Gideon Levy says that Israeli idealists dreamed of the day when Israeli soldiers would tell their society about the occupation. Then Breaking the Silence came forward, and it was crushed, with the media’s help. Israelis live in denial. “No question marks.” Only outside pressure will force them to end the tyranny over half the population, the Palestinians.
Former dean of Columbia’s school of international affairs Lisa Anderson left her position in 2008 after 12 years on the job in part because of a campaign by pro-Israel rabble rouser Bari Weiss, then a Columbia student, to hold her accountable for inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the school, says a tweeter identifying himself as Anderson’s son. Weiss is now a free speech advocate at the New York Times.
The AIPAC policy conference has featured one prominent Democrat after another seeking to outflank the Trump administration in expressions of love for Israel. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer took the prize by slinging mud at Palestinians and Arabs as the reason there is no end to the conflict. Schumer said the problem is the Palestinians “don’t believe in the Torah. So that’s the reason there is not peace.”
War with Iran could “perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become,” Col. Lawrence Wilkerson warns, but Israel is trying to “suck” America in to such a conflict, with Senator Chris Coons of Delaware providing militarist propaganda worthy of the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.
There was no political opposition to Avraham Burg’s message of equal rights in Israel and Palestine at Temple Israel in Brookline, and that’s bad news. The political winds are blowing in such an opposite direction in the U.S. and Israel right now that those who object to his message don’t believe he is even worth pushing back at.
The press is reporting that Jared Kushner’s days as a White House power may come to an end, due to a flurry of reports about his meetings as a Trump adviser with foreign officials and corporate execs who are in a position to help out his family’s troubled real estate company — as well as Kushner’s considerable innocence when it comes to foreign policy. The knives are out, and the latest reports are that Donald Trump himself wants his son-in-law to disappear.
After 75,000 views, Youtube removed a cover version of Lorde’s hit song “Royals” that exalted the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) “due to a copyright claim by Kobalt Music Productions.” Youtube let stand many other parodies of the song, often savage toward the artist. There is always an exception for pro-Palestinian creations.
The premier Israel lobby group AIPAC fulfills its mission of guaranteeing bipartisan support for Israel by having many liberal Democratic speakers this weekend: Rep. Adam Schiff, Jake Sullivan, and Tamara Cofman Wittes. Even as the progressive Democratic base grows alienated from Israel, establishment Dems need to show support for the rightwing country so as to preserve their careers.
Adrian Chen’s piece on Russiagate in the New Yorker has an important subtext: There is a narrative to be narrated, dammit, and facts can get in the way. And if you naively choose the facts, you might find yourself demonized as a pro-Putin propagandist. When the truth is that leftwing skeptics of Russiagate are opposed to the MSM’s neverending warmongering.
Ambassador David Friedman’s assertion that uprooting 100s of 1000s of settlers would “cause a civil war” is echoed by many on the left. Both sides imagine a one-state outcome, even as liberal Zionists attack Friedman for suggesting that Israeli society is not resilient and that the two-state solution is right around the corner.