After Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce announced it would begin accepting applicants for work permits to Israel, tens of thousands rushed to apply. One photo of the scene tells the story of the devastation the Palestinian economy is currently facing.
“The one thing that is common among these six organizations that have just been declared to be terrorist is that they have all been active, especially Al-Haq, in documenting and presenting dossiers to the International Criminal Court in the Hague regarding Israel’s violations of human rights,” and particularly of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in 2014, led by Gantz, that killed more than 2200 Palestinians, the Palestinian-American lawyer Jonathan Kuttab, who co-founded Al-Haq said yesterday.
There is nothing quite like a mind poisoned by the lures of racial supremacy, of unmitigated colonial power. In this way Zionist fragility is far from unique. It is the younger relative of every anti-oppressive reckoning forced upon the privileged members of supremacist projects throughout history.
Israel’s declaration of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as “terrorist” organizations continues to have reverberations in Washington. Rep. Betty McCollum has introduced a resolution calling on the U.S. House of Representatives to condemn Israel’s announcement, and specifically called for the Biden administration to “publicly condemn this authoritarian and antidemocratic act of repression by the Government of Israel against prominent Palestinian civil society organizations.”
Omari Hardy, a 31-year-old state representative and former middle school teacher, has been unapologetic in his support for BDS and Palestinian human rights as he attempts to win the Democratic nomination to represent Florida’s 20th district in congress. The race will be yet another fight between the Democratic Party establishment and the progressive base over Palestinian rights.
There’s a lot of news this week. The new Israeli government is pushing forward on settlement expansion despite surprisingly strong lip service against it from the Biden administration. And the unapologetic support for BDS from Omari Hardy, a progressive candidate for Congress in Florida, has caused a Jewish newspaper to smear him as a reincarnation of Hitler– and the Democratic Majority for Israel has leaped in to smear Hardy as an antisemite.
The new Israeli government this week moved forward on plans to build 3000 more settlement units in the West Bank; and yesterday the State Department issued its strongest opposition to the plans since Joe Biden took office, calling the plans “unacceptable.” The State Department spokesperson said yesterday the U.S. “strongly” opposes the expansion of settlements.
Reactionary Arab regimes are normalizing with apartheid Israel as international civil society, intellectuals, and artists honor the Palestinian call for BDS.
Palestinian students are forced to leave the mixed Israeli city of Nof Hagalil to attend school in nearby Nazareth. Why? Because local schools refuse to accommodate Arab students, which reflects the vision of local leaders — a town devoid of an Arab population whatsoever.
Ten globally recognized Christian organizations in Palestine “condemn and denounce in the strongest possible terms” Israel’s decision to designate six Palestinian groups, including leading human rights groups, as “terrorist organizations.”