The media hypes threats by industry to leave Israel over Netanyahu’s “judicial coup.” But Palestinians have demanded divestment for years without press. The double standard shows anti-Palestinianism.
Activists led a demonstration through the streets of Manchester, UK and into the stores of food retailer Pret A Manger to protest plans to open 40 new stores in Apartheid Israel.
On February 22, Israeli forces invaded Nablus, killing 11 Palestinians, and wounding more than 100 more. The Biden administration responded by calling for “both sides” to “de-escalate tensions.”
The U.S. Ambassador to Israel says West Bank Palestinians can’t have equal rights because it would end the Jewish state, and his “biggest fear” is that Israel has “lost the narrative” on U.S. campuses.
The U.S. Supreme Court will not consider a challenge to an Arkansas law that targets the BDS movement.
The Israeli government’s moves to hamstring the judiciary and to steal more Palestinian land for Jewish settlements are causing further breakup in the pro-Israel consensus in the United States.
In yet another demonstration of the bankruptcy of Biden’s policy on Palestine, the State Department called a UN Security Council resolution opposing Israel’s latest settlement move as “unhelpful,” a sure sign the U.S. will veto it. And reinforcing Biden’s bankruptcy is the emergence of a new Democratic Party PAC funded by Jeffrey Yass, who has funded Trump Republicans, to bolster the rightwing settler agenda here in the U.S.
My friend the late writer Yossi Gurvitz was an apikoros in the best sense of the word, the Jewish term for a freethinker. His heresy led him to support BDS. Educated in yeshivas, he broke out as a teen when he discovered Plutarch, reading real not bible history. That independence led him in time to become “Israel’s first serious anti-occupation blogger” and to point out the vicious ethnocentrism in the basement of Jewish religiosity that Israel was awakening– “and every demon that was pushed into the basement is up and has an M16.”
Nikki Haley was the first U.S. governor to sign anti-BDS legislation, and once criticized AIPAC for not being pro-Israel enough. Now, she is preparing to run for president.
“Anybody who is contributing to the Israeli economy should stop. Stop that contribution until the wind changes.” Noa Sattath, an Israeli rabbi and civil rights activist often promoted by the liberal Zionist group J Street, called for crushing economic pressure on the fascistic new Israeli government during a webinar with Americans for Peace Now last week.