Israel is well-known for its potent U.S. lobby that not only influences Congress and the mainstream media but intimidates Americans who dare criticize its policies toward the Palestinians, as Dennis J Bernstein describes.
Israeli police stormed a Palestinian hospital twice over the past week, detaining doctors, using tear gas, and terrifying staff and patients. A man they were pursuing died of his wounds.
“They invaded the entire hospital. The young man, Mohammad Abu Ghannam, died of his wounds during the scuffle.
Mainstream media under-report Israeli aggression, which will make the Palestinians’ eventual response appear to be unprovoked violence.
The National Association of Jewish Legislators and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are demanding that President Donald Trump appoint a special envoy in the State Department “to monitor and combat” antisemitism that actually often focuses on activism supportive of Palestinian human rights.
Israeli companies offer tourist training camps in which families, even with small children, practice shooting live ammunition at targets resembling Palestinians. Such courses are also being offered in the US.
Americans need to know important facts that they aren’t learning in the very filtered reporting we get. We need to know what’s happening in Palestine, and what’s enabling this in the U.S. The latter stories are even more covered up. Some personal anecdotes by Alison Weir, including recent censorship by Truthout management
Jerusalem: Israel’s state prosecutor has filed a precedent-setting lawsuit against the estate of a Palestinian seven months after the man killed four Israelis in a car-ramming attack. The Prosecutor’s Office seeks compensation—perhaps as much as $2.3 million—from the widow and four young children. The process could trigger a legal time bomb where Palestinians opt to file similar lawsuits against Israel or Israelis.
Mexican and UAE investigative journalists and human rights defenders have had their smartphones hacked by a secretive Israeli-made system. An infected phone gives the perpetrator access to movements and location, emails, WhatsApp messages, and passwords, and can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone.
A dozen American rabbis visit Hebron and see for themselves the result of a settlement inside a Palestinian town. They find the experience “eye-opening and heart-wrenching.” Their trip coincides with one of the worst crises ever in relations between Israel and the U.S. Jewish community.
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson officially gives hundreds of millions of dollars to GOP politicians, plus untold sums in “dark money”; in addition, he bankrolls Benjamin Netanyahu through his right-wing newspaper. Bottom line: Adelson gives Netanyahu power in Israel through his own private news outlet, and in the US by buying off Congress and calling the shots on its Middle East policies.