Palestinian citizens of Israel are 20 percent of the population. But not a single one was on Israel’s 90-member Olympic team. “Sports Apartheid” is the correct term for preventing 20 percent of your fellow citizens from competing internationally. What’s also amazing is that until now, no one in the U.S. mainstream press has even bothered to report on this injustice.
The Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has ventured into a territory– Judeophobia– that is nowadays mostly occupied by ardent Zionists intent on proving that Jew hatred is eternal and that the state of Israel is the only place where the Jews can feel safe. In today’s Europe, argues Sand, Judeophobia has been largely replaced by Islamophobia, while erstwhile Antisemites have become admirers of Israel, particularly of its way of “dealing with the Muslims”.
The politics of the Olympics is unlike daily politics. Indeed, it is about something profoundly deeper, related to identity, culture, national struggles for liberation, equality, race and, yes, freedom.
Maurice Samuel’s 1924 tract, “You Gentiles,” is cherished by antisemites and Zionists alike because it says that a Jew can never mix successfully in a non-Jewish world because the Jew’s concerns are more serious, and the gentile’s more playful, so the Jew will always be “a source of unhappiness to himself and to those around him.” Samuel’s book insists on the impossibility of Jews and non-Jews living in stability and respect, and thus, the necessity of Jews living in their own land.
Palestinian activists, human rights workers, Israeli military, and Jewish settlers have all trained their lens on Israeli state violence—some to contest Israeli military rule, others to consolidate it.
The legendary human rights lawyer Michael Ratner’s life is exemplary for Americans seeking to undo an outmoded view of Israel. “I thought of [Israel] as the home of my people. I had my bedroom ceiling painted with the seven wonders of the world and a huge map of Israel. I had no idea how my view of Israel would change later in life,” Ratner relates in his posthumous memoir, Moving the Bar.
Jody Sokolower’s new book challenges the distorted picture of Palestinians her students had gained from media. “The struggle to bring Palestine into our classrooms is as important to freeing Palestine as all our other acts of solidarity,” Sokolower writes.
After every ceasefire, Rana Shubair tries to imagine leading a normal life. In Gaza, the bar is set low and means not living under raining bombs. “Mama, who broke our house?” the neighbor’s three-year-old asked. His mother ignored his question. The following day the toddler announced, pleased that he had figured it out, “The Israelis broke our house.”
Over the past century more than 20 international commissions have been convened on the question of Palestine, Dr. Lori Allen uses them as the basis for her investigation into Palestinian political history.
Over 16,000 artists, including hundreds of Palestinian artists, six Academy Award winners, and eight Pulitzer Prize winning writers, have signed a letter denouncing Israel’s apartheid system and calling on countries “to cut trade, economic and cultural relations.”