Newsletters

Weekly Briefing: It got a little harder this week to maintain hypocrisy on Palestinian human rights

The World Cup tournament began today in Qatar, and I’m proud that we ran an important piece on the politics of football, Sary Farraj’s essay saying that the World Cup is a “golden opportunity for Palestine.” Farraj points out how the global campaign to isolate Russia over the Ukrainian invasion destroyed any pretense that sports are not political. Russia was barred from playing in the World Cup, and many athletes will be sporting pro-Ukrainian symbols.

The good news is that we are likely to see demonstrations of solidarity with Palestine during the World Cup. “Already there have been calls for Arab national teams’ captains to wear Palestinian flag armbands, to raise the Palestinian flag in stadiums, and to normalize support for Palestine in the same way that it has been taken for granted for Ukraine,” Farraj writes.

Certainly it seems that every day makes it harder to maintain the Palestinian exception in the American discourse when it comes to occupation, persecution, and murder– a hypocrisy we are dedicated to exposing.

An actual breakthrough in the struggle to end Israeli impunity took place in Washington this week. The Justice Department is finally opening an investigation into the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli soldier in the occupied territories– six months after the fact. The news of the investigation was broken by outraged Israelis, who have covered the case up and who say they won’t cooperate with the investigation. I guess $4 billion a year in aid only goes so far in forging an unbreakable alliance! The Justice Department waited till after the midterms to take the bold step; but it acted because there has been unending pressure from Shireen Abu Akleh’s family and progressive Democrats, including some in Congress, demanding the Biden administration take this step.

We continue to do our utmost to build awareness of how hard life is for Palestinians. The deaths of 21 Palestinians in Gaza’s Jabaliya Camp during a fire at a party welcoming home a young man who had finished his PhD in Egypt was clearly a result of Israel’s inhumane blockade of the territory. The family had stockpiled gasoline– as so many Gazans do to try to cope with power shortages. Please read Tareq Haddad’s wrenching report on the tragedy and the persecution from which it arose.

And while I’m bragging about the work of our Palestine Bureau– please also read Mariam Barghouti’s reflections on the last decade of Palestinian activism, from the time in 2012 when she was 18 and a youth movement arose to demand “return, freedom and national unity.” Barghouti explains how that movement shaped the “transnational quilt” of Palestinian demands that play such a large role in the politics of the conflict today. A Palestinian movement that is finally having an impact in America.