The Edward Said Library is in desperate need of donations in order to be able to continue offering book clubs, English language conversation classes, and opportunities for schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip. Nada Elia writes, “Please donate what you can. It can buy a box of crayons, coloring books, books on decolonial struggle, it can help pay the rent. It can lessen the suffocation of Gaza, until the siege is lifted.”

Nada Elia says there is no need to rewrite history where Martin Luther King Jr. is involved, as we have ample documentation of the direction the civil rights leader was heading: one opposed to militarism and fascism globally, along with his unflinching commitment to end segregation and apartheid–two evils that have become the hallmark of modern-day Israel.  

The fight to block the criminalization of BDS should go beyond the focus on making it a matter of American freedom of expression, and American citizens’ constitutional rights, Nada Elia writes.  It is a matter of solidarity with an oppressed people, suffering under brutal occupation, a genocidal siege, and apartheid.

Rashida Tlaib has been getting criticized for calling Donald Trump a “motherfucker” but Nada Elia writes that she is thankful for Tlaib’s willingness to challenge the pressure to be civil: “I am thankful for her for breaking taboos, and having the courage to say what many think.  Let us remember what else she has spoken, which would be considered a “profanity” by her peers.  She said the hitherto unspeakable, about Palestine: one country, because separate but equal doesn’t work anywhere.”

Nada Elia writes, “Finally, the fantasy of the two-state solution is dead.  As people across the political spectrum from the right to the left agree that Israel controls historic Palestine in its entirety, the question now seems to be whether the one de facto state, from the river to the sea, will be Jewish, or democratic.”  

Can leftist Jews really be part of the struggle for justice for Palestinians—a justice that hinges on an end to the violation of basic human rights, including the Right of Return of refugees—by making Aliyah to the country that privileges them, simply because they are Jewish?  

Nada Elia says that one of the more encouraging aspects of the BDS victories over 2018 was that most were accomplished by local individuals, groups, and coalitions with no direct involvement from the “leaders” of the BDS movement. These victories illustrate that the years of political discussion that were catalyzed by the 2005 Palestinian call for BDS against Israel are bearing fruit.

Nada Elia binge watches all four parts of the Al Jazeera documentary “The Lobby” that was leaked online earlier this month. While there were no bombshells, the series shows astroturfed pro-Israel groups on campus, but Elia notes, “the lack of conviction is painful, almost pathetic, when the fakes come face to face with the real grassroots, the student organizers with SJP.”

After seeing the effort by UCLA to ban the conference of Students for Justice in Palestine, Nada Elia couldn’t help but marvel at how some administrators bend over backwards to accommodate any representatives and requests from Zionist organizations, while also bending over backwards to censor and criminalize any representatives and requests from pro-Palestine rights organizations. Justice for Palestine? OMG, what a heinous crime!

Would Lara Alqasem’s liberal Zionist supporters have defended her right to enter her homeland if she had wanted to attend Bir Zeit University instead of Hebrew University? Nada Elia writes that there is much more to Alqasem’s case that needs to be examined, hinging on her identity and her choices, as well as how these were perceived, or intentionally ignored, by some of her defenders.