American Zionists are not deluded about Zionism. They know exactly what Israel is, and they are actively supporting blatant supremacy, racism, and apartheid. But that is changing, because Zionism is finally being challenged in the left/liberal press.
The Israel lobby group ADL tried to stop the Nakba commemoration at the Capitol by saying that Rashida Tlaib had slandered Israel. The historic ceremony was carried off thanks to Bernie Sanders.
The last three Democratic presidents took a “cautionary tale” from Jimmy Carter and decided not to push the issue of Palestinian justice because it might cost them a second term, says Eric Alterman.
This month marks the 39th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. Ellen Siegel, now 79 and a retired nurse in Washington, D.C., talks to Steve France about what happened to her in 1982, when she was working as a volunteer nurse at the hospital in the Shatila neighborhood of Beirut: “The soldiers’ rifles were pointed at us. Some of my fellow hospital staff started crying. I wondered, was anyone going to know that I died in this refugee camp?”
The failure by the World Medical Association to act on Israeli torture despite a 12-year-long, evidence-based appeal by 725 doctors from 43 countries regarding accountability for doctors complicit with Israeli torture practices shows there is not even-handed regulation of doctors worldwide regarding complicity with torture. “Publications deemed critical of Israel often evoke vitriolic and ad hominem attacks upon writer and medical journal – and little engagement with the cited evidence.”
Netanyahu used a visit from Tony Blinken to turn the subject to Israel’s supposed “existential” threat, Iran. This claim is taken seriously inside the beltway, but Assal Rad writes that it is spurious. U.S./Israel alignment has been harmful to regional and global security.
The documentary “The Occupation of the American Mind” describes the successful effort by Israel to sell its brutal military policies as self-defense against Palestinian terrorism. A panel featuring Sut Jhally and Diana Buttu will discuss the film on Sunday.
Historian Jerome Slater reinterprets the Cold War in the Middle East: “It’s an easy case to make that it was the United States, specifically Nixon and Kissinger… who sabotaged Soviet inititatives that I think were very fair for a two state settlement guaranteed by the super powers.” The Soviets wouldn’t have been in the Middle East if the U.S. hadn’t supported Israel so vigorously, which left Arab states no choice but to align with the Soviet pole. But the Soviets pushed peace in an effort to thwart a global conflict.
Canadian law makes it illegal to recruit soldiers for a foreign state. but the line between enticing impressionable young people to oppress Palestinians and formal recruitment is unclear. Now, activists are calling on the government to investigate the Israeli consulate for recruiting Canadians into the Israel’s military, and possible military recruitment inside of Toronto schools.
An open letter published by Harper’s magazine, and signed by 150 prominent writers and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new “cancel culture”. It is easy to agree with the letter’s generalized argument for tolerance and free and fair debate, but the intent of many of the letter’s signatories is the very reverse of their professed goal: they want to stifle free speech, not protect it.