Maybe you remember this photo that went round the world four years ago. A Palestinian boy was accused of stonethrowing and marched away blindfolded by a dozen soldiers in Hebron. Fawzi al-Junaidi was 16 and spent three weeks in detention. You can imagine how that experience scarred him.
The amazing thing about the photo is that it’s four years old, and nothing has changed in the occupied lands that are supposed to be a Palestinian state. The situation only gets worse. What happened to Fawzi al-Junaidi happens to other children all the time. Because it’s Israel’s only answer to protesters demanding rights.
The Netanyahu government gives way to the Bennett government, which includes liberal Zionists, and the policies are the same. Because the politics of a besieged Jewish homeland are rightwing nationalist and militarist, forever.
The Trump administration is replaced by the Biden administration with liberal Zionist backing and the policies are almost as bad as Trump. Biden will clearly spend No political capital on this issue, which he regards as a giant loser politically.
So American politicians say nothing as Israel builds more Jewish-only settlements where the Palestinian state was supposed to go and cordons off Jerusalem from the West Bank so there can never be a Palestinian capital there.
Palestinian children are raised with no rights in the occupied territories and no freedom to go to the seashore 15 miles away, or Jerusalem, and Betty McCollum can only get 30 signatures on her bill to remove American funding from Israeli programs that punish children. Israel still counts on the Democratic Party to support it till the Capitol would crumble and fall, as Nancy Pelosi said three years ago. Because she and Biden see the Israel lobby as a pillar of the Democratic Party.
The good news of the last year is that the grass roots continue to march on Washington. The Palestinian solidarity movement is chalking up victories all over America except in the halls of Congress. Even the recruits of the Israel lobby — young Jews under 40 — say Israel practices apartheid.
Anyone with a conscience and two eyes understands what a cruel joke the two-state solution is. It is a neverending promise to Palestinians that if you just behave yourselves some day we will be able to promote the idea of sovereignty for you. Not yet! Not now! And meanwhile Israel will continue to swallow up your lands and push you off them, and America will give Israel $4 billion a year. Anyone who has visited Palestine can tell you, there will never be a two-state solution: There are 700,000-plus Jewish settlers living on the choice hilltops inside occupied Palestine and spreading by the minute. Maybe the most important media breakthrough of last year was when the Washington Post (finally) sent three reporters through the West Bank and East Jerusalem to show that a Palestinian state is more of a fantasy than ever. And 330 Palestinians were killed by Israel in occupied territories last year. Because that’s Israel’s only answer to the demand for freedom.
Liberal Zionists cling to the idea of a two-state solution because they recognize that the alternative is a struggle for equal rights under apartheid that will only end, as the South African struggle did, with one democratic state. They don’t want that, because they see Jewish sovereignty as a great and necessary good in a world that’s unsafe for Jews. A secure homeland for the Jewish people… That’s a generational belief, it’s dying out by the minute.
But liberal Zionists have been successful in creating a firewall around Washington and New York. “[T]he Democratic party at least remains almost totally united in support of two states,” as J Street says. In the U.S. establishment, it is still verboten to say the truth about Israel, that it practices apartheid. It is still the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only real debate is whether you want to try to put pressure on Israel to improve the Palestinian conditions so that the two-state solution doesn’t become officially dead or just continue to love Israel no matter what it does. J Street maintains the left pole of that discussion, pushing for “restricting” aid that is used to confiscate more land, and pushing a two-state solution act in Congress. But in the end it is hard to see how that position is any different from “managed conflict,” the mainstream Zionist idea of clamping down on Palestinian resistance to their rightslessness forever.
I wonder if this is the year when the two-state solution finally dies in Washington. That is the ballgame, when the grassroots finally overwhelm the establishment delusion. When liberal Zionist gatekeeper organizations like Americans for Peace Now and J Street finally say the truth that every other progressive is now in on: Israel practices apartheid.
Friends ask me whether the Palestinian solidarity movement should just ignore the leftleaning part of the Israel lobby and organize among progressives, or reach out to the liberal Zionists. I tell them I believe in active engagement with that community, even in a critical way, because I think the lobby is ultimately so powerful in Washington. So shearing off liberal Jews will undermine the liberal Zionist lobby in the end and force a reckoning in our politics.
I know my tone is inconsistent. Sometimes I am hectoring, sometimes I am mocking, because I am so impassioned, and because I have seen apartheid for myself and I think it is an urgent moral matter to bring it down.
But sometimes I am beseeching. Many of us are privileged in this country. I ask all those who support the two-state solution to consider. It’s been four years since Fawzi al-Junaidi was photographed being muscled in that brutal way. Now he’s 20, and younger boys are taking up protests against their bleak future, and many of them have been shot and killed. If these were your children, could you in good conscience support a two-state solution of false promises? I am sure the answer is No.
h/t Terry Weber, Constancia Romilly, Stephan Shaw, and Scott Roth.
Just received from a Canadian friend:
Palestinian resistance to Israel’s campaign to “Judaize” all of Jerusalem (mailchi.mp)
“See how Palestinians are waging a determined peaceful resistance to Israeli ethnic cleansing in the ancient multicultural and multi religious City of Jerusalem”
(Wednesday, January 19th 1:30 p.m. Ottawa time)
Palestinians are still fighting to preserve their right to live in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and many other areas of Jerusalem.Wednesday, January 19, 2022
1:30 p.m. Ottawa time, (8:30 p.m. Jerusalem time)
Featuring: Dr. Munir Nuseibah, Professor of Law at Al Quds University, Jerusalem
and
Lily Feidy, Ph.D., Dean of Hind Al Husseini College for Women at Al Quds University, JerusalemSince 1947, Israel has been gradually expanding its footprint in Jerusalem – pushing out Palestinians (both Muslims and Christian) and bringing in more and more Jewish settlers.
“Judaization” of Jerusalem is the official policy of the State of Israel. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_Jerusalem)
The expansion has taken place continuously, in defiance of the United Nations as well as official Canadian policy. The pressure on Palestinians to get out is constant. Palestinian areas of Jerusalem are dramatically underserviced – in schools, water, and garbage collection. Palestinians are refused building permits. Since 1967 over 25,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed, Palestinian businesses are snuffed out, Palestinian cultural institutions closed down.
Palestinian Jerusalemite Professors Dr. Munir Nuseibah and Dr. Lily Feidy will describe how Palestinians are resisting through a nonviolent struggle against the ethnic cleansing of their historically multi religious and multi cultural city
This webinar is by advance registration only.
“Because he sees the Israel lobby as a key component of the Democratic Party.”
What is the mechanism by which the lobby for a foreign government becomes such a “key component” of an American political party? Should it not be required to register as an agent of a foreign government, as President Kennedy was trying to require it to do? President Washington warned against “special” relationships in foreign affairs. This type of relationship, so susceptible to corruption, in which America sacrifices its values and itself, is exactly what Washington was warning against.
Philip Weiss asks:
‘Imagine you had a Palestinian child — could you support the ‘2-state solution’?
My answer: For what should be obvious reasons, NO!!!!!
Re: Imagine you had a Palestinian child — could you support the ‘2-state solution’?
Yes, without a moment’s hesitation. The question that begs an answer is why aren’t progressives invoking the Leahy Act?
You conclude that nothing has changed, but the whole house of cards is more vulnerable than it has been in years. For the first time, both the International Criminal Court and the UN CERD actually took action on complaints from “the State of Palestine” regarding the crime of apartheid and publicly announced there is probable cause to investigate or take action on those charges. So what conflicting evidence are the State and Defense Department able to muster?
The Court agreed that Palestine does not require Israel’s consent (in accordance with the Oslo Accords) to request outside assistance from the Court to help investigate the most serious crimes defined by international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity (such as the crime of apartheid and persecution) when they are allegedly committed by Israel itself within the 1967 borders of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Those criminal offenses are the subject of jus cogens law and there is a compelling state duty to investigate and bring the perpetrators to justice. Any conflicting treaty or law is legally null and void according to customary law and the terms of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:
I don’t see how a legally valid one-state settlement could even be concluded during an illegal occupation where threats or the use of force are employed almost daily to constantly evict portions of the population, terrorize them and colonize the region at gunpoint, and annex it.
Most relevant: 1 of 2
The Jebusite/Canaanites were ancestors of today’s Palestinians & it was they who founded Jerusalem circa 3000 BCE. Originally known as Jebus, the first recorded reference to it as “Rushalimum” or “Urussalim,” site of the sacred Foundation Rock, appears in Egyptian Execration Texts of the nineteenth century BCE, nearly 800 years before it is alleged King David was born. Its name “seems to have incorporated the name of the Syrian god Shalem [the Canaanite God of Dusk], who was identified with the setting sun or the evening star & can probably be translated as ‘Shalem has founded’.” (Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths, 1996, pp. 6-7)
It is estimated that the Hebrews did not invade until circa 1184 BCE & their resulting United Kingdom of Israel, which never controlled the coast from Jaffa to Gaza, lasted only about 75–80 years, less than a blip in the history of Canaan & Palestine. Even the Hasmonean Dynasty under the Maccabees lasted only about 70 years (circa 140–70 BCE) & it was under Roman control.
No credible archaeological evidence, or writings of contemporaneous civilizations, have been found that prove Solomon or David actually existed. Nor has any evidence been discovered to confirm that the Jewish exodus from Egypt ever occurred.
The late renowned Jewish Israeli writer/columnist, Uri Avnery: “[David & Solomon’s] existence is disproved, inter alia, by their total absence from the voluminous correspondence of Egyptian rulers & spies in the Land of Canaan.” (“A Curious National Home,” by Uri Avnery, May 13/17 – http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1494589093/)
Aclaimed historian/anthropologist & “Holy Land” specialist, Professor Ilene Beatty: “When we speak of ‘Palestinians’ or of the ‘Arab population [of Palestine]‘, we must bear in mind their Canaanite origin. This is important because their legal right to the country stems from the fact that the Canaanites were first, which gives them priority; their descendants have continued to live there, which gives them continuity; and (except for the 800,000 dispossessed refugees [of 1947-48] along with the further hundreds of thousands expelled before & after the war Israel launched on 5 June 1967]) they are still living there, which gives them present possession. Thus we see that on purely statistical grounds they have a proven legal right to their own land.” (Arab & Jew in the Land of Cannan) cont’d