President-elect Joe Biden is set to nominate retired Army general Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary. After retiring from the military in 2016, Austin joined the board of Raytheon. The defense manufacturer has sold billions of dollars worth of weapons to the Saudi coalition that’s been pummeling Yemen with bombs for years.
This holiday season come shop with Mondoweiss — we’ve done the digging so you don’t have to! Here are our staff picks from gorgeous ethically sourced clothes, to Palestinian handicrafts, to hand-dipped Hanukkah candles, to books and Zoom cooking classes with one of our favorite chefs.
In a shot across Biden’s bow, former Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor warns the incoming president not to restore funding to Palestinian refugee agency and not to reverse Trump’s decisions to leave UNESCO and U.N. Human Rights Council.
Palestine Writes Literature Festival was an exhilarating relief from the pandemic. Writers including Naomi Shihab Nye, Ibtisam Barakat and Ghada Karmi spoke of indigeneity, dispossession, erasure, settler colonialism, oral history, collective memory, the right of return, Palestinian queerness, radical feminism, and the burning need to explore and document all of this in art, film, and writing.
Ayman Abu Alia remembers his son, Ali, who was killed by Israeli snipers on his 15th birthday. “In the past few days, I have seen all the young men and boys in the village stand with us, and it makes me feel like Ali is still standing here with us,” Abu Alia tells Mondoweiss, “He’s still here, brave, and standing up for his people and his land. That’s how I will remember my son.”
In a letter that was smuggled out of Israel’s Damon prison to be shared at the Palestine Writes festival, political prisoner Khalida Jarrar shares the essential role literature plays for Palestinian prisoners struggling the retain their humanity and remain connected to the outside world. “Our struggle for liberation inside prisons starts with protecting resistance literature,” Khalida writes.
Due to the rising numbers, the government announced a full-scale one week closure in select districts of the West Bank.
The incoming Biden administration has found the one Trump policy it wants to continue — normalization deals with Israel.
Despite these requirements under international law, human rights organizations report children are poorly treated by the Israeli military justice system, including the use of solitary confinement for minors. This is unacceptable and is one of the key issues we should be focusing on, in holding Israel to account for its human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
The killing of Ali Abu Alia — on top of hundreds of similar atrocities in recent years — has generated outrage in the west. Will anyone bear responsibility for robbing the young teenager of his life? It all depends on the responses of American political actors.