There is a “crack in the veneer that Israel can just oppress and destroy Palestinian lives forever” is how Lee Camp sums up after interviewing Sivan Tal in Moment of Clarity about the latter’s decision (along with his wife Dori) to refuse to allow his son to be conscripted in the Israeli military.
Unlike the situation in 2017 with their older daughter Hadas, when she herself publicly refused to enlist and spent 60 days in jail, Sivan and Dori Tal are taking a novel approach to the situation with their son Yair. …
In the Struggle for Palestinian Political Legitimacy, De-Normalizing Jewish Nationalism is Essential
To dismantle a system of oppression, intensely radical politics are required.
That is why any resolution to the Palestinian Nakba in the form of a unitary state cannot possibly retain the fiction that Jews world-wide are a monolith “people” who need to be in-gathered in one place, that place being a geographic territory colonized and violently seized by atheist East European Jews who have marketed this myth successfully by positioning a religious symbol at the center of Israel’s flag.
Israel’s propaganda success has been so spectacular that many today conflate a fascist, supremacist, apartheid ideology (Zionism) with Judaism itself.
It’s time for a fresh start for Palestine, as Prince Hassan says, but a truly fresh start, not a variant mutation of the toxic past
It’s déjà vu time for Palestine; we have lived through the same fiasco before only to get bogged down in the Oslo poisoned swamp.
Déjà vu washed over me as I read a letter by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan addressing Israelis, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (Feb 26, 2021), the largest Israeli newspaper (Hebrew). It is a letter clearly written within the “one-homeland-two-state” initiative framework.
The rhetoric of Prince Hassan’s letter includes references to climate change, weapons of mass destruction (meaning nuclear), global security (meaning terrorism) and Covid19, all of which, other than Israel’s own security, were not in…
Re: Quora: fascists welcome; Palestinians, not so much
Dear Kathleen Kern:
So sorry to hear that Quora continues to provide a safe haven for Zionist bigotry and act as an active participant in spreading Israeli propaganda. Zionism is a racist ideology and Quora, I am convinced, is a Zionist organization. It is therefore no surprise to me that bigoted Quora practices extend, not only to canceling Palestinian culture and history, but also to the creation of an environment hostile to Muslims and people of color.
Thank you for the principled stand you continue to take. The good news is that…
Gideon Levy, let’s hear why all of Palestine should be demilitarized and decolonized from the river to the sea.
Soapbox (described on Facebook as Russia state-controlled media) is circulating a video of veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy lecturing against the Zionist occupation of the West Bank.
In the first few frames Levy says:
“Palestine must be demilitarized.” Sorry, why should Palestine be demilitarized? Don’t they [Palestinians] have their right to self-defense?
Levy is here defending Palestinians’ right to armed resistance against the occupation (immediately following these words, we are shown action images, first of a stone-throwing Palestinian and then of Israeli soldiers in riot gear); he is saying, though he doesn’t use these words, that Palestinians have a right…
Facebook is “independently engaging with experts and stakeholders” to discuss the usage of the term “Zionist.” According to The Verge, Facebook allows the term “in political discourse,” but not “when it’s used as a proxy for Jews or Israelis in a dehumanizing or violent way.”
I am not an expert on Zionism though I have a book-shelf of information about it; I am a stakeholder in Facebook, as I participate there in several communities. If Facebook were to engage me in the discussion it is having around the term “Zionist,” I would explain the following:
I have been trying to normalize anti-Zionist, anti-Israel speech through my writing and social-media activism for many years now. It hasn’t been easy (see my account of suing Quora for muzzling anti-Zionist speech here).
In today’s climate of right-wing vigilantism, it has just gotten worse.
I am now the target of a campaign to cancel my Medium blog, where I frequently write about Palestine, Zionism and Jewish supremacy. The website stopantisemitsm.org posted an article yesterday calling for readers to pressure Medium to remove my account, equating my writing about Palestine with anti-Semitism.
As I watch the unfolding political drama of the impeachment trial in the US Senate, the glimmer of hope for change I had following the incredible scenes at the Capitol on Jan 6 is being dimmed. The question in my mind now is whether it is even possible, with the tools being used by Joe Biden, to turn the tide on Trump’s movement.
The US news media is marveling that, for the first time ever, a president has denounced white supremacy “by name” in an inaugural address. The hashtag #EndWhiteSupremacy is gaining currency. But I believe the rallying cry generated…
Many are noting happily that Joe Biden’s flurry of executive orders are “surprisingly” progressive … and decent. In an essay in Jacobin titled ‘If Joe Biden Moves Left, You Can Thank the Left’, Lisa Featherstone acknowledges that, though “deeply implicated in much of what is wrong with America and the world today,” Biden nevertheless appears to be doing the right thing. She assigns credit for Biden’s decisive departures from the old to: “the organized left, which has helped transform US politics.”
No such transformation appears to be on the horizon for Palestine and the “Middle East” in general. …
In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have us believe that the United States and Israel have a common enemy.
Pelosi implies that the American insurrectionists whose ideologies are rooted in racism, xenophobia and supremacy represent a threat to both the US and Israel — i.e., she believes antisemitism threatens the well-being and sanctity of the apartheid Jewish state, just as its existence among the ranks of the insurrectionists threatens American democracy.
That’s a big lie. What helped create Israel is the antisemitic motivations of British politicians. What poses a threat to Israel is…
Rima Najjar
Palestinian and righteously angry
