US election showed that American Jews and Israeli Jews could not be more different, American Jews dislike Netanyahu two-to-one, and so the Israel lobby is divided forever, because the Jewish community is divided on the Israel question, with many young Jews supporting boycott. And that divide will continue to spur political debate.
Daoud al-Khatib, 45, died in Ofer prison last month near the end of 18-year sentence, of heart attack. He had undergone open-heart surgery in 2017, but difficult living conditions in prison, combined with the grief of losing both his parents while behind bars, had an adverse effect on his health.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s withdrawal last Friday from an October memorial to Yitzhak Rabin is an act of irreverence for an Israeli leader we’ve not seen before at her political level; and the drama has roiled the pro-Israel community. Even the Biden campaign spoke up, an aide saying that AOC’s decision was “problematic” for the Democratic Party.
Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK, The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, 7amleh, and a number of other groups, are holding a digital day of action to draw attention to Facebook’s censorship of Palestinian voices.
Jewish Voice for Peace has become the first organization to unionize within the US-based Palestine solidarity movement. “We unionized because liberation starts at home (and the workplace) and cannot happen without workers at the forefront,” writes Amira al-Thawra.
Biden defers to rightwing Israel lobby on Israel, blocking use of word “occupation” in the draft 2020 Democratic Party platform. He is clearly worried about losing Florida, and donors, to Trump. And you wonder why his Jewish outreach aide has endorsed a Republican over Ilhan Omar, or why Chuck Schumer paid no price for betraying Obama on the Iran deal.
“Jews and allies for Rashida in Detroit are tired of profits, greed, and unchecked power being put before people. Last night was a demonstration of the strength of our community and an invitation to join us in the fight ahead.” said JVP Action Organizer Reuben Telushkin after the event, “The challenges faced by Palestinians are all too familiar to many Detroiters, who also contend with severe economic and racial injustice — and the horrifying ways those inequalities accelerate infection right now.”
“Some of the most evil name-calling and epithet-slinging [against Israel] that takes place is sadly within our own Jewish community,” Laura Shaw Frank of the American Jewish Committee says. Her accusation echoes charges the AJC has made against Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, but “evil” sure ups the ante.
On the occasion of the Jewish Voice for Peace transition to a new leadership, leaders in the Palestinian activist community take the opportunity to honor and thank past Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson for her dedicated and strategic leadership of an organization that has done so much to advance Palestinian rights to self-determination, freedom, justice, and equality in the U.S. and beyond.