By opposing and prohibiting funding to many of the Israeli policies of military occupation that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, and by increasing the transparency around US weapons flows to Israel, Representative Betty McCollum’s latest bill is the boldest effort ever by Congress to ensure that the United States is no longer complicit in Israel’s denial of freedom to five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
B’Tselem researcher Nasr Nawaja’a tells Mondoweiss that intimidation from Israeli settlers and the Shin Bet has increased since a video he recorded showing the arrest of Palestinian children made international headlines. In fact, just a few days after the video of the boys’ detention was published, Nawaja’a says he was summoned for interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, and was warned to “not make any more trouble for the army.”
Gallup’s latest annual poll of US attitudes on Israel and Palestine shows Israel has a favorable image but there are signs that support for Palestine is beginning to increase. In 2020, the Palestinian Authority had a favorability rating of just 21%. That jumped to 30% this year.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that the man, 45-year-old Atef Hanaysheh, was shot with live ammunition in the head during a protest against settlement expansion and the confiscation of Palestinian-owned land in the village of Beit Dajan.
The Palestinian Feminist Collective’s open letter asking allies to adopt Palestinian liberation as a critical feminist issue has set off debates within feminist and Palestinian liberation movements. Nada Elia writes that some of the debate is understandable considering mainstream Western feminism’s disregard for the plight of the Palestinian people, but ultimately the call is about affirming, yet again, that one cannot be a feminist while supporting gendered violence, settler-colonialism, indigenous dispossession, and apartheid.
Palestinians will kick off their national vaccination campaign Sunday, offering long-awaited jabs to the general public for the first time following the arrival of does from the GAVI Alliance and COVAX, a vaccine-sharing program. Allison Deger unpacks the supply chain that brings the essential vaccines across the globe, and through Israeli checkpoints, into the arms of Palestinians.
The Jewish National Fund is a linchpin of the system that enforces superior rights for Jews over Palestinians, whether inside Israel or in the occupied territory. A recent JNF decision to start publicly funding projects in the West Bank just makes that role more clear. Now the question becomes — will its international supporters stand by the organization?
“We are turning people away, very sick people, because we have nowhere to put them,” a nurse who asked to remain anonymous told Mondoweiss. “At this point it’s like we were waiting for people to die just so that someone else can take their bed or their ventilator.”
Microsoft doesn’t get scrutinized as much as its peers, but the corporation provides a bold example of how corporations benefit from, and contribute to, Israeli militarism and violence. Microsoft cultivates and helps export Israel’s dangerous tools, while also sanitizing the deadly US-Israeli alliance with the help of non-profits and academic partnerships.
This week will mark the one year anniversary since the first cases of the coronavirus were reported in Palestine, and a state of emergency was declared in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, where Palestine’s COVID-19 outbreak began. One year later Palestine’s COVID-19 nightmare seems to only be getting worse. Cases are surging in the West Bank, causing health officials to declare a third wave of the virus, as many hospitals across the territory reach maximum capacity.