A new poll has Jamaal Bowman up by 10 points over incumbent, and Israel lobby favorite, Eliot Engel. “Though the Democratic old guard has frequently been criticized as out of touch with the party base, name recognition and the right donors have held most would-be challengers at bay. If this poll is accurate, that time is rapidly ending,” tweeted American Prospect executive editor David Dayen.
The Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council (JVP HAC) joins the multitude of social justice groups and community-led calls for an end to the structural and systemic racism in, and violence by police forces across the country towards Black Americans.
Peter Miller explains the parallels and linkages between US law enforcement practices and what Israeli forces use to maintain the occupation in Palestine.
Irish novelist Colum McCann says that he was “cracked wide open” when he met West Bank Palestinian Bassam Aramin and his Israeli Jewish colleague Rami Elhanan one evening in Bethlehem. But his novel “Apeirogon” that elevates the two runs the risk of normalizing the occupation by treating reconciliation as the answer to political oppression.
Dedicated Zionists from Robert Satloff to Martin Indyk to Dennis Ross say annexation threatens the future of the Jewish state because it will alienate Europe and the Democratic Party; but AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby org, says not a word, foretelling a chaotic scramble for power inside the Israel lobby, with J Street and youth groups gaining ascendancy.
Trump wants Israel “to move forward with annexation to create a wedge issue visavis Joe Biden and the Democratic Party [to have] a hard political tool to use against Democrats in a very tight election. We all remember last summer the brouhaha that Trump created over the potential visit of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to Israel and accusing the Democratic Party of being leftwing radicals,” Israeli journalist Neri Zilber tells J Street webinar.
In the past five days, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has announced at least 20 new coronavirus cases in the West Bank, with the majority of cases reported in rural towns and villages in the Hebron district.
Netanyahu is sending Tzipi Hotovely to be ambassador to the UK even though she has attacked the leading body of British Jews, the Board of Deputies, for supporting a Palestinian state. “[A]n organization that supports the establishment of a Palestinian state is clearly working against Israeli interests. It is important to say explicitly: A Palestinian state is a danger to the State of Israel.”
A strong movement has coalesced opposing the Canadian government’s attempt to gain a seat on the UN Security Council. For Palestinian activists, this call to refuse to reward the Trudeau government is welcome.
Susan Rice is reportedly a front runner to be Joe Biden’s VP pick. Over the course of her career she has criticized Israel, but never held it accountable.