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August 2021

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Flag bearers Hanna Minenko and Yakov Toumarkin of Team Israel during the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, July 23, 2021 (Photo: Getty Images/Matthias Hangst)

Palestinian citizens of Israel are 20 percent of the population. But not a single one was on Israel’s 90-member Olympic team. “Sports Apartheid” is the correct term for preventing 20 percent of your fellow citizens from competing internationally. What’s also amazing is that until now, no one in the U.S. mainstream press has even bothered to report on this injustice.

Protestors with Palestine Action are occupying Elbit System’s London HQ, and preventing operations at the site. In the past year, Palestine Action has disrupted Elbit for 105 days of 365, across their 10 UK sites plus those of a drone parts supplier. The action taken today, as with all actions by Palestine Action, has been taken in order to end the supply of UK made arms, drones, munitions and military technology to Israel.

The liberal Zionist group J Street cannot endorse Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling in the occupied territories even as it seems to try to look as if it does. It is balancing the official Jewish community that is angered by Ben & Jerry’s, and young Jews who see Israel as practicing “apartheid.” It’s a straddle with political risks.

At a time when long-established rights – the right to vote, women’s right to control their own bodies, the right to organize, the free press — are all under attack, it is deplorable to see Democratic politicians join those tearing down democracy by acting on New York State Retirement System’s policies that penalize the boycott of Israel.

The Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has ventured into a territory– Judeophobia– that is nowadays mostly occupied by ardent Zionists intent on proving that Jew hatred is eternal and that the state of Israel is the only place where the Jews can feel safe. In today’s Europe, argues Sand, Judeophobia has been largely replaced by Islamophobia, while erstwhile Antisemites have become admirers of Israel, particularly of its way of “dealing with the Muslims”.