News

Look for our new website this summer! While we continue to post to this page, you'll find more updated news about events in Gaza, Israel and the Middle East, as well as news about local demonstrations, on Facebook: Jewish Voice for Peace Boston. We also send information about demonstrations and events through email; if you would like to be included, contact us at jvpboston@gmail.com.

Israel going for one million Jews in the West Bank
Despite his disappointing results at the ballot box, Netanyahu has successfully leveraged his negotiating position to create a right-wing government that is outwardly aggressive and inwardly nationalistic.

By Aluf Benn, 11.03.13

The election campaign season comes to its real conclusion this week with the formation of the government and an unadulterated victory for the right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recovered from the blow he took at the ballot box and managed to extract the maximum out... Read more.

Israeli Licence to Cheney-Linked Energy Firm on Golan
Heights Raises Eyebrows

By Jim Lobe

In a potential new source of contention between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has reportedly granted a U.S. energy firm with heavyweight political connections to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights. Read more.

Family reports Samer Issawi on ‘verge of death’ after refusing liquids and vitamins 236 days into hunger strike

By Kate on March 15, 2013

Al-Akhbar 14 Mar -- Palestinian hunger-striker Samer Issawi is on the verge of death according to a statement from his sister Shirine Issawi Thursday, a day after he decided to refuse both liquids and vitamins. The statement was given to the web magazine Palestine Online. Palestine’s prisoners’ rights group Addameer had reported Wednesday that Issawi was suffering from severe heart problems, the latest in a series of illnesses Issawi has contracted since the start of his 236 day hunger strike. Read more.

New cross-Canada student coalition looks to build on BDS victories

By Charlotte Kates, March 8, 2013

As Canada’s Minister of Immigration and Citizenship, Jason Kenney, castigated Palestine solidarity activists for organizing Israeli Apartheid Weeks across the country, and as its Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, threatened “consequences” for Palestinians if they pursue Israel in the International Criminal Court as he spoke before AIPAC in Washington, DC, students on campuses across Canada have come together to build a new alliance to educate, inform and organize for Palestine. Read more.

PCHR calls for investigation into the circumstances of Palestinian detainee’s death in Megiddo Prison in Israel

February 24, 2013

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) calls for an immediate and independent investigation into the circumstances of the death of a Palestinian detainee in Megiddo Prison in Israel following 4 days of detention. PCHR has serious concerns that the detainee may have been subjected to physical and psychological torture while he was being interrogated inside the prison. Read more.

Ariel Sharon feared genocide charges over Israel's role in Sabra and Shatila

By Ofer Aderet, February 21, 2013

Notes from 1983 cabinet meeting show former defense minister was concerned that the entire government, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin, would be accused of genocide in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon if the Kahan commission's findings were accepted. Read more.

Palestinians clash with Israeli forces in protests over prisoners

By Joel Greenberg, February 22, 2013

JERUSALEM — Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces at flashpoints in Jerusalem and across the West Bank on Friday, capping a week of demonstrations in support of four Palestinian prisoners on extended hunger strikes against their incarceration. Read more.

What a 'period of calm' looks like in the Occupied Territories
Three months after the last major Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, the "period of calm" is only "calm" for Israel.

22 Feb 2013 09:55

Three months have passed since the ceasefire that brought an end to Israel's eight-day attack on the Gaza Strip known as Operation "Pillar of Defence". This infographic depicts the number of attacks on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military during this three-month period, as well as the number of Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza. Read more.

Prisoner X: Doubts Grow on Jailhouse Suicide Claims for Australian Israeli Linked to Mossad

Full link.

Residents of Palestinian village accuse Israeli authorities of harassment
Tax raids, fines and arrests are just some of the means by which the state hopes to quell protests against road that would bisect Beit Safafa; police, city deny collective punishment.

By Nir Hasson, Feb.20, 2013

Since they began protesting against a main traffic artery being built smack through their neighborhood, say the inhabitants of Beit Safafa, police and other authorities have been abusing them. They suspect the authorities of trying to break them using means they would never apply in a Jewish neighborhood. Read more.

Veolia suffering "expensive" damage due to Palestine campaigners’ publicity, says financial expert

By Adri Nieuwhof on Tue, 02/19/2013

For years, the French transnational Veolia has tried to downplay the effect of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns which aim to hold the company to account for its role in the Israeli occupation. Read more.

Holy Moley Batman—Palestinian textbooks don’t demonize Jews!

Cecilie Surasky – If you are quiet and can hear a loud cracking noise in the distance, that’s the sound of the Hasbaraniks losing one of their favorite stock charges against the “big, scary, bad” Palestinians. To quote Hillary Clinton when she was held captive to local interests and regularly said stuff she didn’t believe a U.S senator in NY, Palestinian textbooks don’t, “give Palestinian children an education, they give them an indoctrination.” This oft-heard charge about Palestinian textbooks filled with horrific portrayals of Jews has been a lynchpin component of the Israel-as-innocent-victim narrative which AIPAC and company promote everywhere from churches to Congress. All to keep the dollars and protection flowing. Read more.

Watch: BDS campaigner Omar Barghouti lecture and conversation with Amy Goodman in Santa Fe

Ali Abunimah on Sun, February 10, 2013
Omar Barghouti with Amy Goodman, Conversation, 1 February 2013

On 1 February 2013, Omar Barghouti, a founder of the Palestinian movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel, spoke in Santa Fe sponsored by the Lannan Foundation as part of its In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom series. Watch here.

EU to use legal loophole to ban settlement goods

Germany's Der Spiegel says European Union to take effort to ban products made in West Bank, Golan Heights further by using import laws' loophole

Published: 02.12.13, 12:35 / Israel News

Germany's German Der Spiegel magazine claimed Monday that Israeli producers evade European Union legislation and falsely mark products made in the Golan Heights and the West Bank as "made in Israel." Read more.

Dror Moreh's 'The Gatekeepers' Sheds Light On Israel's Shin Bet

"The importance for me is the message the film gives to the Israeli public. The message is that occupation is bad for the future of Israeli society from all aspects - humanistic, economic, moral, etc. I can assure you that all six former heads and some 95% of my colleagues and workers from the Shin Bet from over three decades all agree with the overall conclusions of the film." -- Carmi Gillon Shin Bet Director 1994 - 1996

John Horn, February 11, 2013

Israel's Shin Bet - think of it as a combination of the CIA and the FBI - prides itself on secrecy. So when documentary filmmaker Dror Moreh approached one of its past leaders some three years ago to discuss the agency's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he expected silence. Read more.

Israel gives final approval for 90 new settler homes

Mon Feb 11, 2013

Israel gave final approval on Monday for 90 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank, driving another wedge into a rift with Washington ahead of a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama.

The dwellings will be built in Beit El, a major Jewish settlement north of Jerusalem, and will house educational staff, the Defense Ministry said.
Read more.

Judith Butler's Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS

Judith Butler February 7, 2013

Editors Note: Despite a campaign to silence them, philosophers Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti spoke at Brooklyn College on Thursday night. In an exclusive, The Nation presents the text of Butler’s remarks. Read more.

Israel plans to evict Palestinians, building new Jerusalem-area garbage dump on their villages

By Adri Nieuwhof on Wed, February 6, 2013

The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem is planning to build a huge garbage dump on Palestinian villages in East Jerusalem, says rights group Adalah. The plan is part of the wider effort to link illegal Jews-only West Bank settlements with Jerusalem. Watch here.

Full-Page Ad in ‘Roll Call’: 80,000 to President Obama—Hold Israel accountable, we have your back

By US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, January 23, 2013

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace announced that they are running a full-page ad in today’s special presidential inauguration edition of the influential Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, which is distributed to nearly 20,000 Capitol Hill staffers and elected officials. Read more.

Re-elect Netanyahu and you get international boycott, Livni warns

By Philip Weiss on January 19, 2013

Yesterday we posted a Naftali Bennett video for the upcoming Israeli election that treats the boycott movement, BDS, as a force that Israel has to contend with. Read more.

An ‘Israeli Spring’ for Palestine? The Call Is Out

By Mal Abdul Rahman, January 15, 2013

Alon Ben- Meir last week called on his fellow Israelis to take to the streets and demand an end to Israel’s occupation policies. His proactive article “Israelis Must Rise Up to Avert National Disaster,” appeals to Israelis to organize non-violent mass demonstrations similar to ‘Arab Spring’ protests that brought down Arab dictators. He pleads, “free Israel unshackled from the harsh and discriminatory policies that have converted the historically oppressed Jews to oppressors.” Read more.

Obama: ‘Israel Doesn’t Know What Its Best Interests Are’

By Jeffrey Goldberg, Jan 14, 2013

Shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that it would advance plans to establish a settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E-1, and that it would build 3,000 additional housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Read more.

On foot through the hills of E1 — Palestinians join Bab al-Shams
protest village

By Allison Deger, January 12, 2013

Palestinians walk through the hills of the Jerusalem E1 area to reach the newly established protest village of Bab al-Shams, 12 January 2013. (Photo: Allison Deger/Mondoweiss)

"Go across the street immediately and run," directed a member of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC) this morning to a group of 38 Palestinians on a bus from Ramallah to Bab al-Shams. Read more.

Press report: EU 'to propose' peace plan to restart Israel-Palestinian talks,
after Israel elections

By Yossi Lempkowicz

JERUSALEM/BRUSSELS(EJP)---The European Union is drawing up a detailed new plan to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and expects to present it after the general elections in Israel later this month, Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported.

The newspaper, which quoted diplomatic sources in Jerusalem, said the plan was intended to "bring about the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 lines with east Jerusalem as its capital." Read more.

MEDIA RELEASE: Veolia Withdraws from California Water Contract Bidding Following Outcry Against its Abuses of Palestinian Rights

January 11, 2013

Davis, California – The Davis Committee of Palestinian Rights (DCPR) is happy to report that Veolia Water North America has withdrawn as a prospective bidder on a $325 million dollar project that would provide treated water from the Sacramento River to residents of Woodland and Davis in Yolo County, California. Read more.

Goldberg smears JVP after ‘NYT’ columnist mentions them for defending Hagel

by Alex Kane, January 10, 2013

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof defends the nomination of Chuck Hagel today, and also mentions the efforts of Jewish Voice for Peace, who defended Hagel. Atlantic writer and Israel-discourse police officer Jeffrey Goldberg responded on Twitter by smearing Jewish Voice for Peace. Read more.

University of California System and The Three-Pronged Attack on Free Speech and Campus Organizing

by Jadaliyya Reports, Jan 09 2013

In the following episode from AJE's The Stream, Palestine solidarity activists from various University of California (UC) campuses discuss a three-pronged attack on free speech and campus organizing throughout the UC system... Read more.

Israeli pours putrid skunk gas over homes in occupied Palestine

by Philip Weiss, January 7, 2013

Three days ago, January 4, Haim Schwarczenberg took this photograph. He writes: "Skunk trunk spraying putrid liquid all over residential homes in the village of Nabi Saleh."

If you've ever been to this village, you know that these are ordinary people's homes, and that almost all the village, whether it likes it or not, is involved in resistance efforts to the takeover of its lands and spring by the neighboring Jewish colony, Halamish. Read more.

Israelis give their votes to Palestinians in Facebook campaign

In an act of protest one can only find in the world of social media, activists open a Facebook page where Israelis are urged to ‘hand over’ their voting rights to Palestinians. Read more.

Interfaith Peace Builder Scholarships to visit Palestine. Read more.

protesters

Dear Friends,

Events are moving rapidly in the struggle for peace and justice in Israel/Palestine. Anger and grief over the eight-day aerial assault on Gaza have triggered an outpouring of new energy in opposition to Israel’s 46 year-old occupation of Palestinian land and lives.

In the U.S., Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has been at the forefront of mobilizing against the repressive and illegal actions of the Israeli government. In less than a week, over 100,000 people watched JVP’s animated history of the conflict. In the month of November alone, more than 15,000 new people joined JVP’s list.

support peace and justice JVP chapters around the country felt the surge in interest and the desire to do something. When the assault on Gaza happened, we at JVP Boston organized. Forty people staged a counter-rally to the mainstream Jewish Community's Israel gathering with Governor Deval Patrick. With our presence and our signs, we affirmed the value of all lives—Israeli and Palestinian. And we named the pro-Israel rally for what it was: a war rally.

Our protest got substantial newspaper and television coverage: we wrote letters to The Boston Globe—and had one published! We mobilized a significant presence at the larger demonstrations for justice throughout Boston and posted frequently on our Facebook page, nearly doubling our “friends” in one week.

Our ability to respond in times of crisis depends on the long-term, day-to-day work of education and organizing that goes on throughout the year. In 2012, this work included:

sponsoring numerous film screenings, speakers and educational events, including one with Angela Davis on Martha’s Vineyard that drew a crowd of 400 people.

continuing our divestment work, alongside student partners, faith-based groups and anti-Veolia MBTA activists.

sending twelve new leaders to the national JVP Leadership Development Institute.

convening our first chapter-wide Annual Gathering, attended by over 60 people.

One of the most important steps JVP Boston took this year was hiring a half-time organizer, Liza Behrendt. Since September, Liza has established relationships with student activists at nine Boston-area schools, and is organizing Boston-area students in exploring BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns at several campuses.

JVP Boston needs to increase our capacity to harness the recent outpouring of energy and interest in the struggle for justice in Israel/Palestine.

In 2013, we will solidify campus-based organizations across the city, intensify our work with faith-based organizations, conduct public education, grow our base, and broaden and deepen the We Divest campaign, which targets TIAA-CREF pension holders to demand that the Fund divest from companies that profit from the occupation.

We need to re-double our efforts to capture the political openings that exist and accelerate the momentum. We can only do this with your support.

For JVP Boston,
Rabbi Joseph Berman, Elsa Auerbach, Pam Rogers

P.S. The energy is there. The conditions are right. The time is now. Please make the most generous possible donation that you can make. Your contribution is tax-deductible.

Why We Hate Them: Arabs in Western Eyes
A new PBS documentary reveals how films and other media have shaped an
anti-Muslim narrative.

By Philip Giraldi, January 2, 2013

Control of the preferred narrative is essential in today’s instant-news political culture. This has been particularly true since 9/11, as the United States government and the cooperative media have worked together to make sure that a series of enemies are identified and then attacked as a response to what has been shaped as a global terrorist threat. Read more.

State bars Westerners living in West Bank from entering Israel, East Jerusalem
Change discovered after foreigners renewed tourist visas, and saw that 'Judea and Samaria only' had been stamped inside.

By Amira Hass. January 2, 2013

Israel recently renewed restrictions on the freedom of movement of foreign nationals who live and work in the West Bank that prohibit them from entering East Jerusalem or Israel. The changes were discovered when foreigners learned, after renewing their tourist visas, that the words "Judea and Samaria only" had been stamped inside. Citizens from these countries who come to live in Israel or Jewish... Read more.

Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression

By Jadaliyya Reports, Jan 2, 2013

[Researched, written, and edited by members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, this twenty-eight-page exposé focuses on the role of Israel’s government, military, and related corporations and organizations in a global industry of violence and repression. The states most involved with this industry profit from perpetual war and occupation across the globe while maintaining vastly unequal societies of their own.] Listen/read more.

BDS roundup: The victories of 2012

Submitted by nora, January 1, 2013

Worldwide: From Glasgow to Cairo, Jerusalem to Olympia, activists tirelessly campaigned on behalf of the Palestinian-led BDS movement to hold Israel accountable for its ongoing human rights violations. Read more.

Palestinian children bear brunt of the Occupation

Palestine Information Centre, January 1, 2013

RAMALLAH,- According to a report issued by the Department of Statistics, the total number of arrests against Palestinian children by the Israeli authorities has increased by 26% during 2012 compared to its previous year 2011.

The report indicates that the Israeli occupation forces have arrested 880 Palestinian children during 2012, with an average of 73 cases of arrest per month, considering that “a serious and alarming indicator”, in light of the continuation of targeting the children and detaining them in the jails in difficult conditions, and in light of the escalation of the serious violations against them. Read more.

E1 not Israeli territory

December 18, 2012

Miriam Leedor, director of public outreach at B'Tselem , in an Op-ed originally published by Ynetnews website: According to int'l law, 'state-owned' lands in West Bank can be used only for the benefit of the local Palestinian population.

The controversy surrounding the government's decision to promote the construction of thousands of housing units in the E1 zone, which will connect Ma'ale Adumim and Jerusalem and cut through the West Bank, is view by pundits and politicians alike as a serious diplomatic problem, but not a legal one. Read more.

Poll: 67% of centrist Israelis wouldn't elect party that splits Jerusalem
According to a poll commissioned by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 80 percent of Labor supporters and 62 percent of Yesh Atid voters attach importance to the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

By Jonathan Lis, December 18, 2012

Two-thirds of centrist voters - defined as Labor Party and Yesh Atid supporters - would not support a party willing to compromise on Jerusalem, according to a poll commissioned by the rightward-leaning Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Read more.

Helpless: Notes of a Gaza teacher
One Gazan’s war diary, November 14-21.

By Ahmed G. Ferwana

November 14

I wished my colleagues and students a nice weekend, and left the American International School of Gaza (AISG), where I work as a Language and Literature teacher, for my apartment on Al-Shuhada Street, which I consider to be one of the most beautiful streets in the Gaza Strip. It was a lovely Wednesday, to be followed by a three-day vacation, and I had plans to meet some friends for a barbeque. Read more.

ACLU condemns “lawfare” targeting campus Palestine solidarity activism

December 12, 2012

Israel lobby groups are attempting to use US civil rights law to stifle speech critical of Israeli policies and clamp down on Palestine solidarity student activism across US campuses, claiming such speech and activism is “anti-Semitic.” Read more.

Israel must stop attacks on Palestinian NGOs and human rights defenders
Amnesty International Press Release, 11 December 2012

Early on Tuesday 11 December 2012, members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raided three Palestinian NGOs in Ramallah, seizing computers, work files and equipment and ransacking their offices in what Amnesty International says is part of a “pattern of harassment” against campaigners in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Read more.

How Israeli Militarism Is Driving a Wedge Between American Progressives and the Jewish State
Liberals around the world are losing their sympathy for Israel.

December 5, 2012

It all seemed so familiar. With Israeli elections looming, Israel takes a step ostensibly in response to rocket fire from Gaza that it knows very well will escalate the fighting. Read more.

Dividing Line - Segregation in Israel's public bus lines

JVP National’s video explains the Israel-Palestine conflict in just 6 minutes.
Over 100,000 people have viewed it in just 4 days. Watch it here.

PETITION TO SIGN:
Save Wadi Foquin (Fukin)

Wadi Foquin is a Palestinian village located in the Bethlehem District of the West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territories. The village and its population of 1,200 live under Israeli military control. The village and villagers have been victims of human rights violations which impact daily life, and jeopardize their future survival. Sign here.

PETITION TO SIGN:
Hold Israel Accountable for Killing Palestinians with U.S. Weapons

From November 14-21, Israel killed at least 156 Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, including 103 civilians and 33 children, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. In addition, 6 Israelis were killed by Palestinian rockets. Sign here.

Cheering U.N. Palestine Vote, Synagogue Tests Its Members

By Sharon Ottermanand Joseph Berger, December 4, 2012

Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, a large synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is known for its charismatic rabbis, its energetic and highly musical worship, and its liberal stances on social causes.

But on Friday, when its rabbis and lay leaders sent out an e-mail enthusiastically supporting the vote by the United Nations to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state, the statement was more than even some of its famously liberal congregants could stomach. Read more.

East Jerusalem project could bury two-state solution

December 2, 2012

Plans to build in Area E-1 would effectively bisect the West Bank and sever the physical link between the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem . Read more.

Gaza Quiz

By Stephen R. Shalom Source,Wednesday, November 28, 2012

An uneasy cease-fire has been declared ending Israel's attack on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense. Take this quiz to see how much you know about the situation. How did the people of Gaza come to be where they are? A majority of them are descendants of refugees who in 1948-1949 fled or were driven out by Israeli forces from territory that was supposed to be part of the Arab state of Palestine but was taken over by Israel, and they were never permitted to return. Some of them are descendants of residents of the Arab town of Majdal, who, after the 1948-49 war were evacuated from different parts of the town and concentrated in a neighborhood surrounded by barbed wire (to make way for Jewish settlers) and then expelled to Gaza. Read more.

Palestine UN status upgrade should open door to justice

30 November, 2012

The victims who suffered during the 2008-2009 conflict have waited too long for justice. Palestine should act quickly to ensure justice is no longer delayed. ” Widney Brown, Amnesty International's Senior Director for International Law and Policy Fri, 30/11/2012 Palestine's historic recognition as a non-member observer state of the United Nations brings with it obligations under international law, Amnesty International said today. Read more.

Palestinian workers forced off buses by Israeli police

November 28, 2012

Police in Israel have allegedly begun ordering Palestinian workers off buses and are considering adding Palestinian only bus routes between the West Bank and central Israel at the request of Israeli settlers.
Some settlers in the West Bank believe Palestinians using the same buses as them pose a security risk, even though they have legal work permits allowing them to travel to work in Israel. Read more.

Stevie Wonder Pulls Out of Israel Gala
Change.org Petition Called on R&B Star To Shun IDF Event

By JTA, Published November 28, 2012.

Stevie Wonder is set to pull out of a performance at a fundraiser for the Israel Defense Forces, a source told JTA. Wonder’s representatives will claim that he did not know the nature of the group, the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and that he believes such a performance would be incongruent with his status as a U.N. “Messenger of Peace,” according to a source who has read email exchanges between Wonder’s representatives and organizers of the event. Read more.

One of Israel's great leftist warriors wants peace with Hamas and Gaza - but does the Knesset?
Our correspondent meets the legendary Uri Avnery, who roars out against Netanyahu and his government and foresees growing ethnic strife in Israel

By Robert Fisk, November 23, 2012

Old Uri Avnery is 89 but he’s still a fighter. In fact, the famed writer is still one of the great old leftist warriors of Israel, still demanding peace with the Palestinians, peace with Hamas and a Palestinian state on the old ’67 borders – give or take a few square miles. He still believes Israel could have peace tomorrow or next week. If Netanyahu wanted it. “The misfortune of being an incorrigible optimist,” is how he describes his predicament. Or perhaps an illusionist? Read more.

Noura Erakat and Yousef Munayyer on Gaza Assault: Interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes

By Bassam Haddad, Nov 19, 2012

In a repetition of its aerial and ground offensive in Winter 2008/09, Israel has once again embarked on a military campaign against the Palestinian population in Gaza. This assault comes just after US Presidential elections and just before Israel's Parliamentary elections. Read more.

After Harvard Hillel drops event due to donor pressure, progressive Jewish org calls out ‘political litmus test’

By Adam Horowitz on November 13, 2012

Last Thursday, the Harvard Crimson reported that the Harvard Hillel had dropped an event organized by Harvard's Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) because the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) was listed as a co-sponsor. The event "Jewish Voices against the Israeli Occupation" was to feature Israeli Jew Noam Lekach and American Jew Jeff Stein discussing activism in Israel/Palestine. Read more.

A country at war rarely spares a thought for the children of the enemy
A bit more than a week ago, people from communities in southern Israel wrote a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak:

November 12, 2012

"We, members of 'The Other Voice' from the communities near the Gaza Strip, urge the Government of Israel to stop playing with our lives, and immediately open diplomatic contacts with the Hamas government! We are tired of being sitting ducks in a shooting range serving political interests. Missiles from there and bombing from here do not protect us. This country has tried long enough, over years, the games of war and of brute force. Both sides have paid, and are still paying, a high price of suffering and loss. It's time to talk and strive for long-term understandings which will enable citizens on both sides of the border to live a normal life".

'The Other Voice' is a group of residents of Sderot and Gaza Vicinity communities, who maintain an ongoing contact with residents of the Gaza Strip, and promote neighborly relations and dialogue, in the south and throughout the country. Read more.

United Methodist Reverend brings the struggles of Wadi Foquin to

By Annie Robbins, November 11, 2012

Reverend Michael Yoshii, Senior Pastor of the Buena Vista United Methodist Church in Alameda, California, is heading off to Washington DC today to meet with the House of Representatives Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. Read more.

Danish University stops collaboration with settlement

November 11, 2012

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Roskilde University participate in scientific collaborations involving Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. DTU has now dropped their project with a settlement. The Danish Foreign Minister welcomes the decision. Read more.

Obama and the Israel lobby: Quo vadis?

By Stephen M. Walt, November 9, 2012

Has AIPAC lost its mojo? Does Obama's reelection prove that the Israel lobby is getting weaker, and that he can return to Middle East peacemaking with new confidence and resolve? It's no secret that Obama has a frosty relationship with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, fueling GOP hopes that Israel would be a wedge issue that would attract lots of Jewish voters and donors. At least one prominent hardline Zionist, Sheldon Adelson, spent tens of millions of dollars trying to buy the election for Romney, and he got bupkis for all that cash. So now that Obama's got a second term, will he blithely ignore AIPAC et al and pursue an even-handed approach to the Middle East peace process? Read more.

Impressions of Gaza

Noam Chomsky, November 4, 2012

Even a single night in jail is enough to give a taste of what it means to be under the total control of some external force. And it hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to begin to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison, where a million and a half people, in the most densely populated area of the world, are constantly subject to random and often savage terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade, and with the further goal of ensuring that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement that will grant these rights will be nullified. Read more.

Truth To Power

By Abby Zimet, November 10, 2012

Incredible video from the weekly protest in al-Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank after Israeli soldiers arrest Wa’ed Tamimi, the 16-year-old son of detained Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi, after which his younger sister furiously, fearlessly, repeatedly confronts soldiers looking alternately sheepish and amused. A reminder this is all still going on. See it here.

VOICES OF CONSCIENCE: DELEGATION to THE GAZA STRIP

Interfaith Peace-Builders Delegation Arrives in the Gaza Strip
Reports and Photos from IFPB's 2012 Delegation to the Gaza Strip (November 2012):

November 5, 2012 - Interfaith Peace-Builders (IFPB) is pleased to announce that our 21 member delegation to the Gaza Strip passed safely through the Rafah Crossing Monday morning and is now safely in the Gaza Strip.

Interfaith Peace-Builders has sent more than 44 delegations to Palestine/Israel since 2001. This is the first IFPB delegation to enter the Gaza Strip since 2003. Like other IFPB delegations, its purpose is to educate North Americans about the region and deepen their understanding of its conflicts. Read more.

Alice recently returned from a delegation with the Dorothy Cotton Institute to Israel/Palestine and her postings can be found here.

New song by French rap group Zebda, with lyrics by Jean-Pierre Filiu, about life in Gaza.

Filiu, who wrote one of the first books to come out on the Arab Spring last year, is a great model for polymath academic. As well as teach at Paris' SciencesPo, this former diplomat also collaborated with the fantastic cartoonist David B. to produce a comic about the US and the Middle East, Best of Enemies (get part one here) and has done various other collaborations with Arab rap groups (which he follows assiduously). Read more.

"Gaza Ark” To Sail From Gaza

By Saed Bannoura, November 3, 2012

Dr. Mona Al-Farra, vice head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and member of the Preparatory Committee of the Gaza Ark Project, stated that the activists, who are conducting the needed preparations and final touches, are from Canada and France, and that they are cooperating with the Palestinians in Gaza.

Activists will be arriving in Gaza via the Rafah Border Terminal, on the border with Egypt, and will be leaving the Gaza Strip on-board the ship. Read more.

Israeli Ministry of Tourism map annexes over 60% of the West Bank

November 2,2012

Is Israel preparing to annex Area C, as a growing number of analysts have recently been speculating?

This week, on a visit to the Israel’s tourism bureau in Nazareth, I came across an official brochure, “Your Next Vacation: Israel”, that suggests the answer. The brochure is supplied to travel agents around the world as well as to hundreds of thousands of tourists who arrive in Israel each year. Read more.

Israel “far worse than apartheid South Africa” says ANC chair as Pretoria conference backs boycott

By Ali Abunimah on Mon, October 29, 2012

People around the world increasingly agree with Palestinians who say they live in an apartheid system. (Mamoun Wazwaz / APA images)
Activists in South Africa have welcomed a decision by the African National Congress (ANC) International Solidarity Conference to support the Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Read more.

Massive adverts map occupation of Palestinian land

By Fatima Asmal-Motala

There has been a mixed response to the controversial billboard campaign that graphically explains the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

A local businessperson has forked out more than R350 000 for the erection of 12 billboards across South Africa that graphically explain the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

Mbuyiseni Ndlozi of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions South Africa campaign, which is handling the project with the Palestine Solidarity Alliance, told the Mail & Guardian that the businessperson – who wishes to remain anonymous – was inspired by a similar campaign in the United States. Read more.

Benjamin Netanyahu Just Became The 'Israeli Glenn Beck'

By Michael Kelley, Oct 26, 2012

On Thursday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announced he was merging his Likud party with that of his ultra nationalist coalition ally Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermanith to create a "big, cohesive force" ahead of Israel's January 22 elections.

The fallout has been heavy and swift from multiple sides. Read more.

Why is a New York hospital being sacrificed for an Israel-backed science facility?

By Terri Ginsberg , October 26, 2012

Despite critical opposition from residents and their supporters, plans are proceeding unimpeded to build a multi-billion dollar campus linking an Israeli and an American university in New York City. Read more.

UN investigator calls for boycott of firms linked to Israeli settlements
UN investigator on human rights alleges that companies dealing with settlers are in violation of international human rights laws.

By Natasha Mozgovaya and Reuters, Oct.25, 2012

A U.N. investigator on Palestinian human rights urged a boycott of companies tied to Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian Territories on Thursday, but the United States criticized the call as "irresponsible and unacceptable."

Richard Falk, the independent special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories, said the companies - which include Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Volvo and Caterpillar - should be boycotted until they adhered to international rights standards and practices. Read more.

Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel.

October 27, 2012. A disturbing article was published in the 10.24.12 edition of the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz – Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel. We should note that this was sent to us by one of the people who works at Sabeel, human rights attorney Gerard Horton, who works on the issue of the treatment of children in Israel's military "justice" system. Read more.

Reflections on Noam Chomsky’s visit to Gaza

By Rana Baker on Mon, October 22, 2012

Renowned linguistics professor Noam Chomsky has been in Gaza for a few days now. Chomsky was invited by the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) to participate in the university’s first International Conference of Applied Linguistics and Literature (ICALL). Read more.

New York Times Flacks for Jewish Groups Against 15 Major Christian Leaders

By James M. Wall, October 20, 2012

You have to know American Jewish leaders are really riled up when they call on the New York Times to flack for them against 15 leaders of Christian churches who had the audacity to send a letter to the US Congress, which said, with proper Christian indignation:

As Christian leaders in the United States, it is our moral responsibility to question the continuation of unconditional U.S. financial assistance to the government of Israel. Realizing a just and lasting peace will require this accountability, as continued U.S. military assistance to Israel — offered without conditions or accountability — will only serve to sustain the status quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories. Read more.

Gaza Water Confined and Contaminated

"Take ANY city in the world and cut it off from its hinterland and then try to organize "automonous" water supply within and for the city! No, city, I repeat, no city in the world would be able to survive." --C. Messerschmid to Visualizing Palestine

The Gaza Strip is in its sixth year of siege, in the twenty-first year of closure and the forty-sixth year of occupation. The Coastal Aquifer, shared with Israel is its only accessible source of water, polluted at ninety to ninety-five percent. Read more.

Israel vs. No. 2 Pencils

By LENA K. AWWAD and SHATHA I. HUSSEIN, October 16, 2012

As countless students around the world took the SAT a week ago, Palestinians from the West Bank could not join their ranks. The October SAT exam was cancelled for students in the West Bank: The Israeli authorities held the exams sent by the College Board for weeks, not releasing the tests to AMIDEAST’s office in Ramallah. Read more.

Israeli army veterans admit role in massacres of Palestinians in 1948
Read more.

On November 1st, 2012 eight Palestinian villages will be destroyed and 1,500 Palestinians will lose their home so Israel can build a military training facility on their land.

See http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-orders-demolition-of-8-palestinian-villages-claims-need-for-idf-training-land-1.453015. These farming villages date back to at least the 1830s (according to Israeli accounts). To learn more, visit http://www.savemyvillage.org/. Click here to take action.

Israel forced to release study on Gaza blockade

BBC, October 17, 2012

An Israeli court has forced the release of government research detailing the number of calories Palestinians in Gaza need to consume to avoid malnutrition.

The study was commissioned after Israel tightened its blockade of the territory after Hamas came to power in June 2007.

The UN said if the research reflected a policy intended to cap food imports, it went against humanitarian principles. Read more.

The Impact of Child Detention: Occupied Palestinian Territory: 2012
Save the Children Report. Read more.

Dismissal of Palestinians is Reminiscent of Jim Crow Days

By Angela Davis, October 9, 2012

The controversy generated by Newt Gingrich's outrageous statement last year that Palestinians are "an invented people" should have led to greater caution in the formulation of politicians' public statements on Israel and Palestine. However, this seems not to have been the case: Mitt Romney recently offered the judgment that "Palestinians have no interest in peace" as if he were making an uncontested factual observation. Read more.

Russell Tribunal: Israel’s crimes not Possible without US support

By Russell Tribunal, October 9, 2012

Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Walker, civil rights icon Angela Davis and the rest of the jury of international figures of note for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine presented their findings today to a committee of the UN General Assembly, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Read more.

Sold-out Russell Tribunal on Palestine wraps up in New York

By Alex Kane, October 8, 2012

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine's New York session kicked off this morning at Cooper Union (watch the live stream above). Hundreds of people have arrived to hear an expert cast of scholars on Israel's violations of international law. Read more.

ELCA calls for investigation of military aid to Israel

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), October 8, 2012

Concerned about the deteriorating conditions in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and the commitment for a just peace, the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and other U.S. Christian leaders are urging Congress to conduct an investigation into possible human rights and weapon violations by the government of Israel. Read more.

Israel’s Refugee Pawns

By Jonathan Cook, October 4, 2012

In the shadow of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's theatrics at the United Nations last week, armed with his cartoon Iranian bomb, Israeli officials launched a quieter, but equally combative, initiative to extinguish whatever hopes have survived of reviving the peace process. Read more.

BDS roundup: Why more than 200 NYU faculty and staff support TIAA-CREF divestment campaign

October 3, 2012

New York City: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)’s chapter at New York University produced a video in mid-September documenting the growing divesment campaign targeting pension fund giant TIAA-CREF. The campaign calls on TIAA-CREF to drop its investments in a myriad of corporations which profit from Israel’s ongoing occupation and violations of Palestinian rights. According to the video, more than 200 NYU professors and staff have signed onto the TIAA-CREF divestment campaign at NYU. Read more.

It’s Psychological Warfare, Stupid: Why Netanyahu Really wants to Destroy Iran

by Juan Cole, September 29, 2012

The Israeli Likud Party’s cover story for why it wants to draw the United States into a war with Iran makes no real sense. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been predicting an Iranian nuclear bomb since 1992 (a time when Iran had no nuclear program at all), and he has been wrong for 15 years in a row. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and other Israeli officials have said publicly that Iran has not decided to go for a nuclear weapon. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given more than one fatwa or formal religious ruling that making and stockpiling nuclear weapons are forbidden in Islamic law. Read more.

Remembering the Sabra and Shatila massacres
30 years ago, Israeli-backed militias killed 3,000 civilians in two Palestinian refugee camps -- my family included

By NABIL MOHAMAD

Thirty years ago this month, five of my siblings, my mother, my uncle and all 10 members of his immediate family were murdered within 48 hours of each other. These were the worst and longest hours of my life. Read more.

Presbyterian Peace Fellowship to honor JVP and Israel/Palestine Mission Network for divestment effort

By Adam Horowitz, September 27, 2012

The National Committee of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship has voted unanimously to give its Peaceseeker Award for 2013 to Jewish Voice for Peace and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network. Read more.

Why Judith Butler had to be shut down

By Cecilie Surasky, September 25 2012

The announcement of a prestigious international academic prize doesn’t typically generate endless sturm und drang on the pages of major newspapers around the world, threatening to turn into an international incident. But when that prize is given by a German city, and the recipient is Judith Butler, one of the great thinkers of our time– who also happens to be a vocal critic of Israeli policies—apparently it signifies the end is near. Read more.

Bibi in a Box: Netanyahu Loses Support on Bombing Iran

By Dan Ephron, September 24, 2012

Benjamin Netanyahu was fuming. For the first time in months, the Israeli leader had allowed a discussion in his security cabinet about Iran’s nuclear program and it wasn’t going well. Several cabinet members were questioning the wisdom of defying the United States, Israel’s ally and protector, by weighing a strike on Iran before the American election in November, according to a source familiar with the details. The grinding back-and-forth went on for seven hours. Read more.

How AIPAC transfers Americans’ money into Israel’s military

By Grant Smith, September 24, 2012

The Israel lobby’s biggest and longest-running Washington boondoggles are the massive annual weapons and economic packages to Israel. Tightly coordinated campaign contributors (both individuals and political action committees) and the Israeli government’s own quiet demands manifest themselves within AIPAC-drafted foreign aid legislation. The U.S.-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012 forces Americans to fork hard-earned tax dollars over to Israel’s coffers on the pretext that it is in eminent danger. Yet declassified documents reveal that even the current prime minister once worked inside the state’s clandestine nuclear arms smuggling rings. Transferring foreign aid to the Middle East’s sole nuclear weapons state — which can obviously take care of itself — is not just unseemly and unnecessary. It is illegal. Read more.

Tears of Gaza
A new documentary explores the Gaza War from the point of view of children.

BY MICHAEL ATKINSON, September 21, 2012

We privileged Westerners can opine and argue about issues like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but our position is not unlike that of a bombing pilot, a mile high and seeing only a tiny map on an electronic screen. From this far away, we can afford to have nuanced perspectives, taking cultural differences and ancient history into consideration. Read more.

“We’re counting on you”: In video, students in Gaza call on world peers to intensify BDS

By Shahd Abusalama on September 21, 2012

We, Palestinian students and youth, have created this boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) video call for students around the world, believing in the power of youth to make a change. We specifically want to support and encourage students to attend the UK Student Palestine Conference 2012 on 23 September at the University of Manchester. Read more.

Year After Effort at U.N., New Aim for Palestinians

By JODI RUDOREN, September 20, 2012

JERICHO, West Bank — One year after the Palestinians’ high-profile failure to win United Nations membership through the Security Council, they are returning to the General Assembly next week seeking largely symbolic “nonmember state” status, with a subdued campaign that many analysts see as a long-shot effort to win back the waning attention of the world. Read more.

Call for ban on Israeli settlement imports

By KITTY HOLLAND, September 19. 2012

An Oireachtas Committee is to write to the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Eamonn Gilmore, calling for a national ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements. Read more.

Bring these ads to your city. Read more.

NETANYAHU, NOT IRAN, IS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO ISRAEL

By M J Rosenberg, September 12, 2012

One ex-Israeli official put it best. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be “going berserk.”

He is demanding that the United States set a “red line” that, once crossed, will automatically initiate a US attack on Iran. He doesn’t even bother to pretend that war with Iran is in US interests. He just wants his war trigger. But, and this seems literally to be driving him crazy, he sees the chances for war diminishing every day. Read more.

Alice Walker and Desmond Tutu endorse upcoming Russell Tribunal on Palestine in New York City

By Annie Robbins, September 12, 2012

The 4th annual session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will be held in New York City on October 6th and 7th. The focus on this year's session will be UN and US responsibility in the denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination. Read more.

Netanyahu’s warmongering spells high noon for the Israel lobby

By Philip Weiss, September 12, 2012

It's high noon for the Israel lobby at last. The American establishment is balking at the idea of war with Iran, and calling out the neoconservatives for pushing it; and Netanyahu's tantrum is allowing liberal American Jews to declare they're not on his side. There seems a likelihood that the "special relationship" with our closest ally will at last be politicized, or at least that war with Iran will come up in the presidential debates-- and Romney forced to say he doesn't want it either, because Americans don't want it. Read more.

Freedom Theatre calls for action for Zakaria Zubeidi

September 12, 2012

On the 9th of September Zakaria Zubeidi announced that he will embark on a death fast, a complete food and fluid strike, in response to the continuous postponement of his release from Palestinian Authority prison. This effectively means that unless the Palestinian Authority releases Zakaria he will most probably not make it through the week. Read more.

The Triumph and Tragedy of Greater Israel

By Henry Siegman, September 6, 2012

Ma'ale Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
The Middle East peace process is dead. More precisely, the two-state solution is dead; the peace process may well go on indefinitely if this Israeli government has its way.

The two-state solution did not die a natural death. It was strangulated as Jewish settlements in the West Bank were expanded and deepened by successive Israeli governments in order to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. The settlement project has achieved its intended irreversibility, not only because of its breadth and depth but also because of the political clout of the settlers and their supporters within Israel who have both ideological and economic stakes in the settlements’ permanence. Read more.

Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations, and More from CRS

By Steven Aftergood, September 7th, 2012

“The prospect of drone use inside the United States raises far-reaching issues concerning the extent of government surveillance authority, the value of privacy in the digital age, and the role of Congress in reconciling these issues,” says a new report on the subject from the Congressional Research Service. Read more.

Newsletter 02 Sept. 2012 B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

Dear friends, I would like to highlight an important issue currently on our agenda: the threatened expulsion of hundreds of Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills where the Israeli military maintains a firing zone. About a month ago, Israel’s Attorney General clarified for the first time the “operational need” for this particular firing zone. However, he has not explained the legal basis for the declaration of Firing Zone 918. Read more.

What about Israel’s nuclear weapons?

By Patrick B. Pexton, August 31, 2012

Readers periodically ask me some variation on this question: “Why does the press follow every jot and tittle of Iran’s nuclear program, but we never see any stories about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability?” It’s a fair question. Going back 10 years into Post archives, I could not find any in-depth reporting on Israeli nuclear capabilities, although national security writer Walter Pincus has touched on it many times in his articles and columns. I spoke with several experts in the nuclear and nonproliferation fields , and they say that the lack of reporting on Israel’s nuclear weapons is real — and frustrating. There are some obvious reasons for this, and others that are not so obvious. Read more.

Stephen Zunes: California state assembly seeks to stifle debate on Israel

By Stephen Zunes, Aug 30, 2012

The California State Assembly has just passed a bipartisan resolution (HR 35) by voice vote which constitutes a serious attack on academic freedom and the rights of students and faculty to raise awareness about human rights abuses by U.S.-backed governments. While purporting to put the legislature on record in opposition of anti-Semitism on state university campuses, it defines anti-Semitism so widely as to include legitimate political activities in opposition to Israeli government policies. Read more.

Final Session in NYC: Russell Tribunal on Palestine

By Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Dennis Banks, Russell Means and Stephane Hessel, August 29, 2012

We are writing to you on behalf of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP), an international people's tribunal that was created to expose human rights abuses and stir people to action in opposition to Israel's recognized violations of international law. We hope that you will help promote, attend, and participate in our final hearings in New York City on October 6–7, 2012. Read more.

Witness to Rachel Corrie’s Death Responds to Israeli Court Ruling
Absolving Soldier

By Robert Mackey, August 28, 2012

As my colleagues Jodi Rudoren and Danielle Ziri report, an Israeli judge ruled on Tuesday that the state bore no responsibility for the death of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was crushed to death by a military bulldozer in 2003 as she tried to block the demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. Read more.

Call to action: Olive Harvest 2012
Posted on: August 18, 2012

International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

At a time of increasing settler violence in the West Bank, the International Solidarity Movement is issuing an urgent call for volunteers to participate in the 2012 Olive Harvest Campaign at the invitation of Palestinian communities. The olive tree is a national symbol for Palestinians. As thousands of olive trees have been bulldozed, uprooted and burned by Israeli settlers and the military – (over half a million olive and fruit trees have been destroyed since September 2000) – harvesting has become more than a source of livelihood; it has become a form of resistance. Read more.

Congressional Research Service
The Palestinians: Background and U.S. Relations

by Jim Zanotti, Specialist in Middle East Affairs, August 17, 2012

Download the full report.

How much Sheldon Adelson will pay to big up Israel and knock down Obama For Sheldon Adelson, political and Jewish giving are all of a piece Call it the Adelson conundrum: What happens when the guy who acts as if he owns the room really does?

By Ron Kampeas, JTA August 7, 2012

In March at TribeFest, the annual gathering of young adults organized by the Jewish Federations of North America at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, Sheldon Adelson walked in on a surrogate debate between Matt Brooks, who directs the Republican Jewish Coalition, and his counterpart at the National Jewish Democratic Council, David A. Harris.

Adelson, who owns the Venetian, was the first to ask a question. He went on to berate Harris for six minutes, describing President Obama as a “crybaby” who should be in diapers, according to several people in the room, including an organizer. Read more.

Rachel Corrie verdict: Death under IDF bulldozer was an accident

By Mairav Zonzein, August 28, 2012

An Israeli judge ruled Tuesday morning that the State of Israel is not to blame for the death of Rachel Corrie, an American who was killed on March 16, 2003 in the Gaza Strip when she she stood in front of an IDF bulldozer that crushed her. The judge called her death a “regrettable accident.”

Rachel Corrie was in Rafah as an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, acting as a human shield to protest the demolition of Palestinian homes. She was 23 years old at the time of her death. She had arrived in Israel in January 2003 and spent two days getting trained in the West Bank with the ISM before going to demonstrate in the Gaza Strip. During this period there were demolitions happening on an almost daily basis.

An Israeli military investigation into the incident in 2003 found that the IDF was not to blame, arguing that the area was a “combatant” zone that protesters should not have entered in the first place, and that Corrie put herself in a dangerous position. The IDF also argued that she was not visible to the soldier operating the bulldozer and was in fact killed by debris falling on her. Read more.

Judith Butler responds to attack: ‘I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence’

By Judith Butler on August 27, 2012

Yesterday the Jerusalem Post published an attack on the awarding of a major international prize to Judith Butler, the philosopher and Berkeley professor of comparative literature, because Butler favors boycotting Israel. Butler wrote this response and, unhopeful that the Post would publish it, sent it to us. --Editors. Read more.

Gaza 'will not be liveable by 2020' - UN report

August 27, 2012

The Gaza Strip will not be "a liveable place" by 2020 unless action is taken to improve basic services in the territory, according to a UN report.

Basic infrastructure in water, health, education and sanitation "is struggling to keep pace with a growing population", according to the report.

It estimates Gaza's population will rise from 1.6m to 2.1m by 2020.

Israel tightened a blockade on Gaza after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power in the territory in 2007. Read more.

Gaza, Palestine activists #RememberRachel and support #BDS

Breaking the Silence report details soldiers humiliating and torturing Palestinian children and using them as human shields

By Philip Weiss and Annie Robbins, August 26, 2012

The Israeli veterans' organization Breaking the Silence released a shocking new report this morning on the abuse of Palestinian children in the occupied territories. Read more.

Israeli inquiry into Rachel Corrie death insufficient, US ambassador tells family
US government does not believe military inquiry was 'thorough, credible and transparent', as family await verdict in civil suit

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem, August 24, 2012

Rachel Corrie died trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer from destroying Palestinian houses in Rafah in 2003. Photograph: Denny Sternstein/AP
The US ambassador to Israel has told the family of an American pro-Palestinian activist who was killed in Gaza in 2003 that the US government remains dissatisfied with the Israeli army's decision to close its official investigation into the incident. Read more.

Israeli lies unchecked, Palestinian perspectives censored on BBC

By Amena Saleem, 24 August 24, 2012

One of the most obvious examples of bias by the BBC is the taxpayer-funded broadcaster’s habit of inviting Israeli politicians or the Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev, onto its programs to speak without challenge. Meanwhile, Palestinians and those who would convey a Palestinian perspective are not given the same opportunity. Read more.

On the Smear Campaign Against Some “Rabbis for Obama”

By Rabbi Brant Rosen, August 24, 2012

Here is a post I co-wrote with Rabbi Alissa Wise for the Forward Thinking Blog of the Jewish Daily Forward:

The Republican Jewish Coalition and the Emergency Committee for Israel this week urged a group of rabbis supporting President Barack Obama’s reelection to purge members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council from its ranks. The conservative groups claimed they were shocked by the inclusion in the “Rabbis for Obama” list of those whose “values are representative of a small and extreme group of anti-Israel activists.” Read more.

Angela Davis and Gina Dent: Reports From Palestine
This Friday, August 24th, Davis and Dent will speak at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs

By Mathea Morais, August 22, 2012

The Jewish Voice for Peace in Boston, along with a strong Island Host Committee, welcome Angela Davis and Gina Dent to the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs this Friday for: Reports From Palestine. Read more.

Military and Settler Vandalism Escalates as Court Battle over South Hebron Hills Heats Up

August 21, 2012

We continue to follow, report and support the struggle of the Palestinian residents of the West Bank’s southernmost region, to continue living on their ancestral lands which they legally own.

One would think that in an enlightened society such a simple request would be guaranteed beyond doubt. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. For an entire generation, the Occupation regime, aided and egged on by the settlers that regime has introduced into the region, has been trying to uproot a few thousand indigenous residents. The mechanisms have ranged from military edicts, bad-faith legalistic arguments in court, pressure on the ground, and naked violence and vandalism. Read more.

Israeli teens, including girls, held over attack on Palestinian youths
Israeli police arrested seven Jewish teens, two of them girls, suspected over the reported attempted lynching of three Arabs in Jerusalem.

Freya Petersen, August 21, 2012

Israeli police have arrested seven Jewish teens, two of them girls, suspected of attacking three Arabs in Jerusalem.

Haaretz cited a police representative as saying that hundreds of people watched the attack on the three Palestinian youths last Friday in Jerusalem but did nothing to stop it. Read more.

United Church of Canada approves boycott of settlement goods

August 19, 2012

TORONTO (JTA) -- Canada's largest Protestant church has voted to boycott goods from Israel's Jewish settlements.

Voting Aug. 17 on a final set of resolutions, members of the church's governing General Council passed a measure to boycott products exported by Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in eastern Jerusalem. Read more.

Take Action! Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice
CALL TO ACTION!
We call on our friends, as individuals and as organizations, to mark the week of the Corrie trial verdict with the following actions in support of all whose rights have been violated by the Israeli Government. Read more.

Mad or Crazy?

Uri Avnery, August 18, 2012

BINYAMIN NETANYAHU may be crazy, but he is not mad.

Ehud Barak may be mad, but he is not crazy.

Ergo: Israel will not attack Iran.
I HAVE said so before, and I shall say so again, even after the endless talk about it. Indeed no war has been talked about so much before it happened. To quote the classic movie line: “If you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk!” Read more.

In suspected Jerusalem lynch, dozens of Jewish youths attack 3 Palestinians
One of the Palestinians was seriously wounded and hospitalized in intensive care; eyewitness: Today I saw a lynch with my own eyes.

By Nir Hasson, August 17, 2012

Dozens of Jewish youths attacked three young Palestinians in Jerusalem's Zion Square early on Friday morning, in what one witness described on Facebook as "a lynch". Read more.

Hundreds of Israelis petition IDF pilots: Refuse orders to bomb Iran
Tel Aviv University law professors among signatories to online petition, which warns that any decision to strike Iran would be a 'highly mistaken gamble.'

By Tomer Zarchin and Dan Even, August 16, 2012

More than 400 Israelis, including Tel Aviv University law professors Menachem Mautner and Chaim Gans, have recently signed an online petition calling on Israel Defense Forces pilots to refuse to obey if ordered to bomb Iran. Read more.

Briefing: The ABCs of Israeli demolitions in oPt*

August 16, 2012

In 2012 395 Palestinian structures were demolished in the West Bank
RAMALLAH, 16 August 2012 (IRIN) - Rasmiyye Hamande has lived in a cave in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) for most of her life, which may have been a blessing in disguise. “This cave,” she says, “can’t be demolished so easily.” Read more.

Time for black perspective
African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa

August 13, 2012

Fifty-five black activists and scholars insist that the time has arrived for an African-American voice on U.S. policy towards the regions of North Africa and the Middle East.

Silence in the face of injustice and oppression is unacceptable.

“We come together from different organizations, institutions and movements, and some as simply individuals of conscience, who have concluded that silence in the face of injustice and oppression is unacceptable,” they state in “African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa” (AAJMENA). Read more.

Promoter who raised money for Israeli army to hold Lollapalooza on ruins of Palestinian village

By Benjamin Doherty on Sun, August 5, 2012

Lollapalooza, the corporate concert franchise founded by Jane’s Addiction frontman, pro-Israeli fundraiser and activist Perry Farrell, is to launch in Tel Aviv in August 2013. The lineup will be announced in January 2013 according to Haaretz. Read more.

Shop for Peace at the Middle East Children's Alliance

Winner of the 2012 Sermon Contest
"Waking Up and Overcoming: A Unitarian Universalist Response to the Israel-Palestine Conflict"

Jill Baker presents her winning sermon from the 2012 UUJME Sermon Contest.

The Checkpoint
Terror, Power, and Cruelty

By Oded Na’aman

One morning, when I was about four years old, I proudly announced from the back seat of my family’s car, “Mother, I want you to know that I am the first kid in my whole kindergarten to think inside my head rather than out loud.” The car slowed to a standstill as we waited for the light to change. My mother turned to me, smiled, and said softly, “How do you know you’re the first?” Read more.

FACT SHEET: Palestinian Culture: 64 Years Under Israeli Assault

IMEU, AUG 2, 2012

In late July, while on a trip to Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney sparked outrage amongst Palestinians by telling a group of supporters at a fundraiser that the glaring disparity between the strength of Israel's economy and that of the Palestinian territories is a result of differences in the respective cultures of Israelis and Palestinians. Read more.

Romney’s Boston HQ refuses to accept Jewish Voice for Peace petition, members say

Group, listed by ADL as one of the top 10 anti-Israel groups, attempts to deliver letter calling on the presumptive Republican presidential candidate to apologize for comparison of Israelis and Palestinians. Read more. Follow this story on the JVP Blog.

EDITORIAL: Mr. Romney Stumps in Israel

July 30, 2012

Mitt Romney made a point of insisting that he would adhere to an unwritten rule and often violated rule about candidates not criticizing each other or contradicting American foreign policy on foreign soil. About the only effort he made to keep that promise during his stop in Israel was to avoid mentioning President Obama by name. Read more.

African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa: Solidarity Statement

By Black activists and scholars, July 29, 2012

For far too long African Americans have been compelled, by mainstream USA, to remain either silent on international affairs or only speak out on matters relative to Sub-Saharan Africa. With this statement by "African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa" a process unfolds of breaking the silence. Read more.

What Dani Dayan Says and Why It Is Interesting

Richard Falk Blog, July 27, 2012

[Note: I have revised the first paragraph of this post to take some note of comments addressed to the original version, and in light of my own further thoughts]

Dani Dayan’s article, “Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay,” was published by the NY Times on July 26, 2012. Dayan is the chairman of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities, and has been long known as a leading spokesperson of the settler movement. Read more.

Palestine's Investments Require Divestment

By Sam Bahour, July 27, 2012

Nearly two decades ago, I had a dream. I thought the historic tragedy that befell the Palestinian people was about to end. As such, I refused to be an observer to the historic events that were unfolding; instead, I chose to employ my U.S. education and work experience to contribute to building a new reality on the ground -- to build an economy that could serve the new and emerging state of Palestine. Read more.

Population of Jewish settlements in West Bank up 15,000 in a year
Number of settlers has almost doubled in 12 years, increasing obstacles to two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Harriet Sherwood, July 26, 2012

The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank grew by more than 15,000 in the past year to reach a total that exceeds 350,000 for the first time and has almost doubled in the past 12 years. Read more.

Israel orders demolition of 8 Palestinian villages, claims need for IDF
training land
Residents of targeted villages will be moved to the West Bank town of Yatta and its environs; state claims that most of those evacuated have permanent homes in the area.

By Amira Hass, July 23, 2012

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the demolition of eight Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills because the territory is needed for Israel Defense Forces training exercises, the state told the High Court of Justice on Sunday. Read more.

Reflections on a Lifetime of Engagement with Zionism, the Palestine Question, and American Empire

By Noam Chomsky and Mouin Rabbani, July 17, 2012

In the following interview conducted for Journal of Palestine Studies by Jadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani, Noam Chomsky reflects on a lifetime of engagement with the Palestine Question. He reflects on his early engagement, and how it developed over the course of his lifetime. He also considers how things have - and have not - changed, and where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could and should be heading. The interview was conducted in Lexington, MA in 2009 and 2010, and the full text is available in Journal of Palestine Studies 41:3 (Spring 2012), pp. 92-120 and online. Read more.

Signs of a transitional moment in the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic
The fragility of the Palestinian Authority and growing support within Israel for direct control over the West Bank are reshaping the political dynamic.

By Noam Sheizaf, July 15 2012

There are growing signs that the occupation/Palestinian issue is undergoing one of its transitional moments, after which new forces will be at play. On the surface, things are as static as they could be: Inside Israeli society, there is a total denial of the occupation – the Levy committee’s report being just one aspect of it. No major political forces are offering any new idea that could end the occupation. In fact, even the old ideas – a Palestinian state, for example – are no longer discussed. I heard President Shimon Peres say at the Presidential Conference that we should wait, and things will happen in the longer run. The guy is 89, what long run is he talking about? Read more.

Visualizing Occupation: Freedom of movement

By Michal Vexler, Monday, May 14 2012

Whereas West Bank settlers can travel freely between Israel and the West Bank, Palestinian movement is governed by the Israeli security establishment. This illustration is the fourth in a series of infographics on the effect of the occupation on the Palestinian civilian population. Read more.

23,000 Palestinian will be isolated when barrier is completed

July 13, 2012

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) this week issued a fact sheet about the segregation wall being built by the Israeli occupation and the impact it is having and will have on Palestinian lives when it is completed.

According to OCHA, 85% of the wall's route will run inside the West Bank rather than along the Green Line, isolating 9.4% of the West Bank. Read more.

European academics protest involvement of Israeli arms companies in EU research programs (BRICUP petition)

More than 250 academics from 14 different European countries have written to the European Commission urging it to take action to prevent Israeli arms companies and other companies involved in abuse of Palestinian human rights from participating..... Read more.

What's going on in Israel?

By Stephen M. Walt, July 12, 2012

One of the more enduring myths in the perennial debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict is the claim that Israel has always been interested in a fair and just peace, and that the only thing standing in the way of a deal is the Palestinians' commitment to Israel's destruction. This notion has been endlessly recycled by Israeli diplomats and by Israel's defenders in the United States and elsewhere. Read more.

Mutiny fear in Israeli army as religious Zionists gain influence
Highly religious soldiers could refuse orders to remove Jews from settlements

By Harriet Sherwood in Har Etzion, July 11, 2012

In large study halls, ranks of young Jewish men are bent over religious books or debating in pairs the meaning of their texts. Many wear the large knitted kippa associated with the settler movement; a few have guns by their side. Read more.

Settlements are legal? Who cares anyway?!‎

By Shmuel Rosner, July 9, 2012

A judiciary committee has concluded that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are in ‎fact legal. The West Bank, the committee believes, is not occupied territory and ‎therefore Israel has the legal right to settle it. Is it a legally viable conclusion? ‎One would find it hard to dismiss such a conclusion, authored by a former High ‎Court justice, and the former legal advisor to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. ‎Read more.

Legal expert: If Israel isn't occupying West Bank, it must give up land held by IDF
Legal experts respond to report published by Levy Committee on illegal outposts regarding West Bank construction; Talia Sasson: 'Israel in a dangerous position.'

By Tomer Zarchin, July 9, 2012

Prof. David Kretzmer, an expert on international law, also commented on the findings of the Levy committee, appointed to investigate the legality of building outposts in the West Bank. "If Israel is not an occupying force, it must immediately relinquish ownership of all private lands seized over the years for military use, taken with authority as the occupying force in an occupied territory, and restore the lands to previous owners," said Kretzmer. Read more.

While Israeli settlers celebrate Levy report, Netanyahu will have to deal with semantics of occupation
Report represents major accomplishment of settler community within the Likud; message coming from top is report will inspire certain changes, but won't be fully adopted.

By Chaim Levinson, July 9, 2012

The settler community and its backers celebrated Monday what many called “a holiday for settlement” in response to the publication of the Levy Committee report, which came down strongly in support of the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. Read more.

Judiciary panel appointed by Netanyahu concludes: There is no occupation

By Noam Sheizaf, Monday, July 9, 2012

A panel formed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded that Israel is entitled to settle the West Bank with Jews. The committee, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, claims that Israel’s control over the West Bank cannot be seen as “occupation” since no country has recognized sovereignty over the territory. Therefore, the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prevents the transfer of a civilian population by an occupying force into the occupied territory, does not apply to the West Bank. Justice Levy recommends that the Israeli government end the temporary status of the settlements and register the settlers’ control over the territory. Read more.

Israel Navy demands NIS 3 billion for protection of gas rigs
Under navy's plan, four warships and hundreds of soldiers would be mobilized to protect Mediterranean natural gas platforms.

By Gili Cohen, July 9, 2012

Israel's defense establishment is demanding a one-time budget increase of nearly NIS 3 billion to cover its plan to protect the country's natural gas platforms, located in the Mediterranean Sea. Read more.

BDS victory: TIAA-CREF drops Caterpillar from social choice funds

By Adam Horowitz, June 21, 2012

The We Divest Campaign sent out the following press release:

June 21, 2012- Pension fund giant TIAA-CREF has removed Caterpillar, Inc. from its Social Choice Funds portfolio. As of May 1, 2012, financial data posted on TIAA-CREF’s website valued Social Choice Funds shares in Caterpillar at $72,943,861. Today it is zero. Read more.

Another Palestinian political prisoner near death as the ‘battle of the stomachs’ rages

By Ira Glunts, June 21, 2012

Where is the mass Palestinian non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation? That's what those so-smug liberal journalists like Friedman and Kristof ask. However, when it comes they do not see it, if they do see it, they do not write about it. Maybe it is not exactly the protest they envisioned.
Read more.

Pro-Israel activists break new ground — an anti-Arab hate video

By M.J. Rosenberg, June 21, 2012

This video has to be seen to be believed. Although it has long been known that AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee and other pro-Netanyahu groups have ties to groups promoting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate, this video represents a new low. See it here.

It’s not just TIAA-CREF — leading Wall Street firm drops Caterpillar from ‘Socially Responsible’ investment index

By Adam Horowitz and Phil Weiss , June 21, 2012

More major news on the Caterpillar divestment front. One of Wall Street's leading investment advisers has stripped Caterpillar from its recommended list of "socially-responsible" companies-- apparently because of Caterpillar's service to the Israeli occupation. Read more.

Battle of the Empty Stomachs wages on: Akram Rikhawi’s health continues to deteriorate as Mahmoud Sarsak’s hunger strike successfully concludes

Joint Press Release, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

Ramallah-Jaffa, 20 June 2012—Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) reiterate their grave concern for Akram Rikhawi, who continues to face an imminent threat to his life on his 70th day of hunger strike today. Addameer lawyer Mona Neddaf was able to visit him yesterday in Ramleh prison medical clinic, though independent doctors from PHR-Israel are still being denied regular access to him since last visiting on 6 June.
Read more.

Israel in Peril

By David Shulman, June 7, 2012

On April 15 of this year I was returning to Israel on an Alitalia flight from Rome. About forty minutes before landing in Tel Aviv, the captain informed us that Israel had announced extraordinary security measures, constricting its air space in response to an unusual threat, and that from that moment on—we were still high above the Mediterranean—until we would be allowed to leave the terminal, all photography was strictly forbidden; beyond that, we were to follow the instructions of Israeli security personnel on the ground. Read more.

House Votes Tomorrow On AIPAC's "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" Resolution

By M. J. Rosenberg, May 14, 2012

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on a resolution designed to tie the president's hands on Iran policy. The legislation, which is coming up under an expedited House procedure, was the centerpiece of AIPAC's recent conference. In fact, 13,000 AIPAC delegates were dispatched to Capitol Hill, on the last day of the conference, with instructions to tell the senators and representatives whom they met that supporting this resolution was #1 on AIPAC's election year agenda. Read more.

Palestinians march in annual mourning ritual

Mohammed Daraghmeh, May 14, 2012

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Palestinians on Tuesday marked their mass displacement that followed Israel's creation with a blend of sadness and hope, stopping in their tracks for a mournful siren but also flashing victory signs and carrying banners proclaiming their right of return. Read more.

Fatah prisoners held by Hamas on hunger strike

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, May 13, 2012

Sources say prisoners initiate hunger strike to protest their incarceration, show solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israel; Hamas denies Fatah claim that prisoners being held without trial. Read more.

Justice requires action to stop subjugation of Palestinians

By Desmond Tutu, May 1, 2012

A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel's long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws. Read more.

‘Israel’s gone way beyond apartheid’

By Frank Barat, April 26, 2012

Frank Barat caught up with Jeff Halper, long-time Israeli peace activist, author and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), while he was on a European speaking tour which will take him from the UK to Poland. Here is what he had to say about the situation in Israel and Palestine…Read more.

Update on the Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strike

Ramallah, April 25, 2012

On 17 April 2012, Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons launched a mass hunger strike demanding an end to administrative detention, isolation and other punitive measures taken against Palestinian prisoners including the denial of family visits and access to university education. Read more.

OPt: Fighting the scourge of open sewers in Gaza

On 6 December 2011, two children drowned in a sewage cesspool in the Qatatwa neighbourhood of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Wesam Abu Sahlouh, 4, and his sister Malek, 2, lived in a small refugee house nearby the cesspool. They managed to crawl through a hole in the fence surrounding the cesspool while playing outside. Their bodies were found by a relative several hours later. Read more.

It's official. There is a Muslim exemption to the First Amendment.

By Carol Rose, April 12, 2012

Tarek Mehanna is no David Stone.

David Stone and members of his Hutaree anti-government militia amassed a huge arsenal of weapons, including the ingredients for explosives, and allegedly plotted to kill a police officer and bomb his funeral. A federal judge in Michigan said they were just venting and exercising their First Amendment rights. Read more.

IDF admits barring Palestinians' access to own fields
Admission was made in the state's response to a High Court petition filed last year by Beit Furik residents.

By Chaim Levinson, April 11, 2012

The state has confirmed that, acting without a court order, the army has barred Palestinian villagers from freely accessing their farmland for two years. The admission was made in the state's response to a High Court petition filed last year by Beit Furik residents. Read more.

Israel must understand it cannot be like America
For the sake of hegemony, Israel is mortgaging the well-being of its children and the lives of its grandchildren, together with the well-being and lives of children and grandchildren throughout the region.

By Amira Hass, April 11, 2012

The labyrinth of interchanges and roads on the way to Jerusalem tells of planners, ministers, mayors and contractors who "think America." We have gotten used to dimensions that dwarf anything that is not asphalt - people and trees, for example. We have gotten used to "transportation solutions" that gobble up nature. Moreover it's as if, without meaning to, these so-called solutions are tearing apart the existing social fabric. Read more.

Omissions, half-truths, lies: Ambassador Oren in Foreign Policy
In a piece recently published, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren rejected claims regarding anti-democratic trends in his country, and compared the legal status of Palestinians in the West Bank to that of American citizens in Washington DC and the U.S. territories. A response.

By Noam Sheizaf, Tuesday, April 10 2012

When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed Professor Michael Oren – a historian and researcher at the conservative Shalem institute, author of a popular book on the 1967 war – as his ambassador to Washington, he was probably hoping to capitalize on the latter’s name-recognition and credibility, especially with the political establishment and the Jewish elites. Read more.

Tolerance of Whom?
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is planning to build a Museum of Tolerance on the Muslim Mamilla cemetery. This project is a grotesque attempt to erase the well-established history of a continuous Muslim presence in the city that dates back over a millennium.

By Rashid Khalidi, Apr 10, 2012

For over six centuries, many of my ancestors have been buried in an historic cemetery that holds the remains of some of the most prominent public figures and military leaders ever to live inside the Holy City of Jerusalem. Read more.

Misreading Arab public opinion on Iran's nuclear program

By Nadim N. Rouhana Monday, April 9, 2012

In a recent interview with the BBC, Israel's deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor, who is also the country's Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, said that the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons "...sends shivers of fear to all Arab countries." The assumption behind this statement is that "Arab states" see in Iran's nuclear program a threat to their national security. This might lead one to believe that Arab governments and publics would support, or at least not oppose, military measures against Iran. Read more.

Israeli forces attempt to arrest 2-year-old Palestinian child

Mo’men Shtayeh probably owns a John Cena shirt, the WWE wrestler who the Palestinian kids hero worship, their shrill voices echoing in neighborhood streets of Cena’s catchphrase, “You can’t see me!” accompanied with waving a hand in front of their faces. Read more.

Nobel Laureate Under Fire
Grass Says Campaign Against Him 'Injurious'

April 5, 2012

German Nobel laureate Günter Grass has taken to the airwaves to address the raging controversy surrounding his new poem, which is sharply critical of Israel. Yet the debate continues to broaden, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joining the fray on Thursday.

One day after the tempest created in Germany by the publication of a poem critical of Israel, Günter Grass on Thursday defended himself against his critics. The Nobel Prize in literature recipient said he feels he has been misunderstood by critics who are conducting a campaign against him. "The overall tenor is to not engage in the content of the poem, but instead to wage a campaign against me and to claim that my reputation is damaged forever," Grass said in an interview with a German public broadcaster on Thursday. Read more.

The poem, unoficially translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi:

It's about time somebody came out and said it

Why have I kept silent far too long, why not just state the obvious:
it is clear that the endgame has been played out in their war plans:
those of us who may survive are merely footnotes.

The alleged right to strike first could wipe out the Iranian people--
under the yoke of a loudmouthed "hero," herded into "spontaneous" celebrations--
just because someone suspects a nucear bomb is being built in their territory.

But why do I forbid myself to mention
the name of that other land in which there has been
a growing nuclear arsenal for years--
although it has been kept secret and thus unmonitored,
because no inspection is allowed?

I feel the weight of the lie
to which my silence has subjected itself:
the allpervasive silence concerning this state of affairs
an unspoken law that threatens punishment
as soon as it is transgressed;
the verdict of Antisemitism is all too frequent.

Now however since my country,
which has been called to account time and time again
to answer for its own particular and incomparable crimes,
is to deliver-- -- purely as a business deal, although
glibly passed off as "reparations"--
yet another submarine to Israel,
designed to guide warheads of mass destruction
where there is no proof of the existence
of even a single nuclear weapon,
but since fear is being taken as fact,
I'm going to say what has to be said.

Why was I silent for so long?
Because I felt that my background,
which will never be free from stain,
forbade me to impose too great a burden upon Israel--
to which I am bound and wish to remain so--
by openly prclaiming the truth.

Why am I only speaking out now,
in my old age and with my last drops of ink?
Israel's nuclear arsenal endangers world peace-- already so fragile .
Because somebody has to say it. Tomorrow may be too late.
And also because we Germans--already burdened with our history--
by delivering such goods could become partners in a crime
that was predictable, in which our complicity coulsd not be expunged
by any of the usual excuses.

Granted: I'm breaking my silence
because I am sick of the hypocrisy of the West,
and it is greatly to be hoped that others will also free their tongues
and demand that the one responsible for this foreseeable danger
renounce violence and also insist that an unhindered and permanent
inspection of Israeli nuclear arsenals and Iranian nuclear facilities
by an international commission be agreed upon by both countries.

Only thus can both Israelis and Palestinians
and all the other people living side by side in enmity
in this region occupied by madness--
not to mention the rest of us--be helped.

Norman Finkelstein bids farewell to Israel bashing
'It's become too easy,' says Norman Finkelstein, talking about his new and surprisingly optimistic book.

By Natasha Mozgovaya, April 5, 2012

In June, Norman Finkelstein will mark 30 years of criticizing Israel. He remembers the exact day - the beginning of the Lebanon war, which ended his indifference to the Middle East's troubles. He'll have a new book coming out - "Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End" - that focuses on Jewish public figures who represent, in his view, the narrative of beautiful Israel that's coming to an end. He is sure to make a lot of people mad again. Read more.

Dear Abu Mazen: End This Farce
An open letter to the Palestinian leader.

BY YOSSI BEILIN, APRIL 4, 2012

To:
Mahmoud Abbas
President, Palestinian Authority
Muqata, Ramallah

I admit that I never believed the moment would come when I would have to write these words. I am doing so because U.S. President Barack Obama has convinced you not to announce, at this point in time, the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority's institutions and the "return of the keys" of authority for the Palestinian territories to Israel. Because there have never been serious negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the last three years, and because you did not want to perpetuate the myth that a meaningful dialogue existed, you have been sorely tempted to declare the death of the "peace process" -- but the American president urged you to maintain the status quo. It is a mistake to agree to Obama's request, and you can rectify this. Read more.

The man who invented the PA calls for it to be dismantled
Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, calls on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to put an end to the ‘fig leaf’ that is the Palestinian Authority.

By Noam Sheizaf, April 4 2012|

This is as big as an op-ed gets: Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of the Oslo process, has published a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urging him to shut down the Palestinian Authority and let Prime Minister Netanyahu bear direct responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli control. Read more.

Worldwide appeal by concerned Jewish men and women

For an Israel, which upholds and respects human rights

April 4th, 2012
3 years after its start the appeal has been submitted
with 1480 signatures from 32 countries to the Embassy of Israel in Berne ..
Read more.

SFO Jewish Library (you read that right– library) cancels panel on Jewish activism because participant supports boycott

By Rae Abileah , April 1, 2012

I was scheduled to be a panelist on an event in May at the Jewish Library in San Francisco-- "Reclaiming Jewish Activism." After a library funder, the Bureau of Jewish Education, found out I was on the panel, the news traveled up to the Jewish Federation which put pressure on the Library to cancel the event because I was too controversial--apparently because of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco guidelines re BDS. Read more.

Retail chain in Norway halts Ahava sales

April 1, 2012

(JTA) -- A major retail chain in Norway halted the sale of all "products originating from settlements in occupied territories," including Ahava cosmetics.

The Norwegian pharmaceutical chain VITA, which has 160 stores throughout Norway, made the announcement last Friday.

VITA has been the main retailer of Ahava products in Norway, according to the Norwegian People’s Aid and the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees in a statement on the BDS movement website, adding "this decision will be a serious blow to the sales of Ahava products in Norway."

The VITA decision comes after a period of active lobbying from the Norwegian People’s Aid and the Norwegian employees' union.

"The principled decision by VITA not to buy products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank is based on a position of not wanting to contribute to violations of international law," the groups' statement said.

The flagship London branch of Ahava cosmetics closed last September, citing biweekly demonstrations that hurt its profits. Source.

Marwan Barghouti placed in solitary confinement in Israel jail after call for popular uprising
Imprisoned Fatah commander called on Palestinians to sever economic and security coordination with Israel, urged economic and diplomatic boycott.

By Jack Khoury and Avi Issacharoff, April 1, 2012

Imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti who last week called on Palestinians to commence a popular uprising against Israel, has been placed in solitary confinement in Hadarim prison, and denied his rights to see visitors.
Read more.

Press Statement – Israeli Army Invades and Closes University Community Media Center

For the second time in two months, the Israeli authorities have invaded, searched and prevented the functioning of Al-Quds University’s Institute of Modern Media. This time, they prevented skype contact for an event taking place simultaneously in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Read more.

Harvard and UCLA Will Assist in Setting Up New University in Southern Israel

April 1, 2012

Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles have pledged to assist in plans to establish a new university in a Bedouin region of southern Israel, according to Ynetnews, a Web site of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The new campus, in the City of Rahat, will operate as a branch of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, has championed expanding access to higher education in the region. He told the newspaper that he had met with senior officials at Harvard, who promised to assist with academic partnerships. The president of UCLA also pledged that institution’s help, the newspaper reported. Source.

Michael Sfard: Is Israel on the high road to fascism?
Will the anti-democratic legislation underway in Israel soon make progressive advocacy redundant? Is it an exaggeration to say Israel is on the high road to fascism? And what can the Left do to reverse the process? An interview with Israel’s pre-eminent human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard.

By Dimi Reider, March 31, 2012

It’s no longer a secret to anyone Israel is facing a rising tide of anti-democratic legislation – from new restrictions on free speech to the chipping away at the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary. Earlier this month I took a broad look at these trends in a piece published two weeks back on the New York Review of Books website, titled “The Knesset vs Democracy.” Because the premise was so broad, only a handful of quotes from the interviews conducted for the piece made it into the final text, which is a pity, as my interviewees had stark and startling analysis to offer. With the NYRB’s kind permission I’ll be publishing the full transcripts here over the coming weeks, beginning with this interview with Michael Sfard – probably Israel’s most prominent human rights lawyer. Read more.

Dismay at Globe invitation to Israeli theatre

March 29,2012

We notice with dismay and regret that Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London has invited Israel's National Theatre, Habima, to perform The Merchant of Venice in its Globe to Globe festival this coming May. The general manager of Habima has declared the invitation "an honourable accomplishment for the State of Israel". But Habima has a shameful record of involvement with illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory. Last year, two large Israeli settlements established "halls of culture" and asked Israeli theatre groups to perform there. A number of Israeli theatre professionals – actors, stage directors, playwrights – declared they would not take part. Read more.

Israel's plan to attack Iran put on hold until next year at the earliest
Damning U.S. war simulation forces Ehud Barak to reconsider attack plans; Americans pledge more money for Iron Dome antimissile system.

By Amir Oren, March 29, 2012

At 8:58 P.M. on Tuesday, Israel's 2012 war against Iran came to a quiet end. The capricious plans for a huge aerial attack were returned to the deep recesses of safes and hearts. The war may not have been canceled but it has certainly been postponed. For a while, at least, we can sound the all clear: It won't happen this year. Until further notice, Israel Air Force Flight 007 will not be taking off. Read more.

Ignoring Israel's complete domination
Israel's position in its periodic report to the donor-coordination group for the Palestinian Authority reminds one of the boy who kills his parents and then demands an orphan's pension.

By Amira Hass, March 29, 2012

Israel's position in its periodic report to the donor-coordination group for the Palestinian Authority reminds one of the boy who kills his parents and then demands an orphan's pension. Israel describes the failings of the Palestinian economy as if the colonialist occupation is not their primary cause. Read more.

Jerusalem Is at the Heart of the Palestinian Cause

March 29, 2012

Every year on March 30th Palestinians around the world celebrate Land Day, which commemorates a general strike and marches in 1976 against Israeli land appropriation, an event that was a pivotal event in bringing about Palestinian national unity. This year Palestinians throughout the Middle East and in the Diaspora will commemorate Land Day by calling attention to the dangers facing Jerusalem. Read more.

Occupied Lives: Dying while waiting for medical supplies

March 28, 2012

Akram Mones Abu Sefan, 35, lives in Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip with his wife Mervat, 26, and his two young sons: Abed, 5, and Ahmad, 3. He is a specialist drawing teacher in the UNRWA Boys Preparatory School in Bureij refugee camp. In 2009, after undertaking a series of medical tests in Egypt, Akram was diagnosed with chronic myelocytic leukaemia, a severe cancer of the blood cells. Read more.

Four Arab Worlds Meet in Baghdad this Week

By Rami G. Khouri, 28 Mar 2012

DUBAI -- I have been following the deliberations of Arab summit meetings for my entire adult life, and still remain dubious about the value of such gatherings. The summit taking place this week in Baghdad seems no different -- but the Arab world itself is very different. The gathering reminds us that historic transformations are taking place across the region -- while some countries remain static. Read more.

Jailed Fatah leader calls to end ties with Israel

By Noah Browning, March 28, 2012

RAMALLAH (Reuters) -- From his cell in an Israeli prison, one of the most revered figures in Palestinian politics called on Monday for a new wave of civil resistance in the decades-long quest for statehood, and for severing all ties with Israel. Read more.

Why I’m backing the boycott of Israel

By Carol Wald, March 27, 2012

Last month, Glenn Beck addressed a crowd of Israeli-settler supporters in Crown Heights, and there he named what he perceived to be some of the greatest threats to Israel: the Obama administration, George Soros and the Park Slope Food Coop. Read more.

Follow this piece in the NYTimes.

This piece in The Nation.

'Next escalation in Gaza will be more violent'

By Yaakov Lappin, March 27, 2012

Aharonovitch says the solution to Hamas rocket fire is "to be more aggressive," addresses plans for "aerial flotilla."

The next confrontation between Israel and Palestinian terror organizations in Gaza will be “more violent” than previous rounds, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch warned on Tuesday. Read more.

Israel cuts contact with UN rights council, to protest settlements probe
Israel's Foreign Ministry orders envoy to Geneva to ignore all phone calls from rights council commissioner; 'The council sparked this process', says a senior Israeli official.

By Barak Ravid, March 26, 2012

Israel decided Monday to sever all contact with the United Nations human rights council and with its chief commissioner Navi Pillay, after the international body decided to establish an international investigative committee on the West Bank settlements. Read more.

Israel mulls ways to penalize PA in wake of UN human rights probe
Top ministers Lieberman, Ya'alon and Steinitz reportedly support freezing the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority.

By Barak Ravid, March 25, 2012

Israel is considering sanctions against the Palestinian Authority after the United Nations' Human Rights Council decided to establish an international investigative committee on the West Bank settlements. Read more.

Want to promote Israel in the U.K.? Recognize 1967 borders
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority cancels ad by Israel’s tourism ministry in London after it promoted a book on northern Israel without properly demarcating the Golan Heights as a disputed area.

By Barak Ravid, March 23, 2012

Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) cancelled an advertisement by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism in London which attempted to promote a new book on northern Israel. The reason for the cancellation of the ad, which was first published in British newspapers in November 2011, was the fact that the map that was attached to it did not properly demarcate the 1967 borders in the Golan Heights and the West Bank. Read more.

Whoever gives the authorization shall be responsible for the consequences

March 20, 2012

The settlers announce their intention to take over more Palestinians houses at the Sheikh Jarrah and Beit Hanina neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Gush Shalom: They can only proceed if the police facilitates the expulsion of the inhabitants from their homes. Read more.

Israel has 101 different types of permits governing Palestinian movement
Over the decades permit regimen grows into vast, triple-digit bureaucracy.

By Chaim Levinson

Israel's Civil Administration issues 101 different types of permits to govern the movement of Palestinians, whether within the West Bank, between the West Bank and Israel or beyond the borders of the state, according to an agency document of which Haaretz obtained a copy.

The most common permits are those allowing Palestinians to work in Israel, or in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Over the decades, however, the permit regimen has grown into a vast, triple-digit bureaucracy. Read more.

Four young Israelis refuse army draft in new refusenik wave

By Haggai Matar, Thursday, March 22, 2012

In the coming weeks, three young Israelis are expected to go to prison for their refusal to enlist in the Israeli army, and a forth conscientious objector received an exemption from service yesterday. Together they form the first group of refuseniks in Israel in the past three years. These are their stories. Read more.

UN body "appalled" by Israel’s racial segregation policies

By Adri Nieuwhof and Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, 16 March 2012

Racial prejudice can be found in almost every facet of Israeli life, finds a new report.

Israel is criticized for violating the right to equality in a new report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

An advance version of the CERD report indicates that racial prejudice can be found in almost every facet of Israeli life (“Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,” 9 March 2012 [PDF]). Read more.

The storm over Bamba and apathy concerning Gaza
In an alert civil society - you keep things clean and throw the Bamba in the garbage bin. However on the other side of the colorful bag of snacks lurks a destructive apathy.

By Gideon Levy, March 15, 2012

For four consecutive days and nights, millions of citizens of this country once again lived under conditions of fear and terror. The innovation was that, this time, no one tried to whitewash things. The mass terror was to be expected and it stemmed directly from an Israeli act of violence. Nevertheless, no one thought of expressing opposition. Better not to even ask whether indeed a terror attack had been foiled; whether the secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees was one of those rare people in human history for whom there is no replacement; or whether indeed his assassination was beneficial or legal. Read more.

Sorry, gentlemen, but you’re no Roosevelt and Churchill
Britain and America are betraying the values both countries fought for in the past.

By Peter Oborne, Mar 14, 2012

David Cameron, for all this week’s fuss, is not the first prime minister to fly on Air Force One. Back in 1994, John Major accompanied Bill Clinton on a trip from Pittsburgh to Washington DC. (I am aware of this because I was one of a small group of reporters who joined the flight). Read more.

Palestinians prepare to lose the solar panels that provide a lifeline
Israel is planning to demolish 'illegal' solar panels that are the only source of electricity for Palestinians in West Bank villages

By Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv, Wednesday 14 March 2012

Two large solar panels jut out of the barren landscape near Imneizil in the Hebron hills. The hi-tech structures sit incongruously alongside the tents and rough stone buildings of the Palestinian village, but they are fundamental to life here: they provide electricity. Read more.

Israel's Latest Ritual Slaughter

By Stephen Lendman, March 14, 2012

"Information Clearing House" ---Four days of Israeli terror bombing left at least 25 Palestinians dead and dozens injured, some seriously. Human rights groups expressed outrage. So did Arab League states, Iran, Turkey, and Malaysia.

Israel's UN envoy Ron Prosor wants the Security Council to condemn Palestinian victims. Like Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, his audacity gives chutzpah new meaning.

On March 12, Egypt's lower parliamentary house unanimously approved a text declaring Israel Egypt's number one enemy. It called for expelling its ambassador, halting gas exports at below market prices, and reevaluating its 1978 peace treaty. It followed the 1978 Camp David Accords. Read more.

Ceasefire Reached After Israeli Air Strikes Killed 26 Palestinians in Gaza

J’accuse: Israeli youth headed to prison for refusing the draft

By Haggai Matar, Monday, March 12, 2012

Noam Gur was just another teenage girl from the northern town of Nahariya. She grew up in a family that was not politically involved, went to the same school as everyone else, and still doesn’t understand why she’s the only one who sees what her peers are missing. In a month’s time she will refuse to enlist in the Israeli army because of the occupation, and will most likely be imprisoned. An interview. Read more.

Israel's bogus case for bombing Gaza obscures political motives

By Max Blumenthal, March 12, 2012

In the last two days, Israeli forces have killed at least 15 residents of the Gaza Strip and wounded over 30. Among the dead are two young boys (see here and here), while the wounded included a reporter from the Ma'an News Agency and his pregnant wife. Militant factions in Gaza have responded to the Israeli assault by launching several homemade rockets at Southern Israel, leaving two injured and no one dead. Read more.

Israel and Iran: What '60 Minutes' Didn't Tell You

By J.J. Goldberg, March 12, 2012

Leslie Stahl’s “60 Minutes” interview Sunday night with former Mossad chief Meir Dagan (transcript) gave important exposure to his views on the folly of attacking Iran. However, she got two things very wrong, both of which weakened the strength of his case against a military strike. The bottom line is, she let you think Dagan is a lone voice. In fact, it’s Bibi Netanyahu who’s nearly alone on this. The trouble is, Bibi’s the one who gets to make the decision. That’s why Dagan and nearly every other military or intelligence chief is speaking out against him: They’re scared of him. Read more.

Why Zion Square?

By Peter Beinart, Mar 12, 2012

Why Zion Square? Because every day, official Jewish discourse about Israel grows more disconnected from reality, and that disconnect endangers Palestinian dignity, American security and the Jewish future. Read more.

The people demand some blood
Whoever decided on the assassination knew he was cancelling the south's topping off a long Purim. Those in the south had apparently celebrated enough.

By Yitzhak Laor, March 12, 2012

Whoever decided to kill the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees didn't do so to prevent a terror attack. The attack was foiled, thanks to the targeted killing, because the army lies only during its internal power struggles; and when its comes to anything related to war, it returns to the motherly embrace of public opinion: Its intentions are pure. That's its job during war, which only it can declare - and in wartime, after all, we fall in love with the army and with ourselves. Read more.

Israel's Red Riding Hood and the Arab wolf
The prime minister is certainly correct that Israel has the right to defend itself. But don't we have the right to know at long last which Israeli state he is referring to?

By Akiva Eldar, March 13, 2012

During a quiz show on Channel 2 television last week, a contestant was asked which of three towns - Kalansua, Tul Karm or Jenin - was located within the Green Line. The contestant, a nurse with an M.A., hesitated for quite a while and then said she thought the answer was Tul Karm. In order to verify her answer, she requested the assistance of 71 fellow contestants. Seventeen of them - almost one in four - responded that either Tul Karm or Jenin was an Israeli town. Read more.

On display in Gaza: The true Israeli narrative
Islamic Jihad or Fatah, terrorists or guerillas, post-Oslo or pre-Oslo, the Palestinians have no right to resist our control, which we impose by full right.

By Larry Derfner, March 12 2012

Here we are again, fighting for our survival, fighting in self-defense, killing Islamic Jihad terrorists who deliberately fire rockets at innocent Israeli civilians, and all this after we got out of there completely, and after all the peace offers we made since Oslo that they rejected. You see? We have no choice. Read more.

Israel’s Walls and Wars Strategy Begins to Fail

By Rami G. Khouri, 12 Mar 2012

BEIRUT -- The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States received the lion’s share of publicity about Israel’s position in the Middle East and the world last week, but the real story about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict rests elsewhere. The great tale that goes largely unrecognized reflects that combination of bubbling forces around the world -- grassroots, professional, political -- that achieve two important things: to assert that the world will not forever acquiesce in the systematic denial of the national rights of the Palestinian people, and to apply new forms of pressure on Israel to end its systematic oppression of Palestinians that more and more is routinely compared to Apartheid South Africa. Read more.

Latinos, Israel and Palestine: Understanding Anti-Semitism
By Aurora Levins Morales, March 11, 2012
National Institute for Latino Policy

I am a Puerto Rican Jew, born of Ukrainian Jews fleeing war and repression to become sweatshop organizers in 1910s New York, and landed gentry from Naranjito, turned working class migrants in 1930s Harlem and the Bronx, landing in the same garment shops a generation later. I'm also a lifelong activist historian who embraces complexity and has spent decades building alliances between people who misunderstand each other.

It is true that there are specific challenges in the relations between Latin@s (those who are not Jewish) and Jews (the ones who aren't Latin@.) It's true that these challenges are deeply rooted in the anti-Semitism of the Catholic hierarchy, but the belief system that burned Jews at the stake, accused us of sacrificing Christian babies, and held us responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, long predates the State of Israel. And long before that state was founded out of the ashes of genocide and at the expense of a colonized Arab people, Jews were the shock absorbers of Europe's class societies, "Middle Agents" drafted into being the local representatives of distant and definitely Christian ruling classes who alternately exploited and persecuted them while squeezing the life blood out of Europe's peasants and workers.

People are often confused by anti-Semitism They see many US Jews accumulating wealth, moving up, gaining positions of influence, and they say, "What oppression?" Anti-Semitism doesn't work the way racism does. Racism tries to create permanently exploitable groups of workers, people kept in line through discrimination and violence, kept poor and dependent on low wage jobs.

The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top. Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won't make it to the nobleman's palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East.

The people I come from were small scale farmers and garment workers. Like them, the vast majority of European Jews were in no position to wield any sort of economic power, but in a world where the economic lives of Jews were strictly regulated (my great grandfather had to pay bribes to work at a hardware store in a town where Jews were forbidden) the role of agent to the rulers was one of the few options offered, often under duress.

Just as Jews in Europe collaborated in the collection of outrageous taxes from the peasantry, Jews in the United States have collaborated in the exploitation of urban people of color, trading an illusion of safety for the powerful alliances we could have built, and often becoming one of the local faces of oppression: landlords, pawnbrokers, public school teachers and administrators, doctors, and the social workers of the welfare machine, implementing policies that serve others, and collecting rents for the shareholders of the Bank of America. Jews are by no means the majority in any of these roles, but it's been a widespread defensive strategy, in response to the instability of Jewish life, to seek upward mobility not only for its own sake, but as a safety net against persecution.

This is a direct result of the deep insecurity that cyclical oppression creates: no amount of privilege feels like safety, and historically, it hasn't been. The knowledge of what happened to the wealthy, assimilated Jews of Berlin haunts the Jews of Great Neck, who compromise potential alliances for the sake of guarantees that have never worked before, but keep seeming like they should. It's a form of opportunism, the willingness to take up whatever tools are at hand, including the master's tools.

And Latinos have done the same thing, been willing to mobilize the centuries old weaponry of Catholic Jew-bashing in the fight for economic and social justice, mobilize traditional slanders about Jewish greed, or conspiracy theories like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, written by Czarist secret police, that worked so well to keep old world peasants throwing stones at Jews instead of bringing down the aristocracy, been willing to buy the idea that the problem with the slumlord is that he's a Jew, and not that he's a slumlord.

This system of interlocking opportunisms has diverted attention from the real power structure of this country, which is solidly white and Protestant, and kept us from forming alliances powerful and broad enough to unite the 99%. It saps energy from the work of ending racism and economic injustice, and eliminating the anti-Semitism that keeps Jews scared enough to keep signing up to be middle agents.

In the last line of his article, Rubén Navarrete says of the Israelis, "given all that they've endured, they should know better." Trauma doesn't turn make people into better human beings. Most of the time, trauma just makes people terrified and easier to manipulate. It makes starving Irish tenants fleeing a devastating famine willing to own slaves or homestead Native American land or police the ghettos they used to live in. It makes the formerly kidnapped and enslaved willing to set up shop in Liberia and hold their African kin in contempt. It makes the survivors of Hitler's Final Solution be willing to become harsh colonial masters, agents of US oil greed and militarism, to bulldoze the villages of Palestinians to make Jewish settlements, torture and kill those who resist, and still insist they are the victims here. People who have faced destruction don't necessarily know better.

The Jewish right in the United States has a near monopoly on public discourse about Israel, and is amazingly effective at silencing dissent. Anyone, Jew or not, who criticizes Israeli policies toward the Palestinians is accused of wanting to destroy the Jewish people. I myself appear on the Masada 2000 list of Self-Hating, Israel Threatening Jews, (twice, because they don't get it about our double last names.) AIPAC and their ilk are experts at mobilizing intense pressure on funders and sponsors of lectures, films or social justice programs that expose Israel's commitment to crushing Palestinian sovereignty, with all the brutal details that that entails. They believe that the survival of all Jews depends on a heavily militarized, Jewish state in which Palestinians must be deprived of their rights in order to secure the rights of Jews. They insist that to say anything negative about Israel is inherently anti-Semitic, makes the critics retroactive Nazi collaborators. (Yes, I've received emails accusing me of complicity in the deaths of Polish Jewish children who died before I was born!) So when U.S. Latin@s are described as hostile to Israel, this aggressive defensiveness is part of what's in play.

The thing is, that while they're wrong, they're not always completely wrong. Criticism of Israel does take on a special tone of hatred and contempt that draws on the same poisoned well as attacking Jewish slumlords as Jews, or singling out the Jewishness of one group of developers out to build an exclusive luxury resort on Puerto Rico's coast, while never mentioning the religion of the many Christian developers.

Israel is a colonial country with a strong right wing nationalist ideology that does what such regimes do, and it's not any better or worse than other colonial regimes with right wing nationalist ideologies. Yes, it's critical that those who love justice stand up for the human rights and sovereignty of Palestinians and their Jewish Israeli allies, but there is no contradiction between doing so and also standing up for Israeli Jews, jammed into the deadliest middle agent role in our history. Israel needs to be pressured toward integrity, economic and political justice, and respect for human rights, in exactly the same way that the Congo needs to be pressured, that tortured country where millions have died in wars over the precious metal that makes our cell phones work, and the legacy of Belgian colonial rule, known for its extreme brutality, is reenacted every day between Congolese people.

And while it's true that opportunism has been a widespread strategy of both Jews and Latinos, the opportunism that leads us to compromise our integrity by agreeing to the mistreatment of others, both my peoples have long traditions of a very different strategy. Jews have been disproportionately present in movements for social justice wherever we have landed, and significant numbers of U.S. Jews have understood from the start that the best guarantee of our own safety is to form strong alliances with other oppressed people, to fight together, to get each other's backs.

My great-grandparents were garment trade organizers. My grandfather was a radical lawyer who worked on the Scottsboro case. My father, married to a Puerto Rican activist woman, was a rural organizer in Puerto Rico in the 1950s and a leading figure of the independence movement in the 1960s, until we left the island. And my mother, raised among Jewish immigrants in New York who were her best allies against racism, never tolerated anti-Semitism from anyone.

We can't allow support for Jews to be defined as support for Israeli policies. Support for Jews is support for Jewish integrity, for deeply held values of justice and compassion, support for U.S. and Israeli peace, for human rights organizations like the Middle East Children's Alliance, and Jewish Voice for Peace. Many US Jews are deeply concerned about Israel's violent seizure of Palestinian land, and violent suppression of dissent, but don't speak out because they are afraid, not only of attack from the Jewish right, but also of the reality of anti-Semitism, which always flares in times of economic crisis. To many, it still seems that Israel is the one safe haven when things get bad again. We have to see to it that it isn't true.

As long as right wing Jews are the strongest voice against anti-Semitism, they can continue to define criticism of Israeli colonialism and support for Palestinian rights as Jew-hating, intimidating and confusing potential supporters of a just peace. As long as non-Jewish critics of Israeli colonialism allow anti-Semitism to creep into their critiques, U.S. Jews will hold back from joining them, just as people of color don't rush to join white-led organizations where racism isn't actively challenged.

One of the most effective ways for Latin@s to support the people of both Israel and Palestine is to understand the workings of anti-Semitism and take clear strong stands against it. The central justification for Israeli militarism and the subjugation of Palestinians is the belief that Jews are alone in the world, that no-one will fight for us, that the next time Jews are blamed and attacked, most of the world's people will stand by and watch. The more the Israeli right escalates, the more Palestinians are repressed, the less safe it actually is for Jews. When Latinos are willing to examine our history of anti-Semitism, to study the ways it's been used to manipulate and divide us, and root it out of our organizations, communities, and families, we help create the conditions for large numbers of U.S. Jews to stand up for the rights of Palestinians and a decolonized, plurinational, democratic Israel, to abandon the middle agent role and get the backs of other peoples, knowing that they also have ours.

Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican Jewish writer and historian. She is the author of three books, and her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in dozens of anthologies and been translated into seven languages. She can be contacted at aurora@historica.us or on her website at www.auroralevinsmorales.com.

Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian:

"The cycle began with the targeted assassination by Israel of a Palestinian militant who it says was planning an attack within Israel. Zuhair al-Qaissi, 49, the secretary general of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), was killed along with his son-in-law Mahmoud Hanini, 44, when the car in which they were travelling was hit by a missile. A civilian bystander was seriously injured." Read more.

Gaza rockets pummel Israel's south for third day; 200,000 students ordered to stay home
School called off in southern Israel after about 50 rockets fired over the weekend; 18 Palestinians killed in IAF strikes since Friday.

By Gili Cohen , Yanir Yagna and Avi Issacharoff, March 11, 2012

Residents of southern Israel suffered another day under siege on Sunday as Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired about 50 more rockets at the Negev.
Read more.

Op-Ed
Its court system provides little justice for Palestinians.

By George Bisharat, March 7, 2012

Palestinian baker and activist Khader Adnan captured headlines recently for a 66-day hunger strike that led him to the brink of death. His ordeal began in the dead of night on Dec. 17, 2011, when Israeli soldiers broke down the door of his West Bank home. Adnan was arrested before his terrified wife and daughters, and was reportedly abused verbally and physically upon detention and later in interrogation.

Netanyahu asked Panetta to approve sale of bunker-busting bombs,
U.S. official says
Top administration source says Obama instructed Defense Secretary to work with Defense Minister Barak, to give all due consideration to the request for purchasing GBU-28 bombs, advanced refueling aircraft.

By Barak Ravid, March 6, 2012

WASHINGTON - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested the United States approve the sale of advanced refueling aircraft as well as GBU-28 bunker-piercing bombs to Israel during a recent meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a top U.S. official said on Tuesday. Read more.

Israel, Iran and America
Auschwitz complex

March 6, 2012

DURING his meeting with Barack Obama on Monday, Bibi Netanyahu said Israel "must have the ability always to defend itself, by itself, against any threat."

"I believe that's why you appreciate, Mr. President, that Israel must reserve the right to defend itself," Netanyahu said. "After all, that's the very purpose of the Jewish state, to restore to the Jewish people control over our destiny. That's why my supreme responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains master of its fate."

News flash: Israel is not master of its fate. It's not terribly surprising that a country with less than 8m inhabitants is not master of its fate. Switzerland, Sweden, Serbia and Portugal are not masters of their fates. These days, many countries with populations of 100m or more can hardly be said to be masters of their fates. Britain and China aren't masters of their fates, and even the world's overwhelmingly largest economy, the United States, isn't really master of its fate. Read more.

Growing Support for Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa

By Anna Majavu, March 5, 2012

The first ever Palestinian-South African music collaboration between musicians and activists from both countries will be screened by video link between Gaza City and Soweto next Monday [12th March] as part of this week’s 8th international Israeli Apartheid Week. Read more.

AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent

By Chris Hedges, March 4, 2012
Chris Hedges gave this talk Saturday night in Washington, D.C., at the Occupy AIPAC protest, organized by CODEPINK Women for Peace and other peace, faith and solidarity groups.

The battle for justice in the Middle East is our battle. It is part of the vast, global battle against the 1 percent. It is about living rather than dying. It is about communicating rather than killing. It is about love rather than hate. It is part of the great battle against the corporate forces of death that reign over us—the fossil fuel industry, the weapons manufacturers, the security and surveillance state, the speculators on Wall Street, the oligarchic elites who assault our poor, our working men and women, our children, one in four of whom depend on food stamps to eat, the elites who are destroying our ecosystem with its trees, its air and its water and throwing into doubt our survival as a species. Read more.

One state for Palestinians and Israelis

By Ahmed Moor, March 2, 2012
Ahmed Moor, a contributor to al-Jazeera English, helped organize OneStateConference.org, taking place at Harvard University March 3-4.

For decades the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has eluded well-intentioned peacemakers. Diplomats have talked, shaken hands, snapped photos — and returned home from summits with strikingly little to show for their efforts. Read more.

Transcript of Obama’s AIPAC speech

Israeli forces raided AQU campus and prevented the University educational TV from Broadcasting

By Ziad Asali, February 29, 2012

......In the early hours of this morning, two fully armored vehicles carrying a dozen Israeli occupation soldiers broke into the campus of the Institute of Modern Media, a part of Al Quds University which houses the department of media studies and Al Quds Educational TV Station (AQTV), damaging and seizing equipment, including the television transmitter. The raid apparently included plain-clothes Shin Bet forces. Classes were suspended today as students demonstrated outside the campus, and the University attempted to assess the damage. Read more.

A united, democratic nation with equal rights for all

By Diana Buttu | Feb. 29, 2012

AS A FORMER legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, I spent more than six years working toward a “two-state’’ solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During that period, we held countless negotiation sessions, examined scores of proposals, met with hundreds of diplomats and even went house-to-house campaigning for the two-state solution. Today, we are no closer to achieving a two-state solution than we were 20 years ago when negotiations started. Since that time, the number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank has almost tripled to 600,000, with settlements spreading throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip increasingly isolated from the rest of Palestine. Read more.

David Grossman: Why? Who died?

By Sol Salbe on February 28, 2012

Last Friday Haaretz did something unusual: it placed an opinion piece on top of its front page. But it wasn't just an ordinary opinion piece, it was written by one of the country foremost novelists, David Grossman. The article, like Emile Zola's J'accuse, to which it has been compared, was a moral critique. Many who read it were very moved. But the moral missive never appeared in English (at least to my knowledge). The English Haaretz has always been somewhat reticent in presenting Israel to the world. Read more.

Female detainee on hunger strike moved to isolation

February 27, 2012

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- Female detainee Hana Shalabi has been moved to solitary confinement as a punishment for her hunger strike action, a lawyer from the Ministry of Detainees said Monday.

Shireen Iraqi said that Hasharon prison authorities have moved Shalabi into isolation. Her health is deterioting, Iraqi said, adding that Shalabi has not been medically examined since she went on strike. Read more.

Israel's fateful blunder

Middle East Monitor, February 26, 2012

There is something ominous about the current wave of attacks on Christian and Muslim religious sites in and around Jerusalem. The pro-Israel media asserts that these attacks are the handiwork of an extremist fringe. This is not the case. They are part of a determined policy carried out by, for and with the approval of the Israeli government, under army and police protection. Read more.

An Open Letter to The Presbyterian Church (USA)
from the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council

We write to you as members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council to encourage your efforts to initiate phased selective divestment from corporations which profit from or support Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. We applaud your initiative and want to communicate our support as Jewish leaders who also work for justice and peace for the people of Israel and Palestine. Read more.

Avodah Shifts Focus of Israel Trip
Bending to Protests, Service Groups Include Occupation

By Josh Nathan-Kazis, February 23, 2012, issue of March 02, 2012.

Bending to protests, two Jewish anti-poverty groups will include a visit to the West Bank and meetings with anti-occupation activists to an upcoming service trip to Israel. Read more.

An open letter to President Abbas
Read an open letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from a lawyer who advised the Palestinian negotiating team.

By John V. Whitbeck, Feb 22, 2012

Dear President Abbas,

There was visible and audible euphoria at the UN General Assembly in September when you announced Palestine's application for UN membership, at UNESCO's Paris headquarters in October when Palestine was admitted as a member state and at UNESCO again in December when the Palestinian flag was formally raised in your presence (and mine).

Since then, nothing... Read more.

'Burning Campus?' Yes and no, says now-softer group's new approach

By David A.M. Wilensky, February 21, 2012

An interview with the architect of the David Project's new direction
The David Project has long been known as one of the most aggressive, acrimonious pro-Israel voices on campus. But their new report, “A Burning Campus? Rethinking Israel Advocacy at America’s Universities and Colleges,” is starting to change that reputation. Full of new strategies for combating what they see as destructive efforts to delegitimize Israel on campus, they hope the report will form the basis for a new unifying strategy for all on-campus Israel advocacy organizations. At its core is a complete 180: the idea that vigorously attacking “anti-Israelism” on campus is counterproductive.

Enemies, a hate story
It is impossible to ignore what is happening to us: Palestinian children die in an accident, and many Israelis are happy about it - and are no longer even ashamed of it.

By Gideon Levy, Feb 19, 2012

The all-clear was sounded as soon as the news came that the school bus was Palestinian.

Only the most perceptive viewers of Thursday's accident - in which nine children and one adult were killed when their bus collided with a truck north of Jerusalem - could make the distinction. But something in the manner of the coverage intimated at it immediately. Read more.

Hamas and the New Mideast Puzzle

By Sam Bahour, Thursday, Feb 16, 2012

Hamas, the Palestinian “Islamic Resistance Movement,” is on the move.

Hamas is leaving Syria, where it has been based, making a pit stop in Jordan to mend affairs with King Abdullah II, declaring nonviolent resistance the preferred mode of struggle against Israeli occupation, signing (yet another) reconciliation agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and lastly, planning to relocate its headquarters to the State of Qatar. All of this has happened in the span of a few weeks. Read more.

Israel's New Left Goes Online

By Sarah Wildman, February 14, 2012

In mid-December a young Palestinian named Mustafa Tamimi was struck in the face with a tear-gas canister fired from an Israeli armored vehicle. It happened during one of the Friday protests, a weekly event in West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh, where Tamimi lived; he later died from his wounds. In the ensuing battle over culpability—so much of which took place, like everything else these days, on Twitter—a number of English-language bloggers challenged Israeli military spokespeople about the event, again and again, and kept the story of Tamimi’s death in the news. Read more.

Love Under Apartheid

http://loveunderapartheid.com/

Gaza - Occupied Lives: Mental Health
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR)

By Husam El Nounou, February 11, 2012

Amid the humanitarian crises facing the people of the Gaza strip there exists a less well known or talked about crisis, that of mental health. Israel’s tightening of the illegal closure of Gaza in 2006, and its 2008-2009 offensive, has meant that, for Gaza’s 1.7 million civilians, reality is a mix of isolation and violence. This mixture has contributed to a sense of vulnerability, hopelessness, imprisonment and loss of control amongst Gaza’s residents. Read more.

Israel: End Restrictions on Palestinian Residency
Military Control Over Population Registry Splits Families

February 5, 2012

(Jerusalem) – Israeli policies on Palestinian residency have arbitrarily denied thousands of Palestinians the ability to live in, and travel to and from, the West Bank and Gaza, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Israel should immediately stop denying or cancelling the residency of Palestinians and close family members with deep ties to the West Bank and Gaza, and end blanket bans on processing their applications for residency. Read more.

Witness: Mohamad at Eton

Israeli government offers concessions to settlers

By Amy Teibel, January 31, 2012

JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has made two overtures to West Bank settlers in the run-up to his party’s leadership race Tuesday: It’s offering financial incentives to encourage people to move to settlements and opening the door to legalizing rogue settler outposts. Read more.

Cambridge Forum: January 22, 2012
Where Does Democracy Come From? Popular Uprising and Parliamentary Elections in Egypt

Joel Beinin professor of Middle East History, Stanford University
Stanford University Middle East specialist Joel Beinin discusses the results of the Egyptian elections. What is their significance for the future of the Arab Spring movement in Eqypt? In the region? What impact will the election results have on Egypt’s relations with Israel and with the Palestinian people?

View it live on WGBH.

Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern

By Neferti X. M. Tadiar, January 27, 2012

I was recently part of a fact-finding delegation to Palestine organized by the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The delegation was composed of concerned academics and scholars based in the U.S., including myself.[i] During our weeklong investigative trip, we were witness to multiple and varied testimonies to and clear evidence of the daily acts of violence, harassment and humiliation that Palestinians are subjected to, both massive and intimate. Read more.

Activists resisting home demolitions face ‘IDF Price Tag’ attack

By Jeff Halper, Wednesday, January 25, 2012

On Monday night, the IDF demolished Palestinian homes closely identified with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Resistance and acts of solidarity will continue, but even resistance cannot keep pace with the massive Price Tag assault that is the Israeli Occupation.

It has become commonplace among violent West Bank settlers to randomly attack Palestinian mosques, homes, olive orchards and individuals in order to send a message to other Israelis. They are called “Price Tag” attacks, after the “signature” the settlers leave scrawled on the walls of the burnt-out buildings. In the dark of night this past Monday, January 23, the IDF carried out its own Price Tag assault on ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Read more.

You Guessed It; Here Comes Prof. Alan Dershowitz
Uproar Over Upcoming BDS Conference at Penn

By VIJAY PRASHAD, JANUARY 24, 2012

It is not easy in the United States to have a real, factual discussion about Israel. When Norman Finkelstein came to give a lecture at my college a few years ago, a small minority of the faculty and students were enraged. The faculty boycotted the lecture, but the students came. After Norman spoke, these students put their hands up, and one after another read from a script seemingly authored by a Hasbara agency. Then, as Norman frowned and held his own, one young man got up and said, “I have a genuine question….” That was sufficient. The firewall had been breached. He was sincerely disturbed by Norman’s narrative of events against Gaza, and could not square his ideology with the circles drawn by Norman’s data. Read more.

NYPD LIES THROUGH IT’S TEETH ABOUT INVOLVEMENT IN THIRD JIHAD

Tikun Olam Blog, January 24, 2012

The NYPD has gotten itself wound up in knots over all the lies it’s told about its involvement in the anti-Muslim film, Third Jihad. The film was produced by the Clarion Fund, an offshoot of the pro-settler group, Aish HaTorah. Read more.

Preventing 'Politicide' in the Middle East

By Henry SiegmanPresident, January 23, 2012

The bilateral peace process that the U.S. has doggedly sought to insulate from outside "interference" is not only an empty exercise but has served to provide Israel with cover for its settlement project. From its outset the goal of this project has been to subvert Palestinian statehood, a goal from which Israel is but a hair's breadth away. Read more.

Who will protect Gazans from their supposed defenders?
A Palestinian human rights activist was attacked and almost killed after he published an article criticizing militant groups and the Hamas government.

By Amira Hass, January 23, 2012

On December 9, 2011 - reads the silence-breaking article - "the occupiers' planes targeted one of the muqawama [armed resistance] organizations' training camps in Gaza's Nasser neighborhood. In the attack, a father and his 11-year-old son were killed, and his wife and four of their children were wounded." Read more.

Report: Israel to give US only 12-hour warning before attacking Iran because Netanyahu doesn’t trust Obama

By Adam Horowitz on January 22, 2012

Israel: We Won't Give Advance Notice of Attack on Iran
Sunday Times reports that Israel told Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff it would give only twelve hours' warning, for fear that Obama would try to prevent [an attack].
Maariv NRG, 22/1/12

Israel informed Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, during his visit over the weekend, that it would not request US authorisation for an attack on Iran, and that it would give only twelve hours warning before launching such an attack, according to this morning's Sunday Times. Read more.

The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame jail
Special report: Israel's military justice system is accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones

By Harriet Sherwood in the West Bank, January 22, 2012

The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night. Read more.

Zbig: Israelis “bought influence” and outmaneuvered Obama
The president "should have stuck to his guns" on Mideast peace, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, former NSC advisor

BY JORDAN MICHAEL SMITH, FRIDAY, JAN 20, 2012

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s new book, “Strategic Vision,” imagines a world without American power. He envisions profound instability, faltering international cooperation and weak states falling prey to their more dominant neighbors. Describing the dystopia that would emerge if America goes under is a trick British historian Niall Ferguson pioneered. Unlike the jingoistic Ferguson, however, Brzezinski is able to envision China replacing America as the stabilizing force in world affairs. “I don’t think liberal states are more restrained or stabilizing,” he says. “The United States’ actions in the last 20 years, especially with the war in Iraq, do not give reassurance on that score.” Read more.

Thailand recognizes Palestinian state

AFP – Fri, Jan 20, 2012

Thailand said Thursday that it has recognized a Palestinian state, in a move hailed by Palestinian leaders eager to boost their international standing amid a stalemate with Israel. Read more.

Creating American Terrorists

by Philip Giraldi, January 19, 2012

Defenders of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, which declares the entire world to be a “battlefield” against terrorism and authorizes the U.S. military to detain indefinitely anyone suspected of being a terrorism supporter, have claimed that the White House will only use its new power carefully and with due process. Read more.

Weekend of settler violence: more than 100 olive trees destroyed

By URI YACOBI KELLER, SUNDAY, 15 JANUARY 2012

Settler violence over the weekend in West Bank: 100 trees cut down. Car burned. Two additional cars damaged. Two Palestinians attacked. The Israeli army's answer: to arrest the very Palestinians who were beaten just moments before.

According to Palestinian news agencies Maan and WAFA, settlers from the Tapuach settlement attacked Palestinian land in the area south of Salfit yesterday. The settlers cut down no less than 100 olive trees of the Palestinian villages Yasuf and Jamain. Read more.

Israel's Mercy is Inhumanely Strained

By Vacy Vlazna, January 11, 2012

There is a growing campaign to urge the London Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to cancel Israel's Habima Theatre's performances of 'The Merchant of Venice' on 28-29th May 2012 at the Shakespeare Globe to Globe Festival.

The Habima Theatre, the National Theatre of Israel, has no moral qualms about performing in the illegal settlement colonies on stolen Palestinian lands. Read more.

Settler leader: Democracy must be dismantled

By Yossi Gurvitz, January 8, 2012

Haaretz reports that settler leader Benni Katzover calls for dismantling democracy and “bowing to Judaism,” and the leader of the right-wing coalition aids “price tag” activists. Can we discuss the treason of the right yet?
Read more.

Israeli companies can profit from West Bank resources, court rules
Supreme court says international law does not fit the 'reality on the ground' of long-term Israeli occupation

By Harriet Sherwood in Kochav HaShachar, January 3, 2012

Israeli companies are entitled to exploit the West Bank's natural resources for economic gain, according to a supreme court ruling that says international law must be adapted to the "reality on the ground" of long-term occupation. Read more

News Feeds

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News

Israel going for one million Jews in the West Bank Despite his disappointing results at the ballot box, Netanyahu has successfully leveraged his negotiating position to create a right-wing government that is outwardly aggressive and inwardly nationalistic.

Israeli Licence to Cheney-Linked Energy Firm on Golan Heights Raises Eyebrows

Family reports Samer Issawi on ‘verge of death’ after refusing liquids and vitamins 236 days into hunger strike

New cross-Canada student coalition looks to build on BDS victories

PCHR calls for investigation into the circumstances of Palestinian detainee’s death in Megiddo Prison in Israel

Ariel Sharon feared genocide charges over Israel's role in Sabra and Shatila

Palestinians clash with Israeli forces in protests over prisoners

What a 'period of calm' looks like in the Occupied Territories Three months after the last major Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, the "period of calm" is only "calm" for Israel.

Prisoner X: Doubts Grow on Jailhouse Suicide Claims for Australian Israeli Linked to Mossad

Residents of Palestinian village accuse Israeli authorities of harassment Tax raids, fines and arrests are just some of the means by which the state hopes to quell protests against road that would bisect Beit Safafa; police, city deny collective punishment.

Veolia suffering "expensive" damage due to Palestine campaigners’ publicity, says financial expert

Holy Moley Batman—Palestinian textbooks don’t demonize Jews!

Watch: BDS campaigner Omar Barghouti lecture and conversation with Amy Goodman in Santa Fe

EU to use legal loophole to ban settlement goods

Dror Moreh's 'The Gatekeepers' Sheds Light On Israel's Shin Bet

Israel gives final approval for 90 new settler homes

Judith Butler's Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS

Israel plans to evict Palestinians, building new Jerusalem-area garbage dump on their villages

Full-Page Ad in ‘Roll Call’: 80,000 to President Obama—Hold Israel accountable, we have your back

Re-elect Netanyahu and you get international boycott, Livni warns

An ‘Israeli Spring’ for Palestine? The Call Is Out

Obama: ‘Israel Doesn’t Know What Its Best Interests Are’

On foot through the hills of E1 — Palestinians join Bab al-Shams protest village

Press report: EU 'to propose' peace plan to restart Israel-Palestinian talks, after Israel elections

MEDIA RELEASE: Veolia Withdraws from California Water Contract Bidding Following Outcry Against its Abuses of Palestinian Rights

Goldberg smears JVP after ‘NYT’ columnist mentions them for defending Hagel

University of California System and The Three-Pronged Attack on Free Speech and Campus Organizing

Israeli pours putrid skunk gas over homes in occupied Palestine

Israelis give their votes to Palestinians in Facebook campaign

Interfaith Peace Builder Scholarships to visit Palestine. Read more.

Why We Hate Them: Arabs in Western Eyes A new PBS documentary reveals how films and other media have shaped an anti-Muslim narrative.

State bars Westerners living in West Bank from entering Israel, East Jerusalem Change discovered after foreigners renewed tourist visas, and saw that 'Judea and Samaria only' had been stamped inside.

Israel's Worldwide Role in Repression

BDS roundup: The victories of 2012

Palestinian children bear brunt of the Occupation

E1 not Israeli territory

Poll: 67% of centrist Israelis wouldn't elect party that splits Jerusalem According to a poll commissioned by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 80 percent of Labor supporters and 62 percent of Yesh Atid voters attach importance to the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Helpless: Notes of a Gaza teacher One Gazan’s war diary, November 14-21.

ACLU condemns “lawfare” targeting campus Palestine solidarity activism

Israel must stop attacks on Palestinian NGOs and human rights defenders Amnesty International Press Release, 11 December 2012

How Israeli Militarism Is Driving a Wedge Between American Progressives and the Jewish State Liberals around the world are losing their sympathy for Israel.

Dividing Line - Segregation in Israel's public bus lines

JVP National’s video explains the Israel-Palestine conflict in just 6 minutes. Over 100,000 people have viewed it in just 4 days. Watch it here.

PETITION TO SIGN: Save Wadi Foquin (Fukin)

PETITION TO SIGN: Hold Israel Accountable for Killing Palestinians with U.S. Weapons

Cheering U.N. Palestine Vote, Synagogue Tests Its Members

East Jerusalem project could bury two-state solution

Gaza Quiz

Palestine UN status upgrade should open door to justice

Palestinian workers forced off buses by Israeli police

Stevie Wonder Pulls Out of Israel Gala Change.org Petition Called on R&B Star To Shun IDF Event

One of Israel's great leftist warriors wants peace with Hamas and Gaza - but does the Knesset? Our correspondent meets the legendary Uri Avnery, who roars out against Netanyahu and his government and foresees growing ethnic strife in Israel

Noura Erakat and Yousef Munayyer on Gaza Assault: Interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes

After Harvard Hillel drops event due to donor pressure, progressive Jewish org calls out ‘political litmus test’

A country at war rarely spares a thought for the children of the enemy A bit more than a week ago, people from communities in southern Israel wrote a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak:

United Methodist Reverend brings the struggles of Wadi Foquin to

Danish University stops collaboration with settlement

Obama and the Israel lobby: Quo vadis?

Impressions of Gaza

Truth To Power

VOICES OF CONSCIENCE: DELEGATION to THE GAZA STRIP

"Gaza Ark” To Sail From Gaza

Israeli Ministry of Tourism map annexes over 60% of the West Bank

Israel “far worse than apartheid South Africa” says ANC chair as Pretoria conference backs boycott

Massive adverts map occupation of Palestinian land

Benjamin Netanyahu Just Became The 'Israeli Glenn Beck'

Why is a New York hospital being sacrificed for an Israel-backed science facility?

UN investigator calls for boycott of firms linked to Israeli settlements UN investigator on human rights alleges that companies dealing with settlers are in violation of international human rights laws.

Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel.

Reflections on Noam Chomsky’s visit to Gaza

New York Times Flacks for Jewish Groups Against 15 Major Christian Leaders

Gaza Water Confined and Contaminated

Israel vs. No. 2 Pencils

Israel going for one million Jews in the West Bank
Despite his disappointing results at the ballot box, Netanyahu has successfully leveraged his negotiating position to create a right-wing government that is outwardly aggressive and inwardly nationalistic.

Israeli Licence to Cheney-Linked Energy Firm on Golan
Heights Raises Eyebrows

What a 'period of calm' looks like in the Occupied Territories
Three months after the last major Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, the "period of calm" is only "calm" for Israel.

Residents of Palestinian village accuse Israeli authorities of harassment
Tax raids, fines and arrests are just some of the means by which the state hopes to quell protests against road that would bisect Beit Safafa; police, city deny collective punishment.

On foot through the hills of E1 — Palestinians join Bab al-Shams
protest village

Press report: EU 'to propose' peace plan to restart Israel-Palestinian talks,
after Israel elections

Why We Hate Them: Arabs in Western Eyes
A new PBS documentary reveals how films and other media have shaped an
anti-Muslim narrative.

State bars Westerners living in West Bank from entering Israel, East Jerusalem
Change discovered after foreigners renewed tourist visas, and saw that 'Judea and Samaria only' had been stamped inside.

Poll: 67% of centrist Israelis wouldn't elect party that splits Jerusalem
According to a poll commissioned by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 80 percent of Labor supporters and 62 percent of Yesh Atid voters attach importance to the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Helpless: Notes of a Gaza teacher
One Gazan’s war diary, November 14-21.

Israel must stop attacks on Palestinian NGOs and human rights defenders
Amnesty International Press Release, 11 December 2012

How Israeli Militarism Is Driving a Wedge Between American Progressives and the Jewish State
Liberals around the world are losing their sympathy for Israel.

JVP National’s video explains the Israel-Palestine conflict in just 6 minutes.
Over 100,000 people have viewed it in just 4 days. Watch it here.

PETITION TO SIGN:
Save Wadi Foquin (Fukin)

PETITION TO SIGN:
Hold Israel Accountable for Killing Palestinians with U.S. Weapons

Stevie Wonder Pulls Out of Israel Gala
Change.org Petition Called on R&B Star To Shun IDF Event

One of Israel's great leftist warriors wants peace with Hamas and Gaza - but does the Knesset?
Our correspondent meets the legendary Uri Avnery, who roars out against Netanyahu and his government and foresees growing ethnic strife in Israel

A country at war rarely spares a thought for the children of the enemy
A bit more than a week ago, people from communities in southern Israel wrote a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak:

UN investigator calls for boycott of firms linked to Israeli settlements
UN investigator on human rights alleges that companies dealing with settlers are in violation of international human rights laws.

Israeli army veterans admit role in massacres of Palestinians in 1948
Read more.

The Impact of Child Detention: Occupied Palestinian Territory: 2012
Save the Children Report. Read more.

Remembering the Sabra and Shatila massacres
30 years ago, Israeli-backed militias killed 3,000 civilians in two Palestinian refugee camps -- my family included

Tears of Gaza
A new documentary explores the Gaza War from the point of view of children.

Witness to Rachel Corrie’s Death Responds to Israeli Court Ruling
Absolving Soldier

Call to action: Olive Harvest 2012
Posted on: August 18, 2012

Congressional Research Service
The Palestinians: Background and U.S. Relations

Israeli inquiry into Rachel Corrie death insufficient, US ambassador tells family
US government does not believe military inquiry was 'thorough, credible and transparent', as family await verdict in civil suit

Angela Davis and Gina Dent: Reports From Palestine
This Friday, August 24th, Davis and Dent will speak at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs

Israeli teens, including girls, held over attack on Palestinian youths
Israeli police arrested seven Jewish teens, two of them girls, suspected over the reported attempted lynching of three Arabs in Jerusalem.

In suspected Jerusalem lynch, dozens of Jewish youths attack 3 Palestinians
One of the Palestinians was seriously wounded and hospitalized in intensive care; eyewitness: Today I saw a lynch with my own eyes.

Hundreds of Israelis petition IDF pilots: Refuse orders to bomb Iran
Tel Aviv University law professors among signatories to online petition, which warns that any decision to strike Iran would be a 'highly mistaken gamble.'

Time for black perspective
African Americans for Justice in the Middle East & North Africa

Winner of the 2012 Sermon Contest
"Waking Up and Overcoming: A Unitarian Universalist Response to the Israel-Palestine Conflict"

The Checkpoint
Terror, Power, and Cruelty

Population of Jewish settlements in West Bank up 15,000 in a year
Number of settlers has almost doubled in 12 years, increasing obstacles to two-state solution to Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Israel orders demolition of 8 Palestinian villages, claims need for IDF
training land
Residents of targeted villages will be moved to the West Bank town of Yatta and its environs; state claims that most of those evacuated have permanent homes in the area.

Signs of a transitional moment in the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic
The fragility of the Palestinian Authority and growing support within Israel for direct control over the West Bank are reshaping the political dynamic.