The attack on the satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo, leaving at least 12 dead, has inundated the Western media with the tragedy being touted as a “free speech” issue. While the calamity dominates discussions on social media and the press scrupulously tracks the story, both the press and popular culture continue to ignore Israel’s record of intimidating and deliberately targeting journalists.
RE/MAX is one of the largest real estate corporations in the world. RE/MAX International, based in the US, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado, oversees 7,000 offices in almost 100 countries and several of RE/MAX’s Israeli franchises sell property in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. During the first week of December Palestinian solidarity activists across the US flooded RE/MAX offices demanding that the real estate giant cease its activities in illegal, Jewish-only settlements.
Israel has banned Norwegian doctor and human rights activist Mads Gilbert from entering Gaza for life. Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, where he has worked since 1976, earned international renown for his philanthropic work in late 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, an attack that, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, killed roughly 1,400 Gazans, including almost 800 civilians, 350 of whom were children.
On 18 October 2014, a self-professed “racist” pro-Israel counter-protester at a Block the Boat action in Los Angeles told black Palestinian solidarity activist and radio personality Margaret Prescod to “take your Ebola a*s and get out.” The racism of these California-based Zionist counter-protesters is symptomatic of a much larger culture of bigotry and hate in Israel and among some pro-Israel supporters internationally.
On the evening of October 7, after a basketball game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Israeli team Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Palestinian-American Nerdeen Kiswani was attacked by a group of Maccabi Electra fans. The 20-year-old Hunter College student was punched in the stomach, and a Palestinian flag was torn from her hands. Among her attackers was Leonard Petlakh, a professor of Jewish history at her own school. After he and his accomplices assaulted the young Palestinian woman, Petlakh later told police that he himself was allegedly assaulted in a hate crime. He falsely accused 25-year-old journalist and Palestinian solidarity organizer Shawn Carrié of punching him for being Jewish.
A new phase is developing in the US Palestinian solidarity movement: Block the Boat. The weekend of October 18th, Palestinian solidarity activists in Los Angeles will be holding another Block the Boat action. Block the Boat Los Angeles is organizing a community picket at 6 am at the intersection of Pier A Way and Pier A Plaza, on Long Beach, to prevent a Zim ship from unloading. Organizers say their principal goal is to stop ships “from unloading cargo made in Israel in an effort to peacefully apply economic pressure and fight Israeli Apartheid.”
Academe is, in many ways, today a locus of the struggle against Israeli apartheid—just as it was for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the quite recent past.