Even the apartheid regime in South Africa never outlawed human rights defenders in the manner that Israel just did when it declared six Palestinian organizations to be “terrorist organizations.” South Africa sought to maintain a reputation that it respected the Rule of Law. Israel knows that it need not worry about its image because the West will not take action against it for any wrongdoing — in the name of Israeli exceptionalism.
Great news. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, a 25 year House veteran and co chair of the Human Rights Commission, issued a stiff letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying it is “urgent” matter for him to get past his “initial leeriness” and “firmly and unambiguously denounce” Israel’s hateful decree that six leading Palestinian human rights groups are “terrorist” organizations.
Palestinian health officials expanded their vaccination drive on Thursday and approved shots for children age 12 and up. The previous regulations limited shots to children age 16 and older.
On the sidelines of COP26, Israel’s Prime Minister met with Bill Gates to discuss forming working group to study potential cooperation around combating climate change. Gates’ obsession with ‘innovation’, however, might have blinded him from addressing other issues that Israel is also ‘known for’ – namely, being the world’s leading human rights violator and the destruction of the Palestinian environment.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank town of Beita have been struggling to access their land for the olive harvest due to the Israeli military’s continued occupation of Jabal Sabih. “No matter what, we will not leave this land,” Beita resident Ammar Hamayel tells Mondoweiss. “We grew up here, we learned here what it means to be Palestinian and what the land means to us. I will not leave here until my soul leaves my body.”
U.S. exceptionalism is ubiquitous in the American psyche, even on the left. It needs to be overcome if we are to deal with the existential crises before us.
French writer Bernard-Henri Levy makes an absurd assertion on Kristallnacht anniversary– that just as Jews ignored the warning signs of the coming storm in 1938, they are ignoring signs now; “anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel” are “black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst.”
A response to Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s designation of 6 Palestinian civil rights groups as terrorist. “I understand the people who hate us so much that they want to kill someone. I understand people who want to kill me – not as a person they know, but simply as a Jewish Israeli, a representative of the master race that terrorizes them daily.”
“Facing Gaza,” by artist-scholar Robert Hardwick Weston is a collection of montages of images posted on social media, juxtaposing destruction in Gaza during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, and life in Israel.
We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Pittsburgh native, Jim Rogers, an unarmed Black man who was brutally murdered on October 13, 2021 by Pittsburgh police officer Keith Edmonds and other unnamed officers. The increased militarization of U.S. law enforcement agencies are a direct result of the deadly exchange programs between the U.S. and Israeli military forces, including exchanges with the City of Pittsburgh.