Puma has been calling for action against hate. But Palestinian footballer Mahmoud Sarsak asks, “So why is Puma supporting the hate which is destroying lives and poisoning the beautiful game?”
It’s a “canard,” says Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. A “false story,” says former ambassador Dan Shapiro. Biden’s surrogates in the Jewish community go to great lengths to try to debunk a story that Joe Biden took on Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin over settlements in 1982. But the encounter is documented in the New York Times.
Following the release of a UN database of companies involved in illegal Israeli settlements the ordinary consumer is simply faced with the choice: Support war crimes or take corporates to task for their violations.
After countless delays, the UN released the highly-anticipated database of companies that operate in Israel’s hundreds of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Among the international businesses listed are several companies in the travel industry previously known to operate in settlements, like Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor. American food manufacturer General Mills and telecommunications giant Motorola Inc. are also on the list.
The vote last week on H.Res.326 reveals Congress to be more divided than ever in its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Almost all Republicans now back Israel’s one-state apartheid rule over the Palestinian people, whereas most Democrats still give lip-service to Palestinian statehood without being willing to pressure Israel toward this end. However, Josh Ruebner writes that things are changing for the better within the Democratic caucus as a few Representatives bravely challenge the two-state paradigm and test the waters for conditioning aid to Israel.
Over 100 House Democrats decry the Trump administration’s new settlement policy. However, the majority of House Democrats declined to sign.
For Christian Zionists, the settlements have never been illegal because God’s law supersedes international law—and now, it seems, so do the laws of Israel and the United States.
If supporters of a two-state solution are unable or unwilling to come up with a plan then Israel, with the full support and encouragement of the Trump administration, will very soon have the distinction of being not just the world’s only Jewish state, but the world’s only apartheid state as well.
The Trump administration’s declaration supporting Israeli settlements has elicited some progressive outrage, but not in Israel. Liberal Zionists should take note.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the US was revoking the notion that settlements are illegal under international law. “What Pompeo is announcing is not a rupture in US foreign policy, but a culmination of it,” explains human rights lawyer Noura Erakat.