House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will lead a congressional delegation of Democrats to Israel this week. The group includes Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ted Deutch (D-FL), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Bill Keating (D-MA), Eric Swalwell (D-IA), Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Andy Kim (D-NJ). They will be greeted in an official ceremony at the Knesset on Wednesday.
This will be Pelosi’s first trip to the region since 2020 and it comes amid rising tension in Palestine. On Sunday Israeli police arrested eight people in occupied Sheikh Jarrah while they were protesting the opening of a supposed parliamentary office by far-right Zionist Itamar Ben-Gvir– a tent he put up next to a Palestinian home. “The residents of Sheikh Jarrah are confronting an intensifying, coordinated effort of settler and police violence in the past hours,” tweeted the Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd.
That same day an Israeli sniper in the occupied West Bank shot Mohammad Akram Ali Taher Abu Salah, a 16-year-old boy, in the eye with live ammunition. He was pronounced dead the next day. Field researchers with DCI-Palestine say he’s the first child to be killed by the IDF this year. 2021 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2014.
The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) is circulating a petition opposing the Congressional trip. “Amid Israel’s escalating ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people [Nancy Pelosi and 7] Dems are going on a delegation to Israel,” reads a Twitter thread from the group. “Voice your outrage that this #ApartheidDelegation and Congress are normalizing and enabling an apartheid state.”
“The #ApartheidDelegation crosses the international BDS picket line demanded by the Palestinian people and green lights Israeli ethnic cleansing,” it continues. “All at precisely the time when this apartheid system rooted in settler colonialism is being exposed internationally.”
The BDS movement has also called on governments and leaders around the world to sanction Israel for the latest wave of violence. Its statement denounced actions in East Jerusalem, including Itamar Ben-Gvir’s “office.”
Yesterday, fanatic Israeli settlers led by a fascist member of parliament erected a tent on land next to the home of the Salem family, who are facing imminent forced displacement, a war crime under international law and an inhuman act of apartheid. Settlers then shouted their usual Islamophobic slogans and physically assaulted Sheikh Jarrah residents. Israeli forces violently repressed Palestinians protesting these grave injustices, injuring tens and arresting at least 12, many of whom were children.
In October Pelosi met in Washington with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and expressed her continued support for the country. “Israel has always been bipartisan in the Congress of the United States, and it continues to be so,” she said. “For many of us, [support for Israel] is in our DNA. For all of us, it’s at least bipartisan.”
The group’s visit comes just two weeks after Amnesty International released a landmark report accusing Israel of apartheid against the Palestinians and calling for an end to its “system of oppression and domination.”
Is it that time again? The time when leaders of the Democratic party must make their pilgrimage to Israel to worship, and show unwavering support, for all things zionist, and make sure those who control them, are kept assured and appeased.
No surprise here, but it never fails to make me feel disappointed in some of these Democratic leaders.
How can Pelosi ignore all these glaring Israeli crimes? What is she thinking? It makes no sense. It’s baffling. I can’t imagine why she’s doing this. It’s very mysterious I guess we’ll just never know.