After protests from a American Jewish organizations, the California Democratic Party leadership undertook to water down resolutions that were critical of Israel and supportive of Palestinian refugees, put forward by progressive activists. But as Jack O’Dell, the civil rights activist, advised James Zogby long ago: Never be devastated by setbacks and never become overly confident due to progress.
Twenty-five years ago James Zogby led the Clinton White House effort to build economic growth for the Palestinians as part of Oslo accords. He says the project failed –as the Bahrain economic conference organized by the Trump administration will — because Palestinians never gained the political freedom, including an end to occupation, that is a prerequisite to business growth.
James Zogby writes a Netanyahu victory is good: “we will now finally be able to have an honest debate about the dreadful situation created by American complicity in enabling Israel’s continued oppression of Palestinians. This debate might have been aborted for a time had Gantz won.”
Jim Zogby says what is happening to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar should be of concern to all Americans, but regardless the debate she has ignited will continue. “The House of Representatives may pass their resolution, but that won’t close the door on the discussion Omar’s courage has helped to open.,” he writes. “If anything, their behavior and incitement against her has pried it open even further.”
After taking the Jerusalem issue off the table, Trump wants to do the same with Palestinian refugees by denying their right to return. The fiat is not only dangerous and reckless, James Zogby writes, it is cruel and insensitive, and violates international law and covenants.
Palestinian leadership has been told that the U.S. government is on the verge of decertifying their right to maintain an office in Washington because they had the audacity to complain to the International Criminal Court about Israel’s land theft and settlement activity in the occupied territories. James Zogby writes, “Imagine that you are a victim of a violent crime or theft but are forbidden from reporting it because Congress has passed a law that not only prohibits you from reporting the crime, but threatens punishment if you dare to do it. This is the situation in which the Palestinians find themselves today.”
James Zogby writes: “Since the 1970s, I’ve been involved with advocacy for Palestinian human rights and have sought to inform the discourse in the United States about Palestinians and other Arab concerns. So I know what it takes for Mondoweiss to persist in publishing ground-breaking analysis and corrective journalism in the face of hatred, scorn and discrediting. I appreciate Mondoweiss as a vital source of truth, and I have contributed to sustain and grow the site’s valuable work. I’m writing now to urge all of you to join me in keeping Mondoweiss on the job.”
“We’re very careful not to outright oppose BDS,” Wendy Sherman, a Clinton surrogate, told James Zogby during Democratic Party platform deliberations. The tide in favor of Palestinian rights is irreversible, Zogby reports, and in spite of determined resistance from party leaders, the insurgent campaigns of Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Bernie Sanders in 2016 have solidified progress.
Isabel Kershner’s New York Times report on the Pew Research Center’s poll of Israeli public opinion was a transparent effort to combine straight reporting with tortured apologia. Kershner’s handling of one of the poll’s more disturbing findings, that “nearly half of Israeli Jews said that Arabs should be expelled of transferred from Israel,” shows how the Times sows doubt or confusion among readers so as to soften the blow of facts that are damaging to Israel.