Yesterday Donald Trump released a shocking proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States. Trump’s idea rests on research from the Center for Security Policy, a neocon think tank run by Frank Gaffney who has a long history of pro-Israel advocacy and has been called “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Starting Monday things will begin to look different around here: we’ll be beginning an experiment with running advertisements on Mondoweiss. This move represents yet another milestone in the evolution of Mondoweiss. We will be celebrating the site’s 10 year anniversary in 2016 and as our audience and influence continue to grow we are constantly looking for ways to sustain our work and make sure we’ll be here over the long haul. Ads are not a silver bullet, but they will help, and we believe they will add value for our readers.
On this #GivingTuesday, we are excited to introduce to the Mondoweiss community our new Director of Development and Outreach, Tova Perlmutter. Tova’s responsibility is to increase Mondoweiss’s income, but also to help connect the members of our community in useful and rewarding ways. Those of you who have met Tova since she started helping us last year cannot fail to notice her warmth, high energy and boundless excitement about building the movement for justice in Palestine. Your support for Mondoweiss on #GivingTuesday will help us continue to bring you in-depth reporting on the fight for Palestinian rights—on the ground, in the U.S., and around the world.
Amazon and Walmart are selling a “Boy’s Israeli Soldier Costume” this year for Halloween. The description says: “There comes a time when your child wants to save the world the only way he knows how, by dressing as his favorite army man! Have your child step into their Jewish heritage by putting on this Boy’s Israeli Soldier Costume.”
For the clearest distillation of Israeli political thinking there is no better place to start than at the top. Haaretz’s Barak Ravid reports on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message to a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that although he doesn’t want a binational state, “at this time we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future. . . I’m asked if we will forever live by the sword — yes.”
The criticism of Netanyahu as a Holocaust trivializer for his claim that Hitler didn’t want to kill the Jews till a Palestinian leader convinced him of the plan is so universal today that the remarks look to be a landmark in Netanyahu’s cynicism; they draw back the curtain for the world on his refusal to sincerely address Palestinians aspirations for freedom today.
According to data collected by the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department there over 130 Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians during the first week of October. See a timeline of the attacks.
The Republican presidential clown rodeo will be making a stop in Washington DC as Congress gets set to debate the Iran Deal on September 9th. Sen. Ted Cruz and reality television star Donald Trump will appear at a D.C. rally organized by the Tea Party Patriots, the Center for Security Policy, and the Zionist Organization of America to oppose the deal.
Three submissions reflecting the debate in the Palestinian solidarity community over Alison Weir of If Americans Knew following Jewish Voice for Peace’s decision to not work with her and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’s decision to ask her organization to leave its coalition due to violation of its anti-racism principles.
The World Union for Progressive Judaism, an international umbrella organization of the Reform, Liberal, Progressive and Reconstructionist movements, has issued a statement condemning the recent attacks on the Dawabshe family in the West Bank village of Duma and on the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade. However, from the statement it seems clear where the organization’s sympathies lie.