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May 2021

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Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel in London, 6 June 2018.

At the very moment that the UK government has announced plans to ban boycotts, divestment and sanctions by public funded bodies, the very reasons for supporting non-violent strategies to achieve equality for the Palestinian people look more urgent and compelling than ever. BDS is about fairness, equality and justice, ideas that have been at the heart of Jewish ethics for thousands of years

Palestinians inspect the damage after Israeli air strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on May 19, 2021. (Photo: Yasser Qudih/APA Images)

As Israeli Jews we call upon the international community to intervene immediately in order to stop Israel’s current aggressions, to adopt the demands of the Palestinian BDS movement; to work towards the actualization of the Palestinian Right of Return and to bring about historic justice; to reach a just and democratic solution for all, based on the decolonization of the region and found a state of all its citizens.

Palestinians assess the damage caused by Israeli air strikes, in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, on May 14, 2021. (Photo: Mohammed Al-Masri/APA Images)

As a married Jewish couple living in South Bend, Indiana, we try to ground our lives in the best values of our tradition. That’s why we chose, on this year’s Nakba Day, which fell not just on Shabbat but also several days into Israel’s latest war on the people of Gaza, to pray for Palestine outside the gates of our local Jewish Federation. We recited a prayer for peace and added a new line: “May Palestinian-led struggle, including BDS, swiftly and peacefully replace Israeli apartheid with full equality and make the Right of Return a reality.”

President Joe Biden speaks with by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., left, and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich, as he arrives at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Detroit, Tuesday, May 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s courageous encounter with President Biden on a tarmac in Detroit yesterday, demanding action against Israeli war crimes, is already having an effect. Biden, who is on the defensive from the progressive wing of his party, told Netanyahu today that he “expects ‘a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” NBC reports.

May 15, 2021: Palestinians take to the streets of Haifa in the 1948 territory as part of the recent wave of popular resistance against Israeli colonization and occupation across the country, and to protest against massive Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. (Photo by Activestills via Twitter)

Yoav Haifawi continues his reporting from the uprising in Haifa, where the resistance is drawing from all sectors of the Palestinian community, as the Israeli government brings in the Shin Bet to help smash the protests.

The media routinely state that Hamas wants to eradicate Israel. Some of the mystery about Hamas’s goals is surely because the organization is treated as a pariah. U.S. diplomats are prohibited from talking to it openly, the U.S. government calls it a terrorist organization, and the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. media outlets rarely if ever try to interview its leaders or listen to its supporters.

Palestinians look at an unexploded bomb dropped by an Israeli F-16 warplane on Gaza City's Rimal neighbourhood on May 18, 2021. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/APA Images)

Don’t look now, but mainstream Democrats are defying Israel over the Gaza attack. Chuck Schumer calls for a cease fire, joining 30 other Senators, and Gregory Meeks, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for a hold on a $735 million sale of missiles and bombs to Israel that the White House approved May 5 — till he backed down today. But liberal Zionist J Street group is for all military aid continuing to flow to Israel.