Israel’s third election inside a year shows the rightwing continuing to gain ground. This is what Jewish nationalists want. A society governed by an authoritarian leader, no matter how corrupt. Just so long as there are no Arabs anywhere near power. The only hope politically is the burgeoning Joint List of Palestinian parties, which reject apartheid and discrimination.
AIPAC ceo Howard Kohr implicitly describes Bernie Sanders as a “radical” who is trying to undermine U.S. support for Israel and aid Israel’s enemies. “Israel cannot afford a single minute where America’s friendship with Israel at the highest levels either wavers or skips,” Kohr said.
Should billionaires exist? Phil Weiss says the question of the day echoes and exposes the famous question, Does Israel have a right to exist? “The issue ought to be dealt with in the same detached manner as Sanders and others have handled the billionaire question,” Weiss writes.
Writer Eric Flamm says after four trips to Israel, his 15-year-old son has become an anti-Zionist and supports BDS. “Because he couldn’t support the notion that in Israel the Jews received preferential treatment over Palestinians in all aspects of life, such as education, housing, employment, and access to justice.”
Netanyahu’s discussion of Palestinian submission to the “radical” and “historic” terms of the Trump “peace plan” sounds very much like surrender. Recognize Israel as “the Jewish state,” accept Israeli sovereignty over much of the West Bank, including every Jewish settlement. Accept Israeli military control forever. Netanyahu laid out these terms in a speech to rightwing American Jews from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
The pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC once prided itself on doing its business in the dark. But today loving Israel too much is being politicized in the age of Trump. The battle between the liberal Israel lobby and the rightwing Israel lobby portends a day when leftwingers who support boycotting Israel will not be railroaded instantly from US politics.
Trump donor Miriam Adelson jumps into the war between good Jews and bad Jews: ‘Too many… Jews see anti-Israel activism as an express-ticket to assimilation’
Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert says Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is the sole partner for peace, while Netanyahu has blocked peace with “provocative, aggressive” actions and it’s not a story in the US press.
Rep. Nita Lowey tells an Israel lobby group that she chose to chair a House subcommittee controlling foreign aid over a subcommittee controlling much larger funds for health care and education and child care because she went with her heart. Imagine a Congressperson saying they chose a committee because of love for Russia, what the fallout would be.
Lis Harris, author of the superb new book, “In Jerusalem,” spent years trying to learn why Israel has become such an illiberal society. “I don’t believe the problem was started in ‘67 or ‘48 but from the beginning in the Not thinking of the people who were there and what you were doing to them, and what their rights were. It wasn’t always necessarily malign. But it was arrogant.”