Author

Philip Weiss

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Great news. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, a 25 year House veteran and co chair of the Human Rights Commission, issued a stiff letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying it is “urgent” matter for him to get past his “initial leeriness” and “firmly and unambiguously denounce” Israel’s hateful decree that six leading Palestinian human rights groups are “terrorist” organizations.

French writer Bernard-Henri Levy makes an absurd assertion on Kristallnacht anniversary– that just as Jews ignored the warning signs of the coming storm in 1938, they are ignoring signs now; “anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel” are “black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst.”

Israel’s designation of 6 Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist was an “act of tyranny” aimed at the “backbone” of Palestinian society, but the designation is “completely shattered at the moment, completely in shatters” due to widespread repudiation of the so-called evidence against the groups, says Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard. And the U.S. has the power to make Israel back down. But the State Department has said it’s studying the evidence.

“This is state terrorism at its finest hour,” Ubai Al-Aboudi, head of one of the Palestinian human rights organizations Israel has labeled terrorist groups, tells a Washington, DC, webinar convened by leading American thinktanks to push back against the secret dossiers Israel has circulated. He and other Palestinian execs say they crossed Israel’s red line when they assisted the ICC investigation of Israeli war crimes and assisted Rep. McCollum’s bill to cut off U.S. funds for Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian children.