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.
US policy denying Palestinians any avenue of redress against Israeli human rights violations is a public joke, as Matt Lee grills State Spox Ned Price over opposition to ICC jurisdiction. “Where do they go? Where do they go?” And Price has no answer.
NY mayor candidate Andrew Yang’s statement that BDS is “rooted in antisemitic thought and history,” going back to Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses, was a highly intentional statement aimed at capturing the NY Jewish establishment, which has rewarded anti-BDS politicians.
The murder by Israeli soldiers of Ali Abu Alia was the 6th killing of a Palestinian child in the occupied West Bank this year. And though Israeli soldiers have killed 155 children in West Bank in recent years, they have had near complete impunity– a process “unworthy of a country that proclaims it lives by rule of law,” the U.N. says. And liberal Zionist organizations maintain that impunity by insisting Israel keep getting U.S. military aid.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s withdrawal last Friday from an October memorial to Yitzhak Rabin is an act of irreverence for an Israeli leader we’ve not seen before at her political level; and the drama has roiled the pro-Israel community. Even the Biden campaign spoke up, an aide saying that AOC’s decision was “problematic” for the Democratic Party.
Peter Beinart’s abandonment of belief in the Jewish state has caused Congress members to question two-state belief. Why such influence? Because Beinart was part of the liberal Zionist Israel lobby, and his loss of faith threatens the lobby’s power politics not to mention a solemn commitment by the west to a Jewish state.
Annexation compelled Brian Lehrer of WNYC to host an anti-Zionist, and Yousef Munayyer said Annexation is a “clarifying moment” for Americans because it asks us whether we wish to continue to support apartheid against an indigenous people who have been treated as Native Americans were in our country in the 19th century.
The two state solution is dead. Sen. Chris Murphy on the Senate floor, Yousef Munayyer in Foreign Affairs, and Ian Lustick in a new book are the latest public figures to acknowledge as much. But Democratic presidential candidates liberal Zionists want to deny the one-state reality so as to maintain the dream of a Jewish democracy. Amplifying Palestinian voices is the only answer to this logjam.
Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law, tells Mondoweiss it is difficult to know how Israel’s controversial new law aimed at barring boycott activists from entering the country will actually be enforced, but he says the law is in direct violation of international law. “Countries have wide discretion to allow are deny entry to foreigners,” Sfard says. “However, International Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the basis of a person’s opinion and provides freedom of conscious and thought. The law is definitely a violation of both.”