The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.
Israeli peace activist Angela Godfrey-Goldstein writes an open letter to the president’s son-in-law: “Jared Kushner, maybe you believe you’re supporting Israel with your positions, statements and actions? For those of us who for many decades have fought for peace, nothing could be more mistaken.”
The Judaization of the Negev and Galilee have long been central for the Zionist venture. Israel steps up its plans for Judaization of the Negev. The young American Jewish group IfNotNow noticed, and are radicalizing, calling it ethnic cleansing, and part of the “occupation” within Israel’s 1948 borders.
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.
Your country for a country club! Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant inaugurated a swimming pool and country club in the Bedouin town of Rahat and made clear that the gift has a political price, accepting the Jewish nation state law and the higher value it gives to Jewish settlement of the land.
There are still a few weeks before head of the Joint List Ayman Odeh begins his first term in Israel’s parliament, yet he has already led a protest across the country. This past weekend Odeh led the “March for Recognition” with hundreds of Bedouins who live in unrecognized villages. The 130 kilometer trek from the southern Negev desert to Jerusalem officially ended on President Reuven Rivlin’s doorstep Sunday afternoon.
Peter Beinart’s pro-settlement boycott article in the New York Times has rightly been critiqued from…