Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Tuesday afternoon, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel over the past week to five.
The groundbreaking Amnesty International report on Israeli apartheid would not have been possible without Palestinian resistance, including the BDS campaign and the Great March of Return in Gaza. In attacking Amnesty, the ADL makes no attempt to substantively refute any of its arguments. Thus the Amnesty report contributes to an important shift in public mainstream discussion of Palestine that would have been unthinkable not that long ago. A line has been crossed, and moving forward, Israel’s attempt to whitewash itself as a “Jewish and democratic” state will likely be accepted by no one other than its enablers.
House Speaker Pelosi is leading a delegation of Democratic Congress members to Israel this week, including progressives Barbara Lee and Ro Khanna. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights calls on the politicians to cancel the “apartheid delegation” amid “Israel’s escalating ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.
New York Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove says his congregants need to hear not just AIPAC and ADL and J Street opposing the Amnesty report on Israeli apartheid. But from him too, “for Zion’s sake.” “Israel is part and parcel to my Jewish identity, it’s central to my vision of the rabbinate, and as long as I’m the rabbi of Park Avenue [Synagogue], it will remain central to the mission of this synagogue.”
Phil Weiss talks with Terry Rogers about the political and moral challenges involved when privileged American activists engage in the movement for Palestine.
On Jan 28 about 30 activists showed up at the office of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to protest the congressman’s “lack of support for
Palestine.” The California Democrat has not signed onto the McCollum bill aimed at protecting Palestinian children and has publicly opposed the BDS movement.
We are cosponsoring a talk by French author Sylvain Cypel on Tuesday February 15 at noon. “Will diaspora Jews gradually emancipate themselves from a thug nation that claims that it alone can speak in the name of Judaism?” he writes. “More and more American Jews are awakening to the idea that its political rightward drift is a calamity, and that the consequences for them could be disastrous. And that explains the anger of those among them who turn their back on Israel.”
Biden pick Deborah Lipstadt condemned Amnesty International’s report on Israeli apartheid saying it was “part of a larger effort to delegitimize the Jewish state.”
The conclusions the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination reaches may have huge consequences for Israel as it tries to weather the apartheid storm, and for Palestinians seeking justice.
Meet Deborah Lipstadt President Biden nominated the historian Deborah Lipstadt as the special envoy to…