The Democratic Party has squelched the Palestinian issue. Yesterday, Kamala Harris had a conference call with 1800 Jewish Democratic donors and assured them a President Biden will never condition aid to Israel over its conduct and that Biden-Harris will show “unwavering support” for Israel. The party has shut down the left’s criticism of Israel saying it could damage the effort to make Donald Trump a one-termer.
What would you do if you were living in a refugee camp during a global pandemic? For the first time in months, Palestinian refugee camps are seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases raising concerns over the potentially devastating effects the virus can have on disadvantaged communities like the Dheisheh refugee camp.
Lea Kayali says the controversy over Linda Sarsour’s participation at a Democratic Party event was emblematic of the larger dilemma for American Muslims, Arabs, and Middle Easterners: the party wants our vote, but they aren’t willing to work for it.
Susan Abulhawa’s new novel, Against a Loveless World, “has given readers of Palestinian writing a beautiful new horizon within which to imagine freedom.”
The Democratic Party successfully sent the message in its convention that Biden won’t be a troublemaker like Obama on Palestinian human rights, thereby pleasing big donors. But the news from congressional races is that the Democratic base cares deeply about the issue.
Israel has been bombing Gaza for eight days straight, all as part of what Israel says is a response to incendiary balloons sent from Gaza into Israeli territory. “We’ve been through this countless times,” Omar Ghraieb, 33, a Palestinian journalist told Mondoweiss, “but it’s harder now with a global pandemic and the whole world falling apart, no electricity and no water.”
Daniel Shapiro, a point man for Biden on pro-Israel issues, officially represents INSS, an Israeli security org, so the Foreign Agents Registration Act would seem to apply to him. Shapiro has said a year ago his service for INSS is “temporary” but he’s still there and has lived in Tel Aviv since he stopped being U.S. ambassador in 2017.
In the wake of the normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE, Palestinians have taken to the streets across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip to denounce the deal, which they have described as the ultimate “betrayal” and a “stab in the back.”
Izzeldin Bukhari is a chef based in Jerusalem’s Old City who works to promote traditional Palestinian food, but the Israeli occupation makes obtaining locally-grown produce very difficult. “[Israeli is] trying to teach us to give up on being Palestinian. And we are saying ‘I can’t’. Simply, we can’t. It’s in our blood, it’s in our ancestors, it’s the history, the heritage. It comes with every muskhan dish I eat, with every hiwerina I eat, with every waraka dawali. And this is how we continue to be Palestinian.”
Dareen Tatour talks to Palestinians living in the West Bank who had a once in a lifetime opportunity — to visit the sea in Jaffa.