Rep. Betty McCollum has introduced a new bill (H.R. 2590) that challenges Israel’s impunity, at a time when support in Congress for Palestinian rights is at an all-time high. This issue of conditional aid to Israel has gained momentum in recent years – but there is a long way to go…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Progressive Except Palestine? – because Israel critics turn into Israel praisers when they have political ambitions. That’s the royal road in the Democratic Party, where the Israel lobby remains an entrenched force.
In the second important win for Palestinian rights and BDS this month, a federal judge has dismissed a Jewish National Fund lawsuit that targeted the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights for alleged terror connections over its support for BDS.
The Jewish Telegraphic agency reports thatJonathan Pollard, the convicted spy for Israel, told Israeli media: “The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty.” Pollard was paroled from his life sentence in 2015. Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire campaign donor, provided a private plane for Pollard to fly to Israel.
In a moment when support for Israel is slipping a bit in Congress, this Israel-right-or-wrong group proposes a new category of antisemitism in hopes of persuading Progressives to alter their agenda to accommodate pro-Israel Jewish Americans. It’s called “Progressive Except Palestine.”
Extremist Jewish supremacist parties find themselves suddenly relevant as Netanyahu’s Likud party seeks to form alliances and win enough legislative seats to protect him from legal action. Lieberman has even called for “disloyal” Palestinian citizens to be “beheaded.” It may be the beginning of a new level of rightwing governing.
What these claimed “allies” want from the U.S. is greater than what the U.S. wants, needs, or gets from them. Whenever a relationship seems to be falling back into a pattern of false alliance, they should ask what Bill Clinton asked rhetorically of his aides after a meeting with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu: “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” Then they should ask of the other government, “What have you done for the United States lately?”
Kathy Manning (D-NC) wrote of her fear of Gazan rockets when she went on an Israeli tour to the city of Sderot (a town that numerous American politicians are taken to visit). But it’s clear that Manning knows little about the history and current context of Gaza and Sderot, and is missing essential facts. This video gives her the information that Israeli tour guides and US media leave out.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Israeli military oversaw and orchestrated the obliteration of over 10,000 trees in Occupied Palestine… Israel has been uprooting olive Palestinian orchards since 1948, including over one million trees since 1967 alone… Kamala Harris needs to know that Israel’s vaunted ‘tree planting’ is a fraud…
The moment I irritated defenders of Israel on social media, I was summarily fired from my job as a newspaper columnist… I’ve noticed that a lot of people who are ostensibly pro-free speech have little to say when critics of Israel are met with professional consequences…