On Sunday Israel approved plans for 1,300 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank, in the first move of its kind since US President Joe Biden took office. Later this week, the Israel Higher Planning Committee is expected to meet to push forward plans for an additional 2,862 units.
In a new report, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem detailed the harrowing tale of a Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped and tortured by a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank this summer. The youth was burned, beaten, and handed over to Israeli soldiers unconscious.
A coalition of Florida organizations are calling for a boycott of Duty Free Americas over its financial support for racist, ultra-nationalist Israeli settler groups in the West Bank. “The call for boycott of Duty Free Americas is especially important for us Floridians to answer because the owners of this company are our neighbors, and we must hold them responsible and accountable for the millions of dollars they have donated to the ongoing Nakba,” CAIR-Florida’s Central Florida Regional Coordinator Lara Abu Ghannam tells Mondoweiss.
The Israeli government has approved initial plans for thousands of new housing units in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, along with hundreds of Palestinian units in Area C, the part of the West Bank under full control of the Israeli government. “It seems that the approval of a handful of plans for the Palestinians is only intended to try to reduce criticism of the government and to please the US administration ahead of Prime Minister Bennett’s expected visit to Washington in the coming weeks,” settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a statement.
Reactions to Ben & Jerry’s announcement that it is ending business in Israeli settlements shows a new consensus is forming in the Palestine solidarity movement. Many activists are shifting focus from simply boycotting Israeli settlements to boycotting Israeli Apartheid.
Meretz represents the far left of Israeli politics and even its leader says even he buys settlement products. This more than anything shows the overwhelming Israeli political consensus behind the settlements.
Religious zealots have established an “outpost” settlement in West Bank lately and Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians protesting the landgrab. The story is getting wide coverage in Palestine but not in the United States, though these lands are the supposed basis of a “Palestinian state.”
It was not Naftali Bennett or Avigdor Lieberman who finally dethroned Benjamin Netanyahu, but the Palestinians themselves.
Florida protestors tell Duty Free Americas to stop funding expulsion of Palestinians. “Quite simply, our groups are in front of Duty Free America offices today because Israel encourages the construction of illegal settlements, and international philanthropy pays for it,” explained protestor Hiba Kakli.
The New York Times runs “hasbara” or Israeli propaganda about coexistence in Haifa, including humans with wild boars. But Alice Rothchild writes that boars are actually a tool of occupation: Jewish settlements outside Nablus frequently blocked access to the local villages, burned their farms and olive trees, and raised wild pigs that they released into Palestinian farms.