BDS shakes up the House! Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s support for BDS “is inconsistent with our national values,” says a Republican congressman, while the Dems’ appointment of BDS-supporter Ilhan Omar to House Foreign Affairs shows “the days of the Democrats’ support-Israel-at-all-costs stance are numbered,” as the young Jewish group IfNotNow proclaims.

WoMen4All, a bizarre rip-off of the Women’s March, has set up an alternate network of “sister marches” to split the Women’s March. It is dedicated largely to condemning Palestinian rights and promoting Zionism by mixing naked Israeli war propaganda with standard feminist causes, such as enacting the Equal Rights Amendment.

The fight to block the criminalization of BDS should go beyond the focus on making it a matter of American freedom of expression, and American citizens’ constitutional rights, Nada Elia writes.  It is a matter of solidarity with an oppressed people, suffering under brutal occupation, a genocidal siege, and apartheid.

The Birmingham Holocaust Education Center has trampled on the credo, Never Again, by objecting to Angela Davis’s humanitarian award because she supports Palestinian rights. Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh calls on the Education Center to apologize for the damage it has done to Palestinian human rights.

The Senate bill punishing support for BDS against Israel failed again yesterday. Israel has never been so openly politicized before, and many Democratic supporters are expressing the fear that the issue is going to divide the party leading up to the 2020 election.

Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released statistics ahead of the new year that showed a 69 percent increase in settler attacks on Palestinians in 2018 compared to 2017. OCHA recorded 265 incidents in which Israeli residents of the West Bank allegedly targeted Palestinians or their property. In total, 115 Palestinians were injured in those attacks and 7,900 trees and 540 vehicles were destroyed.

Rabbi Wendi Geffen, senior rabbi of one of Chicago’s leading Reform temples, says she does not invite pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions speakers to her temple because they support physical “violence,” equivalent to rightwingers who say Palestinians should die for opposing Israel. The issue is dividing her temple, Geffen acknowledges.

Looking back on this year, it is difficult to choose one moment, one tragedy, or one political decision that stands out among the rest. Palestinians witnessed a tumultuous year in 2018, as they saw hundreds killed from the West Bank to Gaza, their rights slowly stripped away inside Israel, and the heart of Palestinian identity, Jerusalem, pushed further out of reach. But as evidenced by the ongoing fight for the rights of refugees in Gaza’s Great March of Return, the fight against expulsion in places Silwan and Khan al-Ahmar, and the fight for equal rights as citizens in Israel, the fight for Palestinian rights continued as well.

On the 10th anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza which killed over 1000 Palestinians in 3 weeks, the movement to ‘Stop Arming Israel’ is stronger than ever before. 

Pitzer College alumna Diane Shammas tells Pitzer President Melvin Oliver “the time is overdue” for American institutions to take a stance against discrimination against Palestinians by Israel. The Pitzer faculty has voted to suspend a year-abroad program at Haifa University. Oliver said doing so would be a “blow” to the college’s reputation.