Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical rightwing ministers’ agenda is the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And yet high Biden officials are meeting with Netanyahu today, and Secretary Blinken is due out within a couple of weeks, all to give Biden’s blessing to the new government — and perform what the State Department admitted yesterday is “triage” on the failure of the two-state solution.
Al Jazeera is submitting a case to the International Criminal Court over the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Not surprisingly, the Biden administration doesn’t support it.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear the Biden administration is no friend to even J Street’s moderate politics on Israel, let alone the broader struggle for Palestinian rights.
The U.S. Justice Department has informed the Israeli government that the FBI will finally investigate the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American journalist who was shot during an Israeli raid in May. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has already declared that Israel will not cooperate with the probe.
A draconian set of rules and restrictions on the entry of foreigners into the occupied West Bank have gone into effect today, despite months of condemnations by rights groups and legal efforts to stop the restrictions from being enforced.
“It of course comes down to demographic considerations,” Israeli attorney Yotam Ben Hillel explains. “These new restrictions will completely isolate Palestinian society.”
U.S. Liberal Zionists have now upped the pressure on the Biden administration to condemn Israel’s “persecution” of Palestinian human rights group, by issuing statements that Israel’s declaration of the groups as terrorist is “baseless.” Let’s hope J Street victorious NY endorsees Jerry Nadler and Jamaal Bowman now join other Congresspeople in condemning the action.
Pro-Israel groups are praising President Joe Biden’s response to Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza, which the administration has voiced full support for. The airstrikes have killed at least 46 Palestinians, almost half of them civilians and 16 of them children.
Two new legislative efforts to force the Biden administration to investigate the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh were announced this week.
Family members of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reiterate their calls for an independent investigation into her death.
Pressure mounts on Joe Biden to stand up for Shireen Abu Akleh 6 weeks after Israeli forces killed the Palestinian-American journalist. A letter from 24 senators demands that the FBI and State Department undertake an investigation of the killing and rejects Israeli claims that it can do so. Six weeks have passed and there has been “no significant progress” toward establishing a transparent investigation. The “only way” for there to be a “credible” investigation is for the U.S. to undertake it, the senators say. AIPAC, Israel’s U.S. mouthpiece, urged senators not to sign the letter.