Israeli opposition party co-leader Yair Lapid tweeted after a shower, “Israel has to be a state of all its citizens.” Under attack, he reversed himself a half hour later. And Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz has upbraided him, calling the tweet a “seriously outrageous anti-Semitic remark … the slogan of the enemy”.
Benjamin Netanyahu has given the job of Transport Minister to Bezalel Smotrich, who says that he is working for God. Smotrich tried to become Justice Minister, and though his suggestion that Israel should follow biblical law ended that bid, there’s no reason his portfolio won’t grow in years to come.
This week an indictment against a Palestinian for alleged rape was retracted, and the State Prosecutor admitted that a Breaking the Silence member might have been telling the truth about assaulting a Palestinian. Jonathan Ofir says that both struggles – that to prove innocence, and to prove guilt – reflect the opposite sides of the Apartheid mirror.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon published an opinion piece in the New York Times suggesting that the way forward for Palestinians could only be a “surrender” of their national ambitions, and to commit a “national suicide”.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been under fire for using the term “concentration camps” to describe US border detention camps. Speaking in 2015, Israeli journalist Amira Hass made a similar statement about Israeli policies toward Gaza. Jonathan Ofir says the two statements help clarify a reality that “is often far beyond the imagination.”
Palestinian lawmaker Ayman Odeh has long claimed that he was shot by Israeli police at Umm al-Hiran in 2017. But the police manipulated evidence, suggesting he was hit by stones or shrapnel. A new documentary shows how they hid the critical footage.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all but concedes that the famous “deal of the century” is “unexecutable,” in a closed meeting with Jewish leaders. “I get why people think this is going to be a deal that only the Israelis could love, I understand the perception of that.”
The centrist Blue White opposition to Netanyahu’s Likud organized a demonstration in Tel Aviv to ‘defend democracy’. But it was rife with militant symbolism and orientalist mockery, and it marginalized Palestinian voices, as usual. Notably, protesters wore fezzes to say Israel shouldn’t become Turkey. It was surely lost on the demonstrators that many Arabs wear fezzes, including Arab Jews.
The deal of the century in the 1900s was the Balfour Declaration, which recognized Zionist colonization of Palestine, and Trump’s deal of the 21st century only continues that process, by giving Israel the right to annex portions of the West Bank and confine Palestinians to Bantustans.
Madonna tried to offset criticism of her participation in the Eurovision song contest by incorporating a Palestinian flag into her final performance. “The most meaningful expression of solidarity is to cancel performances in apartheid Israel,” the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel responded in a statement.