Introducing “ChangeMakers”: a new feature on the site where we’ll be highlighting inspiring stories of people or organizations creating real change. Please share your suggestions for this feature — stories we published in the past, or that you’d like to see us cover in the future.
Democratic Party lobbyists for Israel worry that Trump isn’t consulting with Israeli leaders and won’t take on Iran. There have been no phone calls between the two recently, says former ambassador Daniel Shapiro. While Michael Koplow says Israel used to have the sense that there was a “larger US umbrella that will prevent things from getting too far out of hand” in Lebanon and Syria, but they don’t feel that way now.
Israeli forces shot and killed a young Palestinian man outside his home today in the al-Arroub refugee camp in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron. A video, published by Quds News Network, shows Omar al-Badawi, reported to be 22-years-old, slowly exiting an alleyway next to his home and waving a white towel — seemingly to indicate to soldiers that he meant no harm.
Bernie Sanders’ editorial, “How to Fight Antisemitism,” strikes many right notes with today’s progressives, but Nada Elia says his shockingly anachronistic understanding of Israel shows the two-state delusion is a hard one to give up.
After longtime GOP Rep. Peter King announced that he would not seek reelection, ending a career defined by his history of racism and Islamophobia. Rep. Ilhan Omar took to Twitter to make it clear that she wasn’t exactly upset by the news, while Senator Chuck Schumer praised the retiring Representative. “Peter King stood head & shoulders above everyone else,” tweeted Schumer, “He’s been principled & never let others push him away from his principles.”
After the Israeli army publicized soldiers cutting off their hair to help cancer patients, Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch was among many who pointed out that the Israeli government prevents many cancer patients in Gaza from getting medical treatment.
Given their history of venom, why did Netanyahu decide to elevate Naftali Bennett to the latter’s life-long ambition, the Defense Ministry? Out of political fear of Benny Gantz. Or more fearfully, out of a desire to push hostilities with Iran.
Boston has banned ads for Palestine– and other political causes– in transportation sites, and an anonymous group responded by opening many bus station kiosks this week and replacing advertisements for commercial products with “posters explaining that the good people of Boston lose out on social programming, education, and clean energy because $11 million of this city’s taxes go towards buying guns for Israel every single year.”
November 9th marks 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall but we have unfortunately entered a new era of walls. The Stop the Wall campaign in Palestine has published a new anthology looking at global connections and resistance to walls and militarization. “Instead of ceding to the temptation to become completely absorbed in the ever more dramatic and brutal crises and attacks on our movements, this is a moment to lift our heads, see beyond the walls, and make connections between our struggles in order to gain strength and confidence together,” Maren Mantovani writes.
The act of Palestinian activists covering their faces during anti-Israeli occupation rallies is an old practice that spans decades. Ramzy Baroud writes now Palestinians should be more worried than ever, as NBC discovered Microsoft has funded the Israeli firm AnyVision, which supplied the IDF with facial recognition software.