September 29 marks 100 years since Britain was assigned the role of Mandatory Power in Palestine. Despite a hundred years of bloody conflict and grief, the international community’s obligation to decolonize Palestine continues today.
Zionists deny that Israel had any part in the ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s Jews in 1950 to encourage Jewish immigration to Israel. But a core aspect of their exodus is omitted: the role of the Israeli airline, Near East Air Transport
In “Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab Jew,” Avi Shlaim declares his identity clearly as an Arab Jew — an Arab by culture, history, and geography and a Jew by faith. His identity was destroyed by Zionism and by the Ashkenazi European Jews.
Netanyahu used a visit from Tony Blinken to turn the subject to Israel’s supposed “existential” threat, Iran. This claim is taken seriously inside the beltway, but Assal Rad writes that it is spurious. U.S./Israel alignment has been harmful to regional and global security.
Joe Biden has praised racist Israeli leaders Benjamin Netanyahu and Golda Meir on many occasions, but don’t expect Kamala Harris to score points off him for it, as she did over his fondness for southern racists. She has had a warm meeting with Netanyahu, refused to criticize Israel’s human rights record, and told the rightwing pro-Israel group AIPAC that she raised money for Israel as a girl and Israel’s story reminds her of the civil rights struggle in the U.S.
Historian Avi Shlaim reveals a shift in his thinking on Israel and Palestine: Zionism was a colonial project well before 1967. And the US and Britain have traded roles as mother country.