ICC ruling that it has jurisdiction to investigate Israeli war crimes has put the country’s leadership on the defensive. Netanyahu calls it “pure antisemitism” and Israel’s US advocates, AIPAC, AJC, and Dennis Ross rush in to say that the ICC has no jurisdiction.
If Palestinian anti-apartheid activist Issa Amro was one of the Russian or Chinese human rights defenders being accused of bogus charges and unfairly convicted by a military court, we would have certainly heard his name on the Senate floor or during a White House press briefing, says Jamil Dakwar.
An Israeli military court could send anti-apartheid activist Issa Amro to jail next week for among other absurd charges using the word “stupid” with an Israeli soldier. An international campaign to stop Amro’s sentencing now includes the Canadian mission to Ramallah, novelist Raja Shehadeh and the liberal Zionist org J Street.
Earlier this week, a U.S. State Department official declared that the Biden administration “embraces and champions” the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. That definition notably defines certain criticisms of Israel as antisemitic.
Liberal Zionist groups have all but ignored B’Tselem’s bombshell report stating that Israel is an apartheid regime. And no wonder, the report impugns the progressive credentials of any organization that calls itself pro-Israel, and apartheid demands use of a tool liberal Zionists have rejected as allegedly antisemitic, BDS.
Liberal Zionists say there are 2 regimes in Israel and West Bank, and apartheid in the West Bank doesn’t undermine democracy in Israel. It’s a fiction, Nathan Thrall shows in London Review of Books. Israel’s discriminations against Palestinians demonstrate there has been an apartheid policy in Israeli government since 1948.
Racist Capitol Hill rioters brandished Israeli flags for a reason, because they admire Jewish supremacy as a guiding principle in that country. Democratic Party supporters of “Jewish democracy” who call for diversity in U.S. politics are living a contradiction that gets more glaring by the minute.
Israel’s shooting of a 24-year-old Palestinian who was trying to hold on to a generator used in construction in occupied territories has been viewed globally. It increases pressure on Americans to shut off the spigot of aid. One thing will stop Israel from ethnic cleansing of West Bank that requires shooting Palestinians: US pressure. But US press and liberal Zionists come up short.
Liberal Zionists’ moral problem is that they are so wed to “the right of the Jewish people to a state” they seek to discredit any real program to pressure Israel for Palestinian rights. Liberal Zionists could maintain this contradiction when fighting Trump seemed more important to Americans than fighting rightwing Israel; but they have now lost this figleaf, and there is an urgent need for real action, not lip service, on Palestinian rightslessness.
The murder by Israeli soldiers of Ali Abu Alia was the 6th killing of a Palestinian child in the occupied West Bank this year. And though Israeli soldiers have killed 155 children in West Bank in recent years, they have had near complete impunity– a process “unworthy of a country that proclaims it lives by rule of law,” the U.N. says. And liberal Zionist organizations maintain that impunity by insisting Israel keep getting U.S. military aid.