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.
The idea of a global family in which we are all interdependent spurred Bob Peck to make a documentary about the persecution of the Palestinians three years ago. The documentary is now out and available for free on Youtube.
Insofar as the subject of conditioning Israel’s aid has permeated mainstream political discourse, it’s remained largely hypothetical. Now activists are calling on progressive Senators who have voiced support for conditioning aid to Israel to get behind a policy with actual teeth.
The two state solution is dead. Sen. Chris Murphy on the Senate floor, Yousef Munayyer in Foreign Affairs, and Ian Lustick in a new book are the latest public figures to acknowledge as much. But Democratic presidential candidates liberal Zionists want to deny the one-state reality so as to maintain the dream of a Jewish democracy. Amplifying Palestinian voices is the only answer to this logjam.
Bari Weiss’s book argues that if you embrace Zionism you will suffer ostracism and career reputational damage. But the last week she’s gotten treatment other authors only dream about, from cable networks to the 92d Street Y to a big-media party where everyone bewailed social media (because the leftwing dares to advocate for Palestinian human rights).
Lately we’ve seen several institutional efforts to show that American Jews are all for Israel, except the lunatics. That’s because the appearance of wall-to-wall US Jewish support is a necessity for Israel lobby groups in convincing politicians to back Israel unconditionally. IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace are a threat to the Stalinist consensus.