Amnesty International (AI) has teamed up with Forensic Architecture of Goldsmiths, University of London, to launching The Gaza Platform, a digital mapping tool that can be used to collate, map, explore and analyze patterns in attacks on Gaza during last summer’s brutal Israeli military offensive against the tiny blockaded enclave.
Following an intense campaign by Irish BDS activists, organizers of the 1st Israeli Feis, a first time competitive tournament of traditional Irish Dance in Israel, announced the cancellation of the event on their Facebook page yesterday. In the initial cancellation announcement, the event accused the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), of threatening to kill “everyone” participating in the event, by shooting them in the head. Talk about massive social media fail.
Katie Miranda interviews Adam Horowitz on the evolution of Mondoweiss and how he became involved in Palestine solidarity. In addition, Katie is supporting Mondoweiss this month by donating $7 from every purchase on www.katiemiranda.com! Please go check it out and support Katie and Mondoweiss by purchasing something today.
In the latest message in our series, “Be The Mondoweiss Megaphone,” Editor-at-large Annie Robbins shares her inspiration for working to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “My hopes and dreams are that Palestine will be free. I strongly believe truth is the most effective weapon there is and the more people are exposed to it, the better it is for everyone.” Please help Mondoweiss raise $50,000 by July 15 to support a unique news operation that serves an amazing community of activists and thinkers.
Marking the first anniversary of Israel’s 51 day assault on Gaza last summer, Block the Factory activists in the UK protested at 3 Elbit Systems arms factories in the UK this morning and successfully shut one down for the day.
To commemorate her magazine’s 15th anniversary, US megastar talk show host and social justice philanthropist Oprah Winfrey glammed out wearing pearl-shaped 69 carat Leviev diamond earrings on the cover of the May 2015 edition of O, the Oprah Magazine. Activists are asking Winfrey to cut ties from Leviev which has been tied to notoriously brutal human rights abuses in Angola and thousands of illegal Israeli settlement homes built on Palestinian land in the West Bank.
Foreign direct investment in Israel dropped by 50% in 2014 according to a 2015 World Investment Report issued yesterday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. One of the authors of the report, Dr. Ronny Manos from the Open University of Israel, speculates the declining investment is fallout from the Israeli military onslaught on Gaza last summer and “international boycotts” against Israel for “alleged violations of international law.”
We suppose it was bound to happen eventually; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said BDS, the Palestinian led nonviolent global movement for justice in Palestine, resembled Nazi Germany. He said it during a meeting with Poland’s Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna today, in speaking of the “defamation” of the Jewish people in Poland when Nazis controlled the country. “The attacks on the Jews were always preceded by the slander of the Jews. What was done to the Jewish people then is being done to the Jewish state now,” Netanyahu said.
A video recorded yesterday by Palestine TV at Jalazone Refugee Camp 4 miles north of Ramallah begins with a soldier yelling and then lunging towards an unarmed Palestinian man appearing to be walking past him on a street. Haaretz reports the soldier “screaming expletives” and “taunting” the man to respond while “vowing that should he say one more word then he will “f*** his mother.” The soldier slams into the man, then swings his right hand up into the air and strikes it down hard over the Palestinian man’s head and face. There is nothing unusual about the violence meted out on an unarmed Palestinian by Israeli soldiers as displayed in this video.