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2020

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Women from a-Tuwani village fill containers with water from the Ein al-Beida spring for the first time in 15 years. (Photo: Miriam Deprez)

At daybreak Kefah Adra set out to fill a plastic container of water from a nearby spring, a morning errand she has not done in 15 years. Like many Palestinian towns in this southern region of the West Bank, a-Tuwani is hemmed in by Israeli settlements, which a decade and a half ago cut off access to her water source. 

In 2016, the Arizona Legislature passed HB 2617. The legislation (which was signed into law by Governor Doug Ducey) prohibited the state from investing or contracting with groups that boycott Israel. The law also established a blacklist of businesses that support the BDS movement. The legislation prompted a challenge from Mikkel Jordahl, the owner of a law firm that contracts with Coconino County Jail District to provide legal services for prisoners. He’s a supporter of BDS and the law required him to certify that his firm would not engage in the boycott. 

UNC-Chapel Hill Students for Justice in Palestine, December 24, 2012. (Photo: Facebook)

The Trump administration’s executive order on antisemitism signals a repressive state action—in effect, setting policy by executive fiat—and an increasingly hostile limit on speech. It will give permission to those university administrations who wish to suppress Palestine solidarity activity rather than make a strong defense of academic freedom.

On a visit to Tel Aviv, scholar Yakov Rabkin finds that the extreme nationalist appeals of Meir Kahane, once ostracized in Israeli politics, are now mainstream. Kahane grasped the brutal logic of settler colonialism and had the courage to make it explicit. Time proved him right.