Israel supporters are outraged that Orla Guerin of BBC mentioned Palestinians in the context of Holocaust trauma. Robert Cohen says her remarks were entirely appropriate because the Holocaust is still resonating through Jewish history and is intimately connected to Israel’s history and actions against Palestinians.
On December 31, 2019, attorneys for Rima Najjar, a retired professor of English literature at Al-Quds University, filed a suit against the question-answer website Quora in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, arguing the site had unlawfully banned her from posting and moderating a forum. The case centers around the use of the word “Palestine” and “Zionist,” the latter of which Quora said constituted “hate speech.”
Yossi Klein Halevi, the author and Israel advocate, said that the left has “weaponized” the Holocaust against Israel. Speaking on i24 News on the 75th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, he said that he “frequently” hears leftwingers saying of Israel, “How can you do the same thing to Palestinians” that was done to Jews during the Holocaust.
Three 17-year-old Gaza boys were killed by Israeli forces near the Gaza fence on January 20. Their families deny Israel’s accusation that they were attacking Israeli soldiers, and are demanding the return of their bodies, according to a report by Middle East Eye.
Today, the extreme right is a wholly acceptable idea in the Israeli mainstream. Supporting illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory has shifted to being a centrist policy.
Palestinian NGOs are hitting back at international donors, particularly the EU, for their “anti-terror” funding requirements, which the groups argue unfairly target Palestinian civil society groups.
Donald Trump has a political motive to release his unbalanced “peace plan”: His biggest donors the Adelsons want it out before anyone else gets into the White House. But only Dan Raviv of Israeli broadcaster i24 News will say so.
Denmark’s Prime Minister was in Israel for a Holocaust commemoration, and she has announced the intention to apply the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates critique of Israel with hatred of Jews. She is also using this idea to incite against immigrants, equating them with neo-Nazis.
US President Donald Trump is set to release his long-awaited “deal of the century” peace plan in the coming days. It is expected the plan will extend Israeli sovereignty to settlements in the West Bank, in addition to annexing the Jordan Valley.
Benny Gantz support for annexing the Jordan Valley shows that the left is completely feckless in Israeli politics, and the only liberal hope is in Palestinian politicians. American liberal Zionists should accept that the two state solution is dead, and they should abandon the ideology that created apartheid: Zionism.