In a letter made public today, over 60 theater artists have called on Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a leading U.S. arts institution located in Manhattan, to cancel Israeli government-sponsored performances by two Israeli theater companies scheduled for July 24–27. The signers of the letter have won numerous awards for their work in theater, including four Pulitzer Prizes, three Tony Awards, and nine Obie Awards. The letter signed by the artists asserts that the performances by Israel’s Ha’bima National Theatre and the Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv will help “the Israeli government to implement its systematic ‘Brand Israel’ strategy of employing arts and culture to divert attention from the state’s decades of violent colonization, brutal military occupation and denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people.”

Amith Gupta writes, “The use of LGBT discourse to pinkwash Israeli state violence–and A Wider Bridge’s slanderous allegations against those who do not comply–are simply one part of an ugly trend to turn pride events from a commemoration of the sacrifices of marginalized peoples into an effort to sanitize their marginalization.”

Jesse Rubin reports on the latest break in virtual pro-Israel advocacy, an online hasbara app that Israel’s strategic affairs minister calls the “Iron Dome of Truth”: “Combining military-language with an advanced technology sector—two things which Israel prides itself on—users can choose from a long list of ‘missions’ and receive points upon completion. The tasks can be as simple as liking a Facebook page called ‘Uncovering Bias and Real Human Rights Abuses at the UN’ or sharing a tweeted photo of Mariah Carey landing in Israel.”

Nada Elia writes about the Chicago Dyke March, “In the aftermath of the ‘controversy,’ Jewish-identified organizations who participated in the march, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Not In Our Name, also asserted they did not experience any hostility, and have issued statements in support of the march, and of the Dyke March Collective’s decision to expel the three provocateurs. JVP went further, by posting a video denouncing A Wider Bridge’s longstanding role in pinkwashing, the Israeli government-sponsored propaganda campaign to distract from Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights by focusing instead on Israel’s alleged gay-friendly policies. As Palestinian activist in the LGBTQ community Izzadine Mustafa stated in a Facebook post, ‘Their racist ideology does nothing but justify the oppression of my people. They claim to be a wider bridge, but in fact create a wider wall which divides and tricks Queer folks into supporting a racist criminal entity.’”

A loud and festive protest against the Israeli occupation of al-Quds, also known as Jerusalem, convened in Times Square on Friday, June 23, 2017. The protest was organized by the Free Al-Quds network and Muslim Congress and co-sponsored, by a number of New York-area community organizations, including the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, NY 4 Palestine, and the NYC Students for Justice in Palestine. More than 100 demonstrators commemorated Al-Quds Day by reaffirming the right of New Yorkers to boycott institutions complicit in Zionism and calling for the end of Israel’s violent, decades-long occupation of Jerusalem. The demonstrators also called for an end to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing bombardment of Yemen, which has killed thousands of innocent Yemeni civilians in the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes.

Israeli musicians write an open letter to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke asking him to honor the Palestinian BDS call and cancel the band’s upcoming concert in Israel: “Israel is increasingly notorious for being a place that forward-thinking artists who care about equality and freedom want little to do with. We are confident that this reality will contribute to moving the Israeli government to change its unjust policies, and help convince companies to divest from Israel, just as they did in apartheid South Africa. Canceling your show will disrupt the ‘business as usual’ facade that international performances in Israel perpetuate. Please reconsider violating the Palestinian call for boycott.”

A new ‘ethics code’ authored by the same professor who wrote the IDF ethics code, seeks to combat BDS advocacy by Israeli academics.

Shimrit Baer writes, “The territories occupied in 1967 have become the focus of international activism because every aspect of life is controlled by the occupier, there are walls and checkpoints, shootings and tear gassing of civilians, detentions without charge, child arrests, bulldozed houses and fields, military raids, unfit drinking water, humanitarian crises–“etc.” The strategic focus on West Bank colonial “settlements” is something that few question. Meanwhile, the placebos of power within the state are serving to inhibit significant internal/external pressures for historical redress. In the scheme of things, importance has to go to Zionist Space as an arena of change. Any civil rights activism without the conscious disruption of Zionist Space is only make-belief.”

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi explores the roots of Puerto Rican-Palestinian solidarity, beginning with movements in the 1970s, “Palestinian Puerto Rican solidarity is extensive and includes various organizations and individuals in multiple locations and during different time periods. In Chicago for example, the solidarity expressed by the embrace of the two freed political prisoners, Rasmea Odeh and Oscar López Rivera goes back to the 1970s. The late Palestinian community leader Samir Odeh was instrumental in forging those ties of solidarity. In fact, leaders who accompanied Oscar López to the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York remembered Samir as one of their comrades from “back in the days.” In New York, even before Palestinian and Arab students began to organize themselves within the Organization of Arab Students (OAS), the Young Lords Party had already declared support for the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. During the 2011 delegation to Palestine in which Angela Davis participated, former Young Lords Party and Puerto Rican Student Union member and long-time anti-war and trade union organizer Jaime Veve, recalled how, as a young student involved in the Oceanhill-Brownsville struggle for community control, he had two posters on his wall, Angela Davis and Leila Khaled.”

On Monday June 12, 2017, Palestinian Christians of the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine issued an open letter to the World Council of Churches ahead of their upcoming gathering in occupied Bethlehem, “We need you and we need you now more than ever. We need your costly solidarity. We need brave women and men who are willing to stand in the forefront. This is no time for shallow diplomacy Christians…Things are beyond urgent.”