As Terry Gross’s interview with Muslim reformer Haroon Moghul on Fresh Air yesterday demonstrates, the mainstream media loves anti-Islamists and the war for the soul of Islam. But it maintains a blacklist of anti-Zionists and ignores the war for the soul of Judaism.
The double standard of American Jewish political power for Zionists: American Jews should back the Israeli occupation unquestioningly and fight the boycott movement against Israel over Palestinian human rights, but when it comes to freedom of Jewish worship in Jerusalem, US Jews should use that boycott power to bring the Netanyahu government to its knees.
Recent days have dashed any thought that Donald Trump would be neutral or an honest broker. Negotiator Jason Greenblatt spent all his time echoing the Israeli message about the conflict, while envoy Jared Kushner reportedly angered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by carrying Netanyahu’s talking points to Ramallah.
If Peace Now is so opposed to the Israeli occupation, why does it help pay the salary of a man who promotes it nonstop: Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents. Young Jews who are resisting the occupation would never do such a thing.
In yet another sign that the Democratic left is determined to stand up for Palestinian human rights, 34 congresspeople have signed letters supportive of Issa Amro, the courageous and non-violent leader of protest actions in occupied Hebron who has been accused by Israel of a series of absurd charges going back to 2010, including “insulting a soldier,” “assault” and demonstrating without a permit.
Among the general US population, the number of those “unreachable” by Israel is 9 percent, but among Jewish college students the number is much higher 13 percent. And that is a “national security issue” for Israel’s future, says Fern Oppenheim of the Brand Israel Group.
A new study titled, “Sounding the Alarm: The American-Israeli Relationship” by an American Zionist group says that Israeli PR (or hasbara) isn’t working, and the more Americans learn about Israel, the less favorably they feel about the country. The report says that Americans have learned a lot more about Israel since 2010, but that knowledge has fostered the country’s unfavorable reputation, and fed the “delegitimization” campaign, because Americans increasingly feel that Israel does not share their values.
“Politically, ideologically and in some sense spiritually, I was born in June 1967,” Israeli settler and ambassador Dani Dayan tells a liberal Zionist gathering in New York, in yet another reflection of how rightwing ideology is ingrained in US Jewish life and in Israeli politics.
Last Sunday five mostly-liberal American Jewish groups held an all-day conference in New York on “Israel at a crossroads on the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War,” and it was chaotic. The Israeli ambassador tells the crowd that Jews have a right to the West Bank because “winner takes all,” while an Israeli rabbi pleads with American Jews to stop backing up rightwingers in Israel. Phil Weiss writes, “if I can extract any lesson from it, it is that older establishment liberal Jews aren’t ready for the new discourse of Israel and they are freaked out about what young Jews are saying. Peter Beinart’s crisis of Zionism of 2013 is now four years old, and we are starting in on the chaos of American Zionism.”
On June 10, leading anti-Muslim organization ACT for America, whose founder, Brigitte Gabriel once described Muslims as being a “natural threat to civilized people of the world, particularly Western society”, initiated a nationwide ‘rally against Sharia law’. Most anti-Sharia protesters were met with fierce opposition, but further organized action will be required to squash the violent surge of anti-Muslim sentiment that’s grown ever more ominous since the election of Donald Trump.