Shahd Abusalama’s grandmother was close in age to Prince Philip who died last week, prompting the author to ponder how both Philip and her sitti were from a generation that lived through the end of Britain’s imperial empire, but from strikingly different vantage points.
By opposing and prohibiting funding to many of the Israeli policies of military occupation that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, and by increasing the transparency around US weapons flows to Israel, Representative Betty McCollum’s latest bill is the boldest effort ever by Congress to ensure that the United States is no longer complicit in Israel’s denial of freedom to five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
How can torture be both banned and common practice? The answer lies in the Israeli Shin Bet’s history, where secrecy has prevailed.
Recent videos show routine racism and violence directed against Palestinians with Israeli government support. Jewish settlers threaten to unleash dogs on Palestinians. Others spew hatred as soldiers protect them: “This is my land, King David walked around here two thousand years ago, herding his sheep. When you were where — in Saudi Arabia? Where Muhammad roamed…. Muhammad killed people. Raped. You’re a rapist people.”
In Ben Grayzel’s documentary about going to Israel on Birthright indoctrination program in 2019, Wael, a Palestinian student, tells him about the absurdity of Birthright. He says it’s crazy that an American Jew who has never come close to the Middle East has such a birthright. most of my cousins are Palestinian and maybe 90 percent cannot enter Palestine,” he says. “That doesn’t make sense.”
While “Woke Zionism,” which seeks to conflate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, is a relatively modern innovation, the erasure of Palestinian existence, both physically and discursively, is one of Zionism’s fundamental features. We must respond by reaffirming the subjectivity of Palestinians living under apartheid. One way to do this is to support the BDS movement which represents Palestinians’ demands for equality, freedom, and justice.
The NDP’s new pro-Palestine resolution is a victory and we must also continue to fight back against the Israel lobby’s efforts to delegitimize the Palestine solidarity movement by intensifing the work on all our campaigns – one struggle, many fronts.
The New Democratic Party endorsement of a partial boycott of Israel is not just a win for Palestinian rights and a blow to the Israel lobby, but is also a victory for grassroots democracy.
It’s been more than 500 days since Amnesty International staffer Laith Abu Zeyad has left the boundaries of the occupied West Bank, due to an Israeli ban based on secret evidence. “It’s absurd that me and my lawyers are being forced to defend myself and argue against secret evidence that we have not even seen ourselves,” Abu Zeyad told Mondoweiss after the court hearing on April 6th. “The judge said the onus was on us to challenge the evidence, but we don’t even know what it is.”
The group Palestine Legal has filed a civil rights complaint against Florida State University for allegedly tolerating and intensifying an anti-Palestinian environment on campus. It’s believed to be the first ever anti-Palestinian discrimination complaint on a college campus. “It’s time to speak out about racism against Palestinians as the status quo,” said Michael Ratner Justice Fellow Amira Mattar in a statement.