When Obama was battling Netanyahu, Joe Biden threw his arm around an Israeli official and said, “Just remember that I am your best fucking friend here.” Now Biden is collecting on the friendship, raising money at the Manhattan home of an Israel supporter, Jack Rosen, who does not want the U.S. to return to the Iran deal.
Jewish activists are pressuring lawmakers to support a bill that bars Israel from detaining children with U.S. funds. “You said separating families does not protect U.S. security. That is also true in Israel at this moment and it’s our money that is paying for the Israeli military in very high amounts,” an activist challenged MA Rep. Stephen Lynch.
If you want a metaphor for Israel don’t think of Spartan farmer-soldiers, as the Zionist myth would have it — a better metaphor would be 1950s Alabama, with an air force. “The average Israeli is xenophobic and racist on a level which would make a Trump rally go pale,” Yossi Gurvitz writes.
A week before Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib were barred from entering Israel and Palestine by Benjamin Netanyahu, a group of congressional staffers attended a tour of the area carried out by a former Israeli intelligence official. According to the itinerary filed with the House Ethics Committee, the staffers traveled to various sites on a 7-day excursion that featured lectures from an Israel Defense Forces base commander, a Palestinian billionaire who has worked alongside occupation forces, and an Israeli settler who advocates for the annexation of the West Bank.
The Democratic field for president wants to blame Donald Trump for Israel’s decision to bar Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel, not Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even though these differences exist between the histories of India and Israel, Kashmiris have expressed solidarity with Palestine because of a sense of resonance with their own experiences. While effective United Nations interventions are needed for Kashmiris and Palestinians, their resistance against these settler/(post) colonial projects continue.
On August 12, Twenty-one Israeli lawmakers sent a letter to members of Congress criticizing a bill that condemned the boycott of Israel because it endorsed a two-state solution. “We would like to make our position clear that the establishment of a Palestinian state would be far more dangerous to Israel than BDS,” the letter reads.
In 2016, Fordham University tried to block a Palestinian advocacy group from being formed. After a two year legal battle, students at the school have won a landmark victory which legal advocates are calling “the first major legal victory for free speech for advocates of Palestine on college campuses,” and a Students for Justice in Palestine club can now be established on their campus.
In an interview on July 26, Vermont Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said he would “absolutely” consider cutting military aid to Israel as leverage to change their government’s actions.
Despite the overwhelming passage by the House of a resolution condemning BDS, many Democratic politicians are torn about how much to support Israel. Rep. John Lewis voted for the resolution but also supports a bill that affirms the right to boycott. Go figure! And two leading presidential candidates have said that Israel should suffer reductions in aid for human rights violations.