Many of Gaza’s youth decide to leave the open-air prison. But many of those who leave end up alienated or refugees. But sometimes to realize the value of your homeland, you have to leave it.
While Americans and Europeans chat and debate with each other about the nuances of Israeli politics and come up with all sorts of fanciful solutions to “the conflict,” the Israeli government tightens its grip on Palestinians and Palestinians become ever more frustrated, eager for action, and impatient with their leadership and with a world that keeps telling them the time is not yet “ripe” for their rights to be realized.
Perhaps that is why we are seeing such widespread support for armed resistance. Perhaps it’s simply a response to Israel escalating an already violent policy of apartheid. In any case, armed action seems to be moving into a more prominent role in Palestinian resistance and it will be important for supporters of Palestinian rights to be ready to defend those actions wherever we can.
Operation Break the Wave continues to take the lives of Palestinian resistance fighters, and now the campaign of extra-judicial assassination has expanded from Nablus to Jenin.
The U.S. is enabling the ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta by providing Israel with military aid and supplying the weapons used to terrorize the Palestinians in the perpetually threatened region, in the South Hebron Hills.
A draconian set of rules and restrictions on the entry of foreigners into the occupied West Bank have gone into effect today, despite months of condemnations by rights groups and legal efforts to stop the restrictions from being enforced.
“It of course comes down to demographic considerations,” Israeli attorney Yotam Ben Hillel explains. “These new restrictions will completely isolate Palestinian society.”
Donald Trump openly conflates Judaism with Zionism. It’s antisemitic and deserves to be called out, but some of those criticisms have come from individuals and groups who have been pushing this very narrative for years.
Israeli settlers, escorted by the Israeli army, invaded a neighborhood in Ramallah last week, further dispelling the illusion of PA sovereignty.
Udai Tamimi, the Palestinian resistance fighter responsible for killing an Israeli soldier at Shu’fat military checkpoint, conducted yet another shooting operation against Israeli troops before being shot and killed at the entrance of the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, after ten days on the run and evading capture by Israeli forces.
PBS News Hour irresponsibly suggests that Rep. Ilhan Omar is antisemitic for her criticism of pro-Israel campaign spending by the Israel lobby. And the same broadcast covers “dark money” in this year’s campaign without mentioning $27 million AIPAC just dropped in the latest cycle. Go figure.
The Israeli latest polls suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu could become prime minister with the help of the overtly racist politician Itamar Ben Gvir of the fascist Jewish Power party. This is causing great consternation for liberal Zionists. For them, the problem is not that Jewish Power is antithetical to Zionism but rather that it is quintessentially Zionist (and giving Zionism a bad name).