Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent refusal to criticize Israel in comments to an Israel lobbyist remind us that the lobby is still entrenched in the Democratic Party. We thought that narrative was over, but it’s not. Israel critics turn into Israel praisers when they have political ambitions.
Hamid Dabashi’s new book on Edward Said shows how the Palestinian intellectual became “integral to the very alphabet of our moral and political imagination.”
Last week an Israeli district court ruled against a Palestinian filmmaker and actor, Mohammad Bakri in a defamation and libel case, ordering him to pay hefty compensation to an officer in the Israeli military who was accused of carrying out war crimes in the 2002 documentary “Jenin, Jenin.” Ramzy Baroud says the verdict can be understood within two contexts: one, Israel’s regime of censorship aimed at silencing any criticism of the Israeli occupation and apartheid and, two, Israel’s fear of a truly independent Palestinian narrative.
Anan Ameri’s memoir “The Wandering Palestinian” is beautifully written in the tradition of Arab story telling. Its humorous and poignant chapters travel a reader to Beirut, Detroit, Washington, and Jerusalem, interweaving the forty-year personal narrative of a free spirited Arab woman who arrives in the USA in 1974, with the larger issues of migration, racism, sexism, and institution building.
Hellbent on crafting an umbilical cord between itself and a biblical, mythical 2000-year old past, Israel has erased the ancient history of Palestinians. A review by Sam Bahour of Keith Whitelam’s “The Invention of Ancient Israel.”
Peter Beinart’s abandonment of belief in the Jewish state has caused Congress members to question two-state belief. Why such influence? Because Beinart was part of the liberal Zionist Israel lobby, and his loss of faith threatens the lobby’s power politics not to mention a solemn commitment by the west to a Jewish state.
Palestinians find inspiration in the first anti-apartheid movement and other struggles against settler colonialism in their call for BDS and secular democracy in historic Palestine.
Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations has an article at Foreign Policy saying that the U.S. should phase out aid to Israel and “end the special relationship” because the peace process has attained its real objective: Israel is established as a secure country with a standard of living rivaling the UK and France, and no real military threat.
Jews who criticize Israel are increasingly being excommunicated from the Jewish community. Barry Trachtenberg reflects on this marginalization, and what legacies anti-Zionist Jews can draw upon.
The idea of a global family in which we are all interdependent spurred Bob Peck to make a documentary about the persecution of the Palestinians three years ago. The documentary is now out and available for free on Youtube.