Former AIPAC official M.J. Rosenberg has confirmed that Ilhan Omar’s description of AIPAC as being “all about the Benjamins” is actually right. He describes how AIPAC manages to handle money without it being official. We should thank Rep. Ilhan Omar for keying the debate.
The overwhelming outrage toward Ilhan Omar from the Democratic Party is happening because she is challenging Zionism in the mainstream, and she is not a Jew or a Zionist. Much of that response is racist; but Omar’s challenge will not be defeated, no matter how many Benjamins — from Netanyahu to Gantz — come our way.
Once again, Likud Party in Israel applies anti-Palestinian race-baiting campaigns in favor of Netanyahu, framing the rival Benny Gantz as enabling a treason. But both sides compete on the “Israel-first” notion.
The “Humboldt 3” are three BDS activists who face a criminal trial in Berlin next month for disrupting a pro-Israel event by an Israeli lawmaker at a university in 2017. Israel has silenced Germany on Palestinian rights using Holocaust guilt, but in Copenhagen the three activists received an award for their courage in exposing apartheid.
“Disney BDS’d me,” Roseanne Barr said on a tour of Israel, where she repeatedly attacked the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aimed at Israel as the second coming of Nazis. She also said ABC tried to kill her when they canceled her show, and she’d make a good prime minister.
The Judaization of the Negev and Galilee have long been central for the Zionist venture. Israel steps up its plans for Judaization of the Negev. The young American Jewish group IfNotNow noticed, and are radicalizing, calling it ethnic cleansing, and part of the “occupation” within Israel’s 1948 borders.
A new Amnesty International report titled “Destination: Occupation” examines how Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor are “contributing to, and profiting from, the maintenance, development and expansion of illegal settlements, which amount to war crimes under international criminal law.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar is repeatedly being accused of bearing anti-Semitic sentiments, since she tweeted in 2012 that “Israel hypnotizes the world” and that it is doing “vile deeds” in Gaza. But many Israelis have made similar charges against Israel, without facing such accusations.
Many rabbis are openly supporting the Jewish youths who are suspected of throwing the stones that killed 48-year-old Palestinian mother Aisha al-Rabi. Will their stones be treated like Palestinian stones? “A stone thrower is a terrorist,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said in 2015, speaking of Palestinians.
Israeli historian Benny Morris tells Gideon Levy that one state means a future of genocide and ethnic cleansing for Israeli Jews, thereby dehumanizing Palestinians as murderous, wild animals, when history tells us Palestinians are angry over ethnic cleansing and discrimination and when those conditions end, we can struggle toward one state with equality.