDS, but earlier this week Israeli lawmakers sent a letter to Congress saying the two-state solution is more dangerous than BDS. Will Netanyahu bar two-state supporters next?