With less than a month left in office for President Trump, the current US administration is working hard and fast to secure more normalization deals in the region.
This holiday season come shop with Mondoweiss — we’ve done the digging so you don’t have to! Here are our staff picks from gorgeous ethically sourced clothes, to Palestinian handicrafts, to hand-dipped Hanukkah candles, to books and Zoom cooking classes with one of our favorite chefs.
Ayman Abu Alia remembers his son, Ali, who was killed by Israeli snipers on his 15th birthday. “In the past few days, I have seen all the young men and boys in the village stand with us, and it makes me feel like Ali is still standing here with us,” Abu Alia tells Mondoweiss, “He’s still here, brave, and standing up for his people and his land. That’s how I will remember my son.”
In a letter that was smuggled out of Israel’s Damon prison to be shared at the Palestine Writes festival, political prisoner Khalida Jarrar shares the essential role literature plays for Palestinian prisoners struggling the retain their humanity and remain connected to the outside world. “Our struggle for liberation inside prisons starts with protecting resistance literature,” Khalida writes.
The killing of Ali Abu Alia — on top of hundreds of similar atrocities in recent years — has generated outrage in the west. Will anyone bear responsibility for robbing the young teenager of his life? It all depends on the responses of American political actors.
On Friday, the Israeli military killed Palestinian teenager Ali Abu Alia, and have attempted to justify it by saying it did not use “live fire” against protesters. Not only did it use lethal force, but it was aided and abetted by the U.S.
Health officials in Gaza say they are days away from running out of hospital beds, sounding the alarm as coronavirus cases continued to radically spike over the last week, sending younger patients to critical care wards for the first time.
On Thursday, Democrats elected Rep. Gregory Meeks to chair the House Foreign Relations Committee beating Texas’ Joaquin Castro by a vote of 148-78. Castro’s candidacy was seen as a long shot but earned progressive support as a result of calling for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, ending U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen, conditioning military aid to Israel, and saying he would bring Palestinian voices to the table if elected.
Remember Israel’s basic law stating that it is the “Nation State of the Jewish People”? Well a judge dismissed a discrimination suit filed on behalf of Palestinian children who can’t find Arabic-speaking classes in the town of Karmiel, saying the law prioritizes Jewish settlement of the land, Palestinians are a minority in the town, so the state doesn’t have to lift a finger to help these children.
Phil Weiss interviews Susan Abulhawa about her new novel Against the Loveless World. “My exile and the destruction of my family and the destruction of everything, of our whole world, has defined my whole life in so many ways and in very personal ways,” says Abulhawa.