Dr. Rima Najjar is suing the website Quora after being banned from the website for reasons she believes are a direct result of her national origin. Nada Elia interviews Najjar about her experience, and discusses the implications of this disturbing case.

Nada Elia writes on Nakba Day 2019: “This year, to honor all that has been lost, and ensure we can move forward, we must pressure our politicians to address the Nakba from the river to the sea.  Let us then seize the moment to demand that our progressive politicians abandon their mindless platitudes about the two-state delusion, and ask them to choose instead:  justice, or apartheid.”

Nada Elia writes: “Throughout the history of this country, progressive change has come from the grassroots, against the reactionary few.  Now, as at other critical historical junctures, we need to make it clear to those coming under attack for their political and moral integrity that we will mobilize for them. As hate is emboldened, we need to send an unambiguous message: we are still the majority, they are the fringe.”  

Nada Elia disagrees with those who say it was good Benjamin Netanyahu won the recent Israeli elections because it will help reveal the nature of Israeli society to the world. “Did anyone who is in any way genuinely interested in politics still believe, up till Netanyahu’s fifth reelection, that the two-state solution is a valid option that simply requires the right Israeli prime minister?” she asks.

Andrew Ross’ “Stone Men” is a sobering book in many ways. The subtitle tells the real story: just as Israel could not exist without the land of Palestine, so the country could not be built without the steady toil, skills, and dependability of Palestinian stonemasons.

Nada Elia loves the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie,” but wishes there was a similar show featuring Muslim characters.

Even as pro-justice activists were celebrating the fact that many Democratic politicians– including the main 2020 presidential hopefuls–have skipped this year’s AIPAC conference in DC, a national campaign was hastily being launched to urge Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) and Amy Everitt (California head of NARAL) not to speak there.  

Nada Elia writes, “a sober voice wants me to bridge the gap between claiming ‘we’re winning’ because US politicians are skipping the AIPAC conference, and the reality on the ground, which Trump is now calling ‘Israeli-controlled,’ rather than Israeli occupied.”

In the US, just as in Israel, Palestinian suffering is silenced, and any mainstream discussion of Palestinian pain immediately gets redirected towards sympathy with Israel, and gets recast as an act of bad faith. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is the latest public figure to be smeared with such false accusations of antisemitism by Zionists who are alarmed at the growing support for Palestinians in Congress. We can’t let this happen.

In a long-overdue defeat for the Louis D. Brandeis Center, a federal judge struck down a three-year old lawsuit against faculty members of the American Studies Association, which had voted overwhelmingly in favor of an academic boycott of Israel at its 2013 annual meeting. In a statement issued yesterday, Palestine Legal said, “this week’s court dismissal emphasizes that efforts to censor the boycott movement will fail.”