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The Israel Apartheid State
(1) Resources (latest last):
(2) Articles: below (latest first)
Albert EINSTEIN, Hannah ARENDT, Sidney HOOK e.a.: "Albert Einstein Letter to The New York Times. December 4, 1948." "New Palestine Party. Visit of Menachen Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed": click here!Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
Lorenzo VERACINI, « Israel and Settler Society » (Pluto Press, 2006, 144p.)Veracini presents a thoughtful interpretation of the dynamics of colonialism, offering a clear framework within which to understand the Middle East crisis. Veracini challenges two important myths: firstly, that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is unique and defies comparative approaches; and secondly that the struggle is mainly based in nationality and religion and therefore different to typical colonial conflicts.
Nurit PELED-ELHANAN: "Palestine in Israeli Schoolbooks" (The IBTaurisblog, Nov 30, 2011): click here!"Nurit Peled-Elhanan asks: how is Palestine, and the Palestinians against whom young Israelis will potentially be required to use force against, portrayed in the school system?" (Nurit Peled) "The argument of my new book"Palestine in Israeli School-Books: Ideology and Indoctrination in Education,"is that Israeli schoolbooks inculcate ignorance and use racist visual and verbal discourse to represent Palestinians in textbooks of history, geography and civics."
Haim BRESHEETH-ŽABNER, « An Army Like No Other.» How the Israel Defense Forces made a Nation. Verso, 2020, 425p. To understand Israel, you must first understand its army. ─ The Israeli army, officially named the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), was established in 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, who believed that ‘the whole nation is the army’. In his mind, the IDF was to be an army like no other. It was the instrument that might transform a diverse population into a new people. Since the foundation of Israel, therefore, the IDF has been the largest, richest and most influential institution in Israel’s Jewish society and is the nursery of its social, economic and political ruling class.
Jeff HALPER: « Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State » Foreword by Nadia Naser-Najjab. Pluto Press, 2021, 244p. For decades we have spoken of the 'Israel-Palestine Conflict,' but what if our understanding of the issue has been wrong all along? This book explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer understanding of the Zionist movement's project to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab population and marginalizing its cultural presence.
Yofi TIROSH: « Civil Law vs Halakhah in Israeli Courts: The Case of Gender Equality » (sources, Spring, 2023): click here!Israel has been a straddling a unique tension between religion and state since its establishment. The state’s Declaration of Independence posits that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people and a country that guarantees equality before the law, regardless of citizens’ religion, race, or sex. In addition, Israel’s Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, and the Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation, the equivalent of a Bill of Rights, begin by anchoring the rights they protect in “the values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Avi SHLAIM, « Avi Shlaim, la mémoire à vif d’un juif arabe déraciné de Bagdad .» Bonnes feuilles (OrientXXI, 18 juillet, 2023): click here! Avi Shlaim a quitté Bagdad avec sa famille en 1950, à l’âge de 5 ans, pour Tel-Aviv. De ce déclassement identitaire et social, de la violence de son second pays contre les Palestiniens, cet historien du conflit israélo-arabe a tiré un récit de vie. Extraits – traduits en français par Orient XXI — de la première partie de "Three Worlds. Memoir of an Arab-Jew," publié en juin.
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- Meron RAPOPORT: « Israel-Palestine war: Israelis in fear and denial as society slides towards fascism » (Middle East Eye, Nov 10, 2023): click here!
Palestinian students, academics, doctors, and dissenting Jewish Israelis are among those caught up in an escalating wave of repression.
- Eva ILLOUZ: « Can Israel Wake Up From Its Worst Nightmare and Do the Right Thing?» (Haaretz, Oct 23, 2023): click here!
We now realize that our house has been built on quicksand that is slowly sucking us down.
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: « Settler Accessory to Murder of Palestinian Endorses Spitting on Priests » (Tikun Olam, Oct 4, 2023): click here!
Elisha Yered claims Judaism approves of spitting on, and assaulting priests in the Old City.
- Haaretz Editorial: «In Netanyahu's Israel, Even Rapists Have Privileges if They Are Jewish » (Haaretz, Aug 1, 2023): click here!
The Knesset is suffering from malignant Kahanism. On Sunday, it enacted a law unrelated to the government coup, the legislative process of which did not encounter public or parliamentary opposition and did not earn its supporters cries of “shame on you!” Yet it is no less dangerous to democracy than the coup, and it proves that the processes of fascism are in full swing.
- Gideon LEVY: « We even destroy their water wells » (Haaretz, 30 July, 2023, via: Jewish Voice for Labour): click here.
JVL Introduction: "Gideon Levy cannot contain his contempt for those who have just cemented in three water wells near the Fawwar refugee camp in the South Hebron hills. He calls it “the work of the devil” and we would be hard-pressed to dissent. “Arab-hatred, apartheid, brutality and evil” he writes, “now cover the spring and groundwater and the false love for the Land of Israel. If not the most horrific crime of the occupation, he asserts, it is one of the ugliest." We agree.
- Ramzy BAROUD:: « Balancing act is over: Israel protests are not about democracy, but ideology » (MEMo, July 31, 2023): click here!
The late Israeli commentator, Uri Avnery [picture], wrote, "I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle … is assuming a more and more religious character." At first glance, the statement may seem baffling. If Israel is a 'Jewish State' that serves as a 'homeland' for all Jewish people, everywhere, does it not follow that the 'struggle', at least from an Israeli viewpoint, is essentially a religious one? If only it was that simple. Israel's dichotomy is that it was founded by an ideology, Zionism, which purposely conflated between religion and nationality. "The Zionist movement was non-religious from the start," Avnery wrote, "if not anti-religious." He went on to cite a famous quote by the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, "we shall know how to keep (our clergymen) in their temples..."
- Ofer ADERET: « Golda Meir Was ‘Open' to a Palestinian State, 1970 Minutes Reveal » (Haaretz, Aug 1, 2023): click here!
Golda Meir has gone down in history as someone who rejected the idea that there was a Palestinian people at all, yet newly disclosed minutes show that she briefly entertained the notion of an independent state alongside Israel.
- Joel BEININ: « A century after its founding, the Israeli Communist Party is at a crossroads » (+972, July 28, 2023): click here!
For 100 years, Maki has been the leading force for Jewish-Palestinian equality in Israeli politics, yet it has failed to unite Arab and Jewish workers into a viable movement. Was it doomed from the start?
- Yossi Klein HALEVI: « The wounded Jewish psyche and the divided Israeli soul » (The Times of Israel, July 28, 2023): click here!
Understanding Israel’s moment of truth – from the war on Start-up Nation, to the moral crisis in Orthodox Jewry, to the author’s personal failure of empathy for political opponents.
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: « udicial crisis: An existential battle for Israel's future » (Middle East Eye, July 27, 2023): click here!
Protesters accuse the government of orchestrating a fascist coup and stealing the country from its citizens
- Gideon LEVY, « Israeli Protest Against the Judicial Coup Has Militaristic Characteristics » (Haaretz, July 23, 2023): click here!
This is (also) the story of an army that had a state. Along came a government that acted to overturn the orders of the government in the army’s state, whereupon the army rose in protest against the government.
- Haaretz Editorial « Netanyahu Is the Leader of Jewish Supremacy » (Haaretz, July 19, 2023): click here!
Benjamin Netanyahu, heading his sixth government, is behaving like someone for whom tearing society into shreds and inciting one group against another is no longer a means to an end but an end in and of itself.
- Rina BASSIST: "Israel's anti-overhaul protesters block roads, clash with police" (Al-Monitor, July 11, 2023): click here!
After the approval Monday night at a first reading of the Reasonableness Standard Bill, liming the authority of the Supreme Court, demonstrators are flooding Israeli cities on Tuesday.
- Amir TIBON: "Why Israel Is Attacking Germany's Top Middle East Expert" (Haaretz, July 10, 2023): click here!
Muriel Asseburg says the Israeli embassy manipulated her quotes, while her workplace, a prominent German think-tank slammed the embassy's 'insinuations and personal defamations' against her.
- Orly NOY: « The narcissism that blinds Israelis to Jenin’s oppression » (+972, July 7, 2023): click here!
Not only did the anti-government protests not condemn the assault on Jenin, its leaders even praised the “brave men” who took part in the invasion.
- Miko PELED: « Complicity in Hate: Israeli Government Boycotts Conference on Attacks Against Christians » (Mint Press, July 5, 2023): click here!
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon denounced a conference organized by the Israeli Open University to discuss the increasing violence on Christians and Christian sites in Palestine. These attacks, carried out mostly by Anti-Christian Zionist hate groups, have increased at an alarming pace. Close to twenty incidents were registered between the end of 2022 and June of 2023.
- Ofer ADERET: « Israel Poisoned Palestinian Land to Build West Bank Settlement in 1970s, Documents Reveal » (Haaretz, June 23, 2023): click here!
A new, publicly accessible archival project shows the inner workings of the Israeli government and military during the early years of the settlement enterprise. ─ Even half a century later, reading minutes from the Israel Defense Forces' Judea and Samaria Division discussions is difficult. Each step in the establishment of a West Bank settlement is cataloged, step by step, from planning to execution. The first step was dispossessing residents of the nearby Palestinian village of their land under the false pretext of making it a military training zone...
- Ramzy BAROUD: « A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank » (Politics For The People, May 31, 2023): click here!
For Netanyahu, the frequent deadly raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps translate into political assets that allow him to keep his extremist supporters happy. But this is short-term thinking.
- Naomi SUSSMANN: « Occupation is what drives Israel’s anti-democratic forces » (Times of Israel, June 21, 2023): click here!
Without addressing 56 years of undemocratic practices used to control Palestinians and expand settlements, the protest can't win.
- Lawrence DAVIDSON: « How stable is Zionist Israel? » (Redress Information & Analysis, June 18, 2023): click here!
It is time to ask the question: just how stable is Zionist Israel? Is it possible that the Jewish population of Israel constitutes an inherently unstable society by virtue of deeply rooted divisions? Are these divisions so deeply rooted that they are irreconcilable? As Lloyd Green put it in a recent article in the Daily Beast, “Decades-old grudges have now morphed into pitched political battles. Antipathies of the old world are now playing out in what was thought to be a high-tech Hebrew-speaking Mecca.”
- Emanuel FABIAN: « Israeli arms sales doubled in a decade, hit new record of $12.5 billion in 2022 » (TOI, June 14, 2023): click here!
Defense Ministry officials note surge in demand for Israeli-made weapons due to Russia’s war on Ukraine, uptick in interest from Arab allies; nearly quarter of exports are drones.
- Josh BREINER: « The Notorious Kahanist Facing Racism and Terror Charges Advising Israel's Far-right Security Minister » (Haaretz, June 8, 2023): click here!
Banned from running for the Knesset, far-right activist Bentzi Gopstein is now advising Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and police top brass. Senior security source: 'It’s insane that this man advises the national security minister'.
- Joshua LEIFER: « Netanyahu’s Salami Method » (Jewish Currents, June 6, 2023): click here!
Using a classic authoritarian strategy, the Israeli right has quashed dissent and entrenched the occupation slice by slice.
- Oren ZIV: « Israel’s protest leaders give the anti-occupation bloc the cold shoulder » (+972, June 6, 2023): click here!
A protest marking the occupation's 56th year was rejected by mainstream organizers, showing how messages about Palestinians are still being silenced.
- Michal FRUCHTMAN: « Who Will Protect the Thousands of Palestinian Children Israel Detains? » (Haaretz, May 28, 2023): click here.
From nighttime detentions without a court order, to blindfolding and beatings: the silence of Israeli mental health therapists in the face of severe harm to Palestinian children is particularly alarming.
- Shir HEVER: « Israeli protests expose divisions in the military » (The Electronic Intifada, May 26, 2023): click here!
Is Israel facing an existential crisis? The panic prevalent in Israeli media at the moment has happened before: in 1948, 1967 and 1973, each time as Israel faced a conventional war in which victory was uncertain. But the conventional armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria, which were seen as threats to Israel’s existence during those three wars, are not threatening Israel today. Today it is Israel’s own military that is turning against itself.
- Shany LITTMAN: « 'In Some Respects, Mizrahi Identity in Israel Is Dominant, and Ashkenazi Jews Face Inequality' » (Haaretz, May 19, 2023): click here!
The First Israel-Second Israel debate is obsolete, says sociologist Guy Abutbul-Selinger. Look around: Most of the cabinet ministers are Mizrahim, most of the mayors are Mizrahim, and middle-class Mizrahi women earn more than their Ashkenazi counterparts.
- Clothilde MRAFFKO: «En Israël, la contre-offensive des colons » (OrientXXI, May 14, 2023): click here!
Galvanisés par un gouvernement ultranationaliste, les colons israéliens multiplient les initiatives avec, en ligne de mire, l’annexion d’une partie de la Cisjordanie. C’est aussi un soutien à Benyamin Nétanyahou face à la contestation de la réforme judiciaire par une large partie de la population, tandis que le premier ministre tente de dépasser les clivages en lançant des attaques sur Gaza largement soutenues par les forces d’opposition.
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: « Israeli Video Calls for Jewish Racial-Blood Purity, Expelling Palestinians “by Force” » (Tikun Olam, May 10, 2023): click here!
It espouses Judeo-Nazi ideology which could provoke acts of Palestinian armed resistance.
- Saul MAGID: « Why are American Jews so shocked by Israel’s far-right turn? » (+972, April 25, 2023): click here!
Israel's electorate is forcing U.S. Jews to grapple with the dissonance not only between liberal values and Zionism, but their understandings of Judaism itself.
- Pieter STOCKMANS: « Op toer in Israël: ‘Wielersport helpt om ons een positief imago te geven’ » (MO*, 17 april 17, 2023): click here!
De annexatie van Palestijns en Syrisch grondgebied, de relaties met Arabische buurlanden: Israël wil maar al te graag dat de wereld die zaken als ‘normaal’ gaat beschouwen. En daarvoor gebruikt het… het wielrennen. MO* sprak in Israël met verschillende spelers in die jonge sector. ‘Als wielertoeristen naar Israël komen, delen ze mooie dingen over ons op hun sociale media.’
- Asaf CALDERON: « The sad truth behind Israeli ‘happiness’ » (+972, April 17, 2023): click here!
How can a country that administers constant violence and suffers deep inequalities be ranked the fourth happiest in the world?
- Anton SHULHUT: « Israel was never a democratic state, from 1948 to now » (MEE, April 5, 2023): click here!
To fully understand the ongoing crisis, we must look at the failed attempts to create a democratic constitution after Israel was established.
- Jonathan LIS: « Israel's Cabinet Okays Advancing National Guard Under Far-right Ben-Gvir Despite Shin Bet, Police Chief and AG Warnings » (Haaretz, April 2, 2023): click here!
The Otzma Yehudit lawmaker will now work to form a committee that will outline the work of the law enforcement organization, which Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai warned 'may harm citizens' personal security'.
- Meron RAPOPORT: « The Israeli right’s arrogance has made a new struggle possible » (+972, March 29, 2023): click here!
The mass protests have opened the possibility, however slight, that Israelis will begin to demand fundamental changes we haven't seen since 1948.
- Shane BURLEY & Ben LORBER: « “The dilemmas of the Mizrahi left in the Israeli protest movement. » (+972, March 29, 2023): click here!
Prof. Smadar Lavie discusses the possibilities and contradictions of the Ashkenazi-dominated protests against the government, and traces the efforts of a small cohort of Mizrahi activists to make their voices heard.
- Haggai MATAR: « How this protest movement is bringing Netanyahu to his knees » (+972, March 27, 2023): click here!
A movement that started out against the government's judicial coup has morphed into a successful uprising. Yet questions still loom about what this moment portends for Israeli politics, and above all for Palestinians.
- Sawsan ZAHER: « The Israeli right is planning to ban Palestinian parties. Here’s how » (+972, March 23, 2023): click here!
If the Netanyahu government secures a forever majority, it will bolster the argument that an apartheid regime reigns between the river and the sea.
- Ibrahim HEWITT: « Where were Defenders of Israeli Democracy Hiding when Apartheid was Growing? » (Informed Comment, March 3, 2023): click here!
It is heartening to see so many Israelis taking to the streets to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned judicial reforms which will basically give politicians the final say on many judicial issues. It is being seen by his opponents as a way for him and other politicians facing criminal charges to get off the hook. He denies this, of course. The protesters declared March 9 last week to be a “Day of Resisting Dictatorship...”
- Walid HABBAS: « Shrinking the Conflict: Debunking Israel’s New Strategy » ( Al-Shabaka, March 6, 2023): click here!
Since 2021, Israeli leaders have proposed a new series of economic policies under the approach of “shrinking the conflict.” This strategy aims to afford Palestinians more economic opportunities and so-called freedoms as a way to sustain the Israeli occupation. In this policy brief, Al-Shabaka policy analyst Walid Habbas debunks the framework and explains why Palestinians will not be pacified with economic incentives.
- Nasim AHMED: « Israel's 'right to exist' challenged in expert testimonies » (Middle East Monitor, March 3, 2023): click here!
>"Israel's right to exist" has been challenged in expert testimonies by leading scholars Professor John Dugard and Professor Avi Shlaim. Dugard is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He has served intermittently as Judge of the International Court of Justice. His other high-profile appointment was at the United Nations where he served as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2001 to 2008. Shlaim, who is an author of several books on Israel and Palestine, is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College and an Emeritus Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford.
- Mitchell PLITNICK: « Israel has quietly annexed the West Bank and Biden stays silent » (Mondoweiss, Feb 25 , 2023): click here!
As Israeli attorney Michael Sfard put it: “Transferring powers to Israeli civilian hands is an act of de jure annexation because it entails removing power from the occupying military and placing it directly in the hands of the government — this is an expression of sovereignty. The bottom line is that the agreement signed today is simultaneously a giant leap of legal annexation of the West Bank and an act of perpetuating the regime’s apartheid nature.”
- Yousef MUNAYYER: « The settler-colonial origins of Israel’s constitutional crisis » (+972, 24 Feb 2023): click here!
The government’s assault on the judiciary is driven by the same urge as the state’s founders: to protect their power to privilege Jews over Palestinians.
- Eitay MACK: «Israel: Evidence of Bezalel Smotrich's support for genocide is clear. The US must act » (Middle East Eye, Feb 7 , 2023): click here!
AEver since entering the Knesset in 2015, Smotrich has made no secret of his genocidal desire to crush the Palestinians. Washington must add him to its sanctions list immediately.
- «‘Total Fascism’: Israeli Parliament Passes Death Penalty Bill Targeting Palestinians » The Palestine Chronicle, March 1 , 2023): click here!
Israeli lawmakers have voted in favor of a bill that would impose the death penalty on so-called “terrorists” accusing of killing Israelis. Backed by rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hardline allies, the bill has been bitterly opposed by Palestinians and foreign observers.
- Alex KANE: « Israel’s Raids on Palestinian Cities: An Explainer » (Jewish Currents, Feb 28 , 2023): click here!
A closer look at the IDF operations that are intensifying violence in Israel/Palestine.
- « Israel has erected 'a formal, full-fledged apartheid regime' » (MEMo, February 27, 2023): click here!
Israel has erected "a formal, full-fledged apartheid regime," the editorial of Haaretz newspaper said yesterday, in a stark warning about the direction of the occupation state.
- Haaretz Editorial: « Israel's Cabinet Just Advanced Full-fledged Apartheid in the West Bank » (Haaretz, February 26, 2023): click here!
Under the thunderous bombardment of the government coup, the cabinet last week advanced a regime-change measure in the West Bank that carries dramatic implications.
- Yaniv KUBOVICH: « Far-right Smotrich Gets Authority Over West Bank Policy, Outpost Eviction Left to Israeli Army » (Haaretz, Feb 23, 2023): click here!
The Civil Administration, Israel's governing body in the West Bank, will now be mostly under the authority of Finance Minister Smotrich, according to a deal brokered by Prime Minister Netanyahu between the two ministers in an attempt to avoid further bickering.
- Michael SCHAEFFER OMER-MAN: « Why Israel’s opposition won’t talk about the real goal of judicial overhaul » (+972, February 21, 2023): click here!
Government officials have explicitly said their legal reforms are about annexation. Opponents won't admit it because they share the same vision.
- Adam RAZ: « How Israel Used Flags to Assert Its Rule Over the Palestinians » (Haaretz, February 17, 2023): click here!
Historical documents expose the abysmal seriousness that Israel devoted to flag waving by Palestinians, and no less to the hoisting of the Israeli flag.
- Joseph MASSAD: « Mizrahi Jews in Israel faced decades of injustice, and still vote extreme right » (Middle East Eye, February 17, 2023): click here!
The current political melee of extreme right versus very extreme right has taken an ethnic turn.
- Michael BACHNER: « Exposé unmasks Israel-led disinformation team that meddled in dozens of elections » (TOI, February 15, 2023): click here!
Tal Hanan, aka ‘Jorge,’ revealed to have ability to hack accounts of top officials, plus software for quickly creating networks of 30,000 social media bots; he denies wrongdoing.
- Nimrod FLASCHENBERG: « The radicalization of the Israeli elites » (+972, February 14, 2023): click here!
In the struggle against the far-right government's plans for total control, Israel's elites could bring the regime to a breaking point.
- « Israel enters a dangerous period – public protests swell over Netanyahu’s plan to limit the power of the Israeli Supreme Court » The Conversation,, February 14, 2023): click here!
The Conversation asked political scientist and Israel expert Dov Waxman, the director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, for his insights into the current crisis.
- Carolina LANDSMANN: « Arabs Aren’t Invited to Israel’s Civil War » (Haaretz, February 13, 2023): click here!
At a Knesset caucus of the National Unity Party, party chair Benny Gantz said, as if addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “If you continue the way you are going, the responsibility for civil war that is brewing in Israeli society will be on you.”
- Ayelett SHANI: « 'Israel's Government Has neo-Nazi Ministers. It Really Does Recall Germany in 1933 » (Haaretz, February 10, 2023): click here!
Holocaust historian Daniel Blatman says he is astounded at how quickly Israel is hurtling toward fascism. 'The moment the judicial reform passes, we will be in another reality,' he says... What we are seeing today is a kind of genie that is bursting from the bottle, and I’m not sure it can be stopped. I am not embarrassed to say that I am afraid. I think that a demonstration of 100,000 or 200,000 won’t help. If two million people don’t rise up now and fight for democracy, fight for liberalism, the conclusion must be that Israeli society accepts what’s going on. That it’s already there.
- Yaniv KUBOVITCH: « West Bank IDF Commander Distributed Book to Subordinates on ‘Redeeming the Land’ » (Haaretz, February 6, 2023): click here!
Brig. Gen. Avi Bluth gave his brigade commanders 'Ours in Tabu: The Secrets of Land Redeemers From Our Father Abraham to the Young Settlements' saying it would help them better understand the status of the land.
- Eva ILLOUZ: « Israel’s Fraudulent Notion of ‘Jewish Democracy’ Has Been Exposed. What’s Next? » (Haaretz, February 3, 2023): click here!
We are in an era of disillusionment, which makes us see reality unvarnished. Zionist nationalism is no longer a unifying goal.
- Mordy MILLER: "Jewish Law Above All: Recordings Reveal Far-right Knesset Member’s Plan to Turn Israel Into a Theocracy” (Haaretz, Jan 19, 2023): click here!
Deputy Minister Avi Maoz is establishing a government agency that aims to eradicate Israel’s secular identity. Dozens of recordings, speeches and articles by Maoz and his mentor, Rabbi Zvi Thau, reveal their plan to bring Israel ‘closer to redemption’.
- Al Mezan Center for Human Rights: "Al Mezan expresses alarm over latest arbitrary measures imposed by new Israeli government against Palestinian detainees" (press release January 10, 2023): click here!
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights notes with deep concern the new arbitrary measures implemented by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) against Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody. As part of these measures, around 70 Palestinian detainees were transferred from their solitary confinement cell in Hadarim prison to another solitary cell in the notorious Nafha prison, which is considered one of the harshest and most severe of the occupation prisons. This move came after the newly appointed Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited Nafha on Thursday, 5 January 2023.
- Michael BRENNER: "Israel’s new hard-line government has made headlines – the bigger demographic changes that caused it, not so much” (CounterPunch, Jan 9, 2023): click here!
Israel’s new goverment is the most right-wing and religious leadership the country has had in the 75 years of its existence, as many observers have pointed out. And this style of leadership may last because it represents the next generation of Israelis.
- Richard FALK: "Decoding Israeli Extremism” (CounterPunch, Jan 6, 2023): click here!
Anyone with but half eye open during the last several decades should by now realize that the undisclosed Zionist Long Game preceded the establishment of Israel in 1948, and aims at extending Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Occupied Palestine, with the possible exception of Gaza. The significance of Netanyahu’s public affirmation of this previously secretive long game is that it may be reaching its final phase and the far-right governing coalition is poised to pursue closure.
- Ramzy BAROUD: "Netanyahu’s new government accentuates West’s hypocrisy ” (Arab News, Jan 2, 2023): click here!
Even before the new Israeli government was officially sworn in on Dec. 29, angry reactions began emerging, not only among Palestinians and other Middle Eastern governments, but also among Israel’s historic allies in the West. As early as Nov. 2, top US officials conveyed to Axios that the Biden administration was “unlikely to engage with Jewish supremacist politician, Itamar Ben-Gvir.”
- Mahommad Bakram BALAWI: "Netanyahu redefines Israel ” (Middle East Monitor, Dec 31, 2022): click here!
The results of the last round of Israeli elections must have represented a big blow to US hopes and efforts as they placed their bets on the former caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid. However, the results have shown that they bet on the losing horse. In essence, though, there is not much difference between Lapid and Benjamin Netanyahu regarding political outcome, except for maintaining the long-propagated image of Israel.
- Janan ABDU: "How the new 'Ben-Gvir law' will further repress Palestinians” (Middle East Monitor, Dec 30, 2022): click here!
A dangerous amendment passed by the Israeli parliament now gives far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir expanded powers and authority over the police to further target Palestinians in Israel.
- Haaretz Editorial, December 26, 2022: "Ben-Gvir Is Paving the Way for His Racist Friends": click here!
The coalition agreements between Likud and its natural partners reveal the program of the ultranationalist, xenophobic, minority-bashing, misogynistic, homophobic extreme right. These agreements are intended to ensure that the new government promotes the worldview and policies of its members. Because this is an extreme right-wing government, the parties have agreed to promote the required legislative changes to enshrine in law the foundations of this branch of the right: racism and discrimination.
- Marwan BISHARA: "“Netanyahu, the godfather of modern Israeli fascism” (Al-Jazeera, Dec 21, 2022): click here!
“Corruption aside, Israel’s far-right fanatics are defined by some basic fascistic characteristics, such as belief in a divine and historic nationhood and tradition that is superior to any notion of modern democracy and citizenship; a pronounced sense of aggrievance and victimhood; militaristic tendencies; and cult worship with a golden Netanyahu medallion of loyalty to go with it. They are also driven by an avowed racism towards the Palestinians, whom they view as interlopers in their promised land.
- Joseph MASSAD: "L’émigration des Israéliens et l’échec du projet colonial de peuplement" (Pour la Palestine, 21 décembre, 2022): click here!
Le journal israélien Maariv a fait état cette semaine d’un nouveau mouvement dont l’objectif est de faciliter l’émigration des juifs israéliens vers les États-Unis à la suite des récentes élections israéliennes qui, selon eux, modifient le rapport de l’État sioniste à la religion.
- Edo KONRAD: "How this government will turn its Jewish critics into dissidents" (+972, Dec 16, 2022): click here!
The transformation of Israeli leftists into dissidents is a reminder that no one is safe from the attempts to turn the 'wrong kind' of Jews into enemies.
- Sophia GOODFRIEND: " The Gamified Occupation. A Fauda-themed escape room in Tel Aviv gives customers a taste of military rule." Jewish Currents, Dec 16, 2022): click here!
Though consumer demand for sanitized war games, which recast the horrors of occupation as a form of titillation, grew in a period when the reality of military rule seemed to be receding from Israelis’ everyday lives, this violent “experience economy” has continued to draw customers in a moment of escalating bloodshed: 2022 was the deadliest year for Israeli civilians since 2008, with 27 people killed in attacks, including 17 inside Israel and 10 in the West Bank. (Israelis are estimated to have killed more than six times that many Palestinians in the same period; more Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in 2022 than in any year since 2005.) Right-wing ethnonationalist politics are ascendant, with elected officials calling on soldiers to shoot Palestinians for throwing stones, and promoting the unrestrained bombing of schools and hospitals in Gaza.
- Orly NOY: "Beware the agents of a Jewish theocracy" (+972, Dec 15, 2022): click here!
Bezalel Smotrich promises to pursue “gentle” religious rule. Iranians will tell you that’s exactly what Ayatollah Khomeini said of the Islamic Revolution.
- Chris HEDGES, "Israel And The Rise Of Jewish Fascism" (Popular Resistance, Dec 12, 2022): click here!
The mask is being lifted from the face of Israel’s apartheid state, exposing a grinning death’s head that portends the obliteration of the few restraints against killing Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed coalition government of Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots represents a seismic change in Israel, one that will exacerbate Israel’s pariah status, erode external support for Israel, fuel a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, and create irreconcilable political divides within the Jewish state.
- Afif ABU MUCH: "On US visit, Arab Israeli leader warns against Netanyahu’s new government" (Al-Monitor, Dec 12, 2022): click here!
In a meeting with the United Nations secretary-general, Hadash-Ta’al party head Ayman Odeh blamed successive governments of neglecting to protect Israeli Arab citizens.
- Amira HASS: "Internal Documents Reveal Israeli Settlers' Dedication to Ousting ‘Arabs’ From West Bank" (Haaretz, Dec 12, 2022): click here!
An internal Civil Administration document, in the form of a map and Excel spreadsheet, shows the close cooperation of state and settlers in dispossessing Palestinians.
- Elisheva GOLDBERG: "Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Militia " (Jewish Currents, Dec 6, 2022): click here!
An IDF assault on left-wing activists in Hebron reveals an emboldened security force—and signals a step toward annexation.
- Sylvain CYPEL: “Itamar Ben Gvir, l’ascension d’un fasciste israélien vers le pouvoir” (orientXXI, 5 déc 2022): click here!
L’ascension aux plus hautes fonctions gouvernementales en Israël d’Itamar Ben Gvir, un « suprémaciste juif » assumé et partisan de l’utilisation des méthodes les plus brutales à l’égard des Palestiniens est donc acté. Il devrait être le ministre de la sécurité nationale du prochain gouvernement de Benyamin Nétanyahou. Hier considéré comme un paria, son parcours incarne l’évolution de la société israélienne en trois décennies.
- Awdah HATHALEEN: "In Masafer Yatta, teachers like me can’t guarantee our students an education" (+972, Nov 15, 2022): click here!
With schools facing demolition orders and soldiers detaining students and teachers for hours, obstacles to education are becoming insurmountable.
- Odeh BISHARAT: “A New Jewish-Arab Opposition Must Rise From Ashes” (Haaretz, Nov 14, 2022): click here!
Why can’t we see Zehava Galon, Ayman Odeh, Ahmad Tibi and many others marching together in a peace bloc espousing equality and social justice?
- Anshel PFEFFER: “Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Politicians Prioritize Power Over Judaism” (Haaretz, Nov 13, 2022): click here!
If the Haredi leaders truly wanted to preserve Torah studying, they would demand high stipends for far fewer religious scholars. Instead, they’re keeping their own power at the expense of Israel’s economy.
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: “Itamar Ben Gvir: the Rebbe’s Disciple. Kingmaker in incoming Israeli fascist government is ardent Kahane disciple” (R.S., Nov 11, 2022): click here!
Itamar Ben Gvir spoke, as he does every year, at the annual memorial for Meir Kahane, the pioneering spirit of Judeo-fascism. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1991. Every year his disciples gather to commemorate him. Normally, one would say this is nothing new and there is hardly anything especially newsworthy about it. But last week’s election changed all that. Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party became the third largest in the Knesset and offered Bibi Netanyahu the majority he needed to win.
- Jonathan OFIR: “Meet the new kingmakers of Israeli politics” (Mondoweiss, Nov 11, 2022): click here!
The racist, homophobic, ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism list was the big winner in Israel's most recent election. It is also a perfect reflection of where Israel is heading.
- Thomas VESCOVi: “Israël : la victoire finale du néo-sionisme ?” (Middle East Eye, Nov 9, 2022): click here!
Le retour au pouvoir de Netanyahou et la montée en puissance de partis suprématistes juifs et racistes questionnent l’avenir d’Israël. Et si cette force politique n’était que la suite logique du sionisme, en tant qu’idéologie nationaliste et coloniale ?
- Peter BEINART: “IIsrael’s Ascendant Far Right Can’t Be Understood by Analogy” (Jewish Currents, Nov 7, 2022): click here!
In other countries, the right clashes with the center over the basic nature of the state—but Israel’s Itamar Ben-Gvir and his rivals are on the same page about ethnocracy..
- “Israel – definitely not business as usual” (Jewish Voice for Labour, Nov 7, 2022): click here!
The Jewish world is still reeling at the outcome of the recent Israeli elections. Many on the left are, too. Some are asking if anything has changed? Your web editor thinks it has. It is one thing to point to what actually existing Zionism has become in recent decades, an oppressive, expansionist power acting with impunity in the occupied territories. It is another to bear witness to the reality of an Israeli government dependent on the support of open fascists and say it is business as usual.
- Gideon LEVY, “Ben-Gvir’s Army in the West Bank” (Haaretz, Nov 6, 2022): click here!
Two out of 10 soldiers voted for Religious Zionism, the slate that includes Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party. Two out of 10 soldiers are Kahanists. Two out of 10 soldiers are in favor of transfer, annexation, death to terrorists, death to Arabs.
- Orly NOY, “The generals are the supremacists of the past. Ben Gvir is the supremacist of now” (+972, Nov 3, 2022): click here!
The Kahanist lawmaker offers a ‘democratized’ version of supremacy: taking power from the old elites and handing it to the marginalized Jewish masses.
- Shir HEVER: “ Meet the new Knesset members of the far-right Religious Zionism party” (Middle East Eye, Nov 3, 2022): click here!
Several of the party's notorious MPs will likely get cabinet positions in the new Netanyahu-led government.
- Joel CARMEL, “Israel should take the diaspora seriously when it has something to say” (Jewish News, Oct 28, 2022): click here!
Joel Carmel, who moved to Israel from the UK, on why the rise to prominence of anti-Arab, anti-gay, anti-progressive Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir was inevitable.
- Gideon LEVY, “How Ties Between Mizrahi Jews and Arabs Were Ruined – With Help From Ashkenazi Israelis” (Haaretz, Oct 31, 2022): click here!
Scholar Hillel Cohen embarks on a journey to the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering in his new book a sharp indictment of the coun-try's racist elites.
- Yaniv KUBOVITCH: "Israeli Soldier Arrested for Joining Settler Attack on IDF Unit in West Bank" (Haaretz, Oct 20, 2022) : click here!
Israeli army chief and PM Lapid slam 'criminal' behavior from the settlers, who threw stones at Palestinian vehicles and attacked soldiers with pepper spray, injuring a general and another soldier.
- Corey SHERMAN: "The GOP’s Plan to Build the Third Temple" (Jewish Currents, Oct 7, 2022) : click here!
Republicans are working with Kahanist activists to advance a violent vision of Jewish control over Jerusalem’s holy sites.
- Noam SHEIZAF: "Kahanism’s triumphant makeover" (+972, Oct 3, 2022): click here!
Itamar Ben Gvir, the star of Israel’s most far-right party, is thriving off of a national political discourse that allows him to accomplish what his predecessors could not: bringing Kahanism to the mainstream.
- Mazal MUALEM: "Israel's Lapid praised by left, lambasted by right, over backing two-state solution" (Al-Monitor, Sept 23, 2022): click here!
Prime Minister Yair Lapid took quite a lot of fire Sept. 22, after expressing his support for the two-state solution in his UN General Assembly speech.
- Judy MALTZ: "Why So Many Young Israelis Adore This Racist Politician" (Haaretz, Sept 13, 2022): click here!
Itamar Ben-Gvir could become a member of Israel's cabinet after November’s election, with young voters among his most ardent supporters – even, it seems, in liberal enclaves like Tel Aviv.
- Asaf ELIA-SHALEV: "Inequality between Israel’s Mizrahi, Ashkenazi Jews to be measured in new statistics" (Times of Israel, Sept 10, 2022): click here!
New policy will make it possible to learn far more than is currently known about gaps in wealth, education and other factors between Jews of different ethnicities.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Israel's Fake News Army" (Haaretz, Sept 6, 2022): click here!
It took four months and lots of twists and turns for the Israel Defense Forces to acknowledge what had been quite clear already within a day of the incident: The Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire.
- Philip WEISS: "Israel heads further right: 30-40 percent of young support fascistic Jewish party" (Mondoweiss, August 10, 2022): click here!
The Gaza attack has heightened Israel's right-wing political tilt as it approaches its next election.
- "Hoogste rechter: Palestijnen in Israël mag staatsburgerschap worden ontnomen" (The Rights Forum, 1 augustus, 2022): click here!
Het Israëlisch Hooggerechtshof staat toe dat Palestijnse inwoners van Israël het staatsburgerschap mag worden ontnomen als sprake is van een ‘schending van loyaliteit aan de staat’. Het besluit vormt een middel voor de staat om zich van Palestijnse inwoners te kunnen ontdoen.
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: "Former IDF General Complains “Leftist” is Equivalent to N-Word" (R.S., August 4, 2022): click here!
Astonishing racist comment from MK who seeks to lead Israel's "Left Zionist" Party.
- Jeremy SHARON: "Understanding the ominous rise of Israel’s most notorious ultra-nationalist" (TOI, August 4, 2022): click here!
With a poll giving Religious Zionism 13 seats if headed by extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, a look at where these votes are coming from and what they say about where Israel may be headed.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israelis Refuse to Be Haunted by the Ghosts of Massacres Past. What Does It Mean for the Future?" (Haaretz, August 3, 2022): click here!
- « Israeli Jews Call: Stop Israel's Apartheid! » An Open Letter to the International Community" (#IsraelisAgainstApartheid): click here!
- Amira HASS: "The Spiritual World of the Hebrew Bands Promoting Expulsion of Palestinians" (Haaretz, July 18, 2022): click here!
Last week another 16 Palestinian families were forced to leave their encampments. What goes on in the minds of the skullcap-wearers responsible for this?
- Nir Avishai COHEN: "Israeli Publisher Shelved My Anti-occupation Book to Avoid ‘Upsetting Customers’" (Haaretz, July 9, 2022): click here!
I’ve felt for a long time that things are getting darker. Each time the light is dimmed a little more. Countless words have been written about things going on among us, and in recent years I really feel the incitement against me because of my opposition to the occupation.
- Judah Ari GROSS: "After bar mitzvah overrun by zealots, parents lament: ‘We saw Israel at its lowest’" (The Times of Israel, July 5, 2022): click here!
Ultra-Orthodox boys and men disrupted prayer services at the egalitarian section of the Western Wall as police stood by; those in attendance say it shook their connection to Israel.
- Gideon LEVY: "Standard Israeli Army Issue" (Haaretz, June 12, 2022): click here!
- Michael SFARD: "We Are All Herzogs, We Are All Occupiers" (Haaretz, June 8, 2022): click here!
- Rita SABAH: "Ces juifs orientaux honnis par Israël" (OrientxxI, 7 juin, 2022): click here!
Dans un film qui sort le 8 juin 2022 en France,"Mizrahim, les oubliés de la terre promise"(2022), Michale Boganim revient sur l’histoire de ces juifs orientaux « montés » en Israël et qui se heurteront au mépris et au racisme des élites ashkénazes.
- Or KASHTI: "60 Percent of Israeli Jews Favor Segregation From Arabs, Survey Finds" (Haaretz, June 6, 2022): click here!
The support rose from 45 percent last year, before riots broke out in a number of mixed Jewish-Arab cities during the last round of fighting in Gaza.
- Carrie KELLER-LYNN: "There’s no place like Homesh: The West Bank’s most politically charged hilltop" (Times of Israel, May 31, 2022): click here!
Jewish sovereignty, religious imperative, and security arguments meet on the road to an illegal outpost.
- Ofer ADERET: "Zionist Arabs, Trains From Berlin: What Herzl Got Wrong About Israel" (Haaretz, May 26, 2022): click here!
How did Theodor Herzl envisage the Jewish state in his 1902 novel ‘Altneuland’? Not an awful lot like it actually is 120 years later.
- Haaretz Editorial: « Israel's Torah Defense Forces » (Haaretz, April 14, 2022): click here!
An evil wind is blowing in the Israel Defense Forces. The messianic speech given by Samaria Brigade Commander Col. Roi Zweig, in a briefing to troops before they entered Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus to provide security while repair work was being done, should be keeping IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and all Israelis up at night.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Don't Cave to the Vanguard of Political Persecution in Israel" (Haaretz, April 5, 2022): click here!
Sapir College’s cancellation of the exhibition “At the Edge of the Sky” after Im Tirtzu protested the inclusion of Hillel Roman’s “No” was a capitulation to political persecution. It is another link in a long chain of attacks on artists and to art. The last and worst of these was the closure of the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art following the removal of David Reeb’s “Jerusalem” at Mayor Carmel Shama-Hacohen’s demand.
- Eric H.YOFFIE, “Fleeing Russia’s Brutality, Ukrainians Reaching Israel Face a Terrible Surprise” (Haaretz, April 5, 2022): click here!
In Israel, a cruel, corrupt religious ordeal awaits thousands of Ukrainian refugees from Russia’s invasion. It will have fateful consequences for their future and for the character of the Jewish state itself.
- Haaretz Editorial: "The Extreme Right in Israel Is Realizing Its Power " (Haaretz, March 12, 2021): click here!
The [citizenship] law does not allow Arab Israeli citizens who marry Arabs from the West Bank to form a family in Israel, since it prevents West Bank partners from obtaining legal status in Israel following their marriage to an Israeli citizen, a status afforded to partners of Jewish citizens.
- Or KASHTI: "Kids at Israeli Bedouin School Are Learning How to Spend the Day Without Water" (Haaretz, Jan 2, 2021): click here!
The school is the only one in Israel that lacks a regular water supply, and the students wait every day for tankers to show up – which they often don’t, or come half empty.
- Odeh BISHARAT: "Israel Will Not Have a Joe Biden" (Haaretz, Nov 16, 2020): click here!
I regret to inform you that there will be no Israeli Joe Biden. Due to the nationalist virus. The nationalist virus distorts reasoning, blinds vision and dulls emotions.
- Danny ZAKEN: "Push to revamp education funding falls flat in Israel" (Al-Monitor, July 20, 2020): click here!
Despite a grand five-year plan to invest in education for Arab-Israelis, the gaps between the Jewish and Arab education systems in Israel have only grown.
- Or KASHTI: "In Israeli Textbooks, the Palestinians Are All but Invisible" (Haaretz, June 19, 2020): click here!
A study by Avner Ben-Amos of Tel Aviv University shows that the occupation is rarely mentioned in history, civics or geography textbooks. A book intended for religious state schools presents the argument over the territories in a few sentences, but describes the ‘67 war as an act of “liberation” that enabled “a return to Judea and Samaria, areas where our patriarchs and matriarchs lived".
- Or KASHTI: "The Israeli Civics Teacher Canned for Challenging His Students" (Haaretz, Jan 30, 2020): click here!
Meir Baruchin, fired for remarks about the IDF and ‘rot’ in Israel, stands by his methods of teaching high school students.
- Shira KADARI-OVADIA: "Israel's Secular Jewish Education Reverses Shrinking Trend, Study Shows" (Haaretz, Dec 31, 2019): click here!
In lower grades, proportion of Israeli students going to secular state schools actually grew state since parents feel religious schools have become 'too extreme'... Another contributing factor, though a much smaller one, is the rise in the number of Arab students studying in secular Jewish schools rather than Arab ones.
- Or KASHTI: "What Israeli Students Will Learn" (Haaretz, Dec 24, 2019): click here!
The Education Ministry’s recent directive to high school civics teachers with regard to the so-called nation-state law left no room for doubt: “The students will know and understand the content of the law and its components;” the students will understand that the law contains the characteristics of the State of Israel as a Jewish state;” and, most important, “the students will internalize the vision of the state, including Israel’s being the state of the Jewish people.”
- Haaretz Editorial: "Israel’s Education Minister for Racism " (Haaretz, Dec 23, 2019): click here!
A rotten stench of racism is wafting from the decision by the head of the Habayit Hayehudi party, Education Minister Rafi Peretz, to join forces for the coming election with the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, which spews hatred of Arabs in the spirit of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. With this decision, Peretz has made himself unworthy of serving as education minister of all Israel’s children. We must not remain silent about granting such legitimacy to Jewish racism.
- Gideon LEVY: "Life after Netanyahu" (Haaretz, Dec 15, 2019): click here!
Someday in the not-too-distant future it’s going to happen: Benjamin Netanyahu will no longer be prime minister. The sun will rise in the east and set in the west the same as always but for many Israelis, perhaps for most, it will be one of the greatest days of their lives.
- Or KASHTI & Noa SHPIGEL: "Town Slams 'Murderous Terrorists,' Nixes Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence Meeting for Students" (Haaretz, Dec 12, 2019): click here!
Meeting with bereaved families meant to open dialogue about coexistence cancelled after politicians and parents complain of children being exposed to 'terrorists'.
- Or KASHTI: "Time to Cancel the State-religious School System" (Haaretz, Dec 11, 2019): click here!
The 2018-19 school year saw the highest ever average investment in students at state-religious high schools, at 40,433 shekels per student – 29 percent more than what a student in a state secular high school received and about 65 percent more than the allocation for an Arab high school student. This is no one-off occurrence. Between 2012 and 2018, the budget for religious high school students soared some 55 percent, nearly twice as much compared to the increases made to budgets of the other two school systems. According to Central Bureau of Statistics data, religious schools have an average of a teacher per 5.2 students, compared to one per 10.4 students in Arab education.
- Or KASHTI: "Israeli Parents Push Back on Religious Indoctrination in Schools" (Haaretz, Nov 20, 2019): click here!
According to the Education Ministry, 'Jewish-Israeli culture' is taught in a pluralistic and sometimes critical fashion – But countless examples prove otherwise.
- Jack KHOURY: "Poll: 49% of Israeli Arabs in Favor of Joint List Supporting Gantz-led Minority Gov't" (Haaretz, Nov 17, 2019): click here!
According to the Army Radio poll, 37 percent of Israeli Arabs support the Joint List actually joining a minority government headed by Kahol Lavan leader Benny Gantz.
- Noga BREMMER SAMIA, "Israeli Schools Teach Pro-settler Religious Nationalism Is the Only Way to Be Jewish" (Haaretz, Oct 31, 2019): click here!
Raising a pious, pro-settler generation: Israeli schoolkids are now targets of a state-sponsored campaign of political and religious indoctrination.
- Jonathan MIZRACHI: "How the once-fringe Jewish Temple Movement is going mainstream" (+972, Aug 14, 2019): click here!
The Jewish Temple Movement has for years tried to change the status quo in one of the most contested holy sites in the world. Now the most mainstream figures on the Israeli right are finally listening.
- Or KASHTI: "Israel Founds National Council to Defend Secular Schools" (Haaretz, June 26, 2019): click here!
Goal is to guide schools toward democratic, humanistic and liberal values and defend from religious and ultra-nationalist-driven interference by the Education Ministry.
- Tomer PERSICO: "Why Israel Will Never Be Governed by Jewish Religious Law" (Haaretz, June 7, 2019): click here!
- Anshel PFEFFER: "Smotrich's 'Laws of the Torah' Are as Delusional as the Christian Right's 'Judeo-Christian Values'" (Haaretz, June 6, 2019): click here!
Far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich is fluent in Judaism's canonical texts. He's also a minority-bashing ignoramus married to a mythological theocratic past constructing a 'Torah' in his own brutish image.
- Meirav ARLOSOROFF: "Here Comes the Destruction of Israel" (Haaretz, Oct 26, 2018): click here!
The Trump administration’s chaos may be worse than what’s going on here, but that’s cold comfort given the Netanyahu government’s methodological actions to undermine the state.
- ADALAH Position Paper: "Proposed Basic Law: Israel - The Nation State of the Jewish People" (Update: 16 July 2018, pdf, 5p.): click here!
Adalah argues that this Basic Law falls within the bounds of absolute prohibitions under international law, and is therefore illegitimate as a colonial law with characteristics of apartheid.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Anti-Zionist Law" (Haaretz, April 30, 2018): click here!
Knesset sought to make clear that the purpose of the nation-state law is to fundamentally change the balance between Israel as a Jewish state and a democratic one.
- Nir HASSON: "The Untold Story of the Jews Who Left Mandatory Palestine" (Haaretz, Feb 16, 2018): click here!
In the three decades before Israel’s establishment, some 60,000 Jews left the country for financial or ideological reasons. A new book reveals a dark corner of Zionist history, including the forced expulsion of ‘burdensome’ Jewish immigrants.
- Jack KHOURY: "Arab Citizens Want to Integrate Into Israel but Refuse to Be a Trampled Minority" (Haaretz, Dec 11, 2017): click here!
People on the right must understand that the country's Arabs are comfortable with their Israeli citizenship but still cherish their national connection to the Palestinians.
- Jonathan COOK: "How will US Jerusalem move affect Israel’s far right?" (J.C., Dec 10): click here!
Donald Trump’s recognition this week of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, overturning seven decades of US policy in the region and effectively ending hopes of a two-state solution, has provoked dire warnings.
- Danny ZAKEN: "Israel's 'new ultra-Orthodox'" (Al-Monitor, Dec 1, 2017): click here!
The first annual conference of the ultra-Orthodox faction of the Labor Party took place on Nov. 26. While people mostly associate the ultra-Orthodox with the Israeli right, it might come as a surprise that the Labor Party has an ultra-Orthodox faction.
- Jonathan LIS: "Knesset Approves Controversial Bill Prescribing Jewish Law in Absence of Legal Precedent" (Haaretz, Nov 14, 2017): click here!
Critics say the bill, which was passed 36-30, discriminates against women, non-Jews and members of the LGBT community. 'This road is leading us to a halakhic state'.
- Judy MALTZ: "Most Israeli Jews Would Deny Voting Rights to Arab Citizens Who Reject Zionist Narrative, Survey Finds" (Haaretz, Nov 7, 2017): click here!
New survey by Israel Democracy Institute finds most Arabs in Israel don’t consider 'Palestinian' their primary identity.
- Edo KONRAD, “In the crosshairs: Israel's war of attrition on political dissent"(+972, Oct 22, 2017): click here!
The attempt to outlaw Israeli human rights organizations means the Jewish state may soon be forced to shed its image of a liberal democratic state. Are Israelis ready for that?
- Shaul ARIELI: "Zionism Doesn’t Need 'Divine Promise' to Justify Jewish Nation-state" (Haaretz, Oct 20, 2017): click here!
By relying on faith-based arguments devoid of any diplomatic or legal validity, Israeli politicians are undermining the solid foundations of the Zionist narrative, which have been accepted by the international community for a century.
- Shlomi ELDAR: "Israeli Labor chief rules out alliance with Israeli-Arab party" (Al-Monitor, Oct 18, 2017): click here!
New Labor Party chair Avi Gabbay made a few surprising statements this week that made it abundantly clear he was abandoning the party’s traditional ideological stand as leader of the center-left, hoping to lure voters on the political right and gain sufficient support to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- Jonathan LIS: "From Mosquitoes to Cable Cars: Why Israel Keeps Extending Its State of Emergency" (Haaretz, Oct 18, 2017): click here!
Government ministries have not managed to this day to update or replace dozens of emergency orders, a large number of them economic and consumer regulations, whose existence are dependent on Israel being in an ongoing state of emergency.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Israeli Labor Party Leader: The New Likudnik" (Oct 18, 2017): click here!
Labor party members, like their colleagues in the left-wing camp, deserve a leader who will show loyalty to their basic values, not Likud's.
- Chemi SHALEV: "The Right-wing Assault on Israeli Democracy" (Oct 17, 2017): click here!
A plan to outlaw Breaking the Silence is part of a campaign that aims to erase the liberal democracy that Israel once aspired to be.
- Amira HASS: "The Closure of the West Bank and Gaza Has Lasted 26 Years" (Oct 16, 2017): click here!
When Israel announces a lockdown of the occupied territories, it creates a false impression that the Palestinians normally have freedom of movement – that hasn't existed since January 1991.
- Haaretz Editorial: "A Left for Jews Only" (Oct 16, 2017): click here!
A Labor Party leader's declaration he wouldn't include Arab parties in a potential government was an attempt to find favor in eyes of right-wing groups and Arab-haters”.
- Barak RAVID & Chaim LEVINSON: "Netanyahu Wants Probe of Foreign Funding of Left-wing Groups Akin to U.S. Probe Into Russian Election Interference" (Haaretz, Oct 15, 2017): click here!
Faction leaders unanimously decide to form parliamentary inquiry committee into funding for 'political organizations and activities meant to hurt Israeli soldiers'.
- Akiva ELDAR: "Moneyed interests blocking path to peace in Mideast" (Al Monitor, Oct 5, 2017): click here!
Once Israeli commentators had said everything they could possibly say about alleged connections between the perpetrator of the Las Vegas massacre and Islamic terrorism, the media shifted its attention to Americans' "intolerably easy access to guns," mixing a measure of scorn with pity.
- Jonathan COOK: "How Kurdish independence underpins Israel’s plan to reshape the Middle East" (Redress Information & Analysis, Oct 3, 2017): click here!
Palestinians and Israelis watched last week’s referendum of Iraq’s Kurds with special interest. Israeli officials and many ordinary Palestinians were delighted – for very different reasons – to see an overwhelming vote to split away from Iraq.
- Ben CASPIT: "Is Netanyahu's party ready to divide Jerusalem?" (Al Monitor, Oct 2, 2017): click here!
Likud Knesset member Anat Berko arrived at the Prime Minister’s Office on Sept. 24 with a group of experts with whom she about a year ago developed a plan to change the face of Jerusalem.
- Susan ABULHAWA: "Invention of the Mizrahim" (Al Jazeera, Sept 2O, 2017): click here!
Israel invented the word Mizrahim to strip Arab Jews of their histories as they tried to do with Palestinians.
- Aaron RABINOWITZ: "War on Hebrew: For Some ultra-Orthodox, There Can Be Only One Language" (Haaretz, Sept 2O, 2017): click here!
As members of insular Hasidic communities integrate into Israeli society, spiritual leaders are waging a campaign to preserve Yiddish.
- Judy MALTZ: "Whisper It, but Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Community Is Starting to Talk About Homosexuality" (Haaretz, Sept 18, 2017): click here!
Observers say there is a growing understanding among many Haredim that the previously taboo subject can no longer be ignored.
- Anshel PFEFFER: "The Myth of ultra-Orthodox Jews as the Last Survivors of 'Original' Judaism " (Haaretz, Sept 18, 2017): click here!
Israel's haredi politicians defend their draft exemption by referencing millennia of Jewish men who studied in yeshiva night and day. That never happened.
- Jonathan LIS: "Israeli Bill Prescribes Jewish Law in Absence of Legal Precedent" (Haaretz, Sept 17, 2017): click here!
The proposal of the so-called 'Nation-State Law' has been submitted as a regular law rather than as a basic law, which has constitutional status.
- Orly NOY: "Is Israel turning its Bedouin citizens into a stateless people?" (+972, Sept 15, 2017): click here!
Israel has been systematically revoking citizenship from its Bedouin citizens without as much as telling them. Is this a harbinger of things to come?
- Gideon LEVY: "A Southern Israeli Village's Fate: Bedouin Out, Jews In. Eight months ago" (Haaretz, Sept 7, 2017): click here!
Yakub Abu al-Kiyan was killed by police during a protest against the demolition of Bedouin houses to make way for Jewish ones; his widow and 10 kids are living in a tent next to the rubble of their home.
- Judy MALTZ: "In First, Israel Threatens to Cut Theater’s Funding Over Show for Palestinian Poet” (Haaretz, Sept 6, 2017): click here!
Move is seen as part of Culture Minister Miri Regev’s ongoing war against Israel’s left-wing arts community.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Zionist Tango” (Haaretz, Sept 3, 2017): click here!
Why the racist honesty of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is preferable to the fake views of the Israeli left.
- Daniel BLATMAN: "The New National Zionism” (Haaretz, Sept 1, 2017): click here!
Israeli Justice Minister Shaked’s worldview recalls the racist xenophobia of the southern U.S. states during the 1930s and onward.
- Haaretz Editorial: "For Israeli Coexistence: Arabic Studies” (Haaretz, Sept 1, 2017): click here!
None of the education ministers have done much to strengthen Arabic studies. None had the courage and desire to see the language as a bridge between groups.
- Farah NAJJAR: "How Israeli citizens are becoming stateless” (Al-Jazeera, Aug 31, 2017): click here!
Palestinian lawmakers, residents say an Israeli policy rendering thousands of Bedouins stateless is 'blatantly illegal'.
- Ron CAHLILI: "The Danger of Ignoring Mizrahi Jews' History” (Haaretz, Aug 26, 2017): click here!
The more you delve into Mizrahi Jewish history, the more you understand what a real alternative it is, one that could help to neutralize the Israeli fear machine.
- Michael Schaeffer OMER-MAN: "Israel is systematically revoking Arabs' citizenship. Don't act surprised” (+972, Aug 26, 2017): click here!
Hundreds if not thousands of Bedouin are having their citizenship revoked seemingly for no reason, according to ‘Haaretz.’ Shocking as it may be, it’s not surprising. Citizenship has never provided non-Jewish Israelis with the same security it gives their Jewish compatriots.
- Eliran RUBIN: "Israel Revokes Citizenship of Hundreds of Negev Bedouin, Leaving Them Stateless ” (Haaretz, Aug 25, 2017): click here!
Some were citizens for 40 years, served in the army and paid their taxes, but had their status canceled with a single keystroke and no further explanation.
- Eliran RUBIN: "Tiny IDF Unit Is Brains Behind Israeli Army Artificial Intelligence” (Haaretz, Aug 15, 2017): click here!
The operational research unit of the Military Intelligence Unit — the software unit of the Israeli army’s J6/C4i Directorate’s Lotem Unit — doesn’t look like the kind of place where state-of-the art artificial intelligence is being put to work.
- Tzvia GREENFIELD: "Nobody in Israel Is Asking: What About the Workers?” (Haaretz, Aug 7, 2017): click here!
A global problem comes home: Some 1,500 Haifa Chemicals workers are about to lose their jobs, and neither the government, nor the Histadrut, nor the left has an answer for them.
- Jonathan COOK: "Netanyahu alarms Umm al-Fahm with talk of population swap” (JC, Aug 3, 2017): click here!
As part of a future peace deal, Netanyahu reportedly told the Americans during a meeting in late June, Umm al-Fahm and its neighbouring communities would be transferred to a future Palestinian state.
- Jonathan OFIR: "New poll shows 2/3 of Jewish Israelis want death penalty for Palestinian attackers” (Mondoweiss, Aug 3, 2017): click here!
There’s a big noise in Israel these days – once again, the discussion of the death penalty for Palestinian ‘terrorists’ has come to the fore. One has to put that word, ‘terrorists’, in quotation marks, because the Israeli Peace Index survey published yesterday, asked the question not only concerning applying the death penalty for Palestinians killing civilians, but also, specifically, concerning Palestinian killings of Israeli soldiers.
- Daniel MONTERESCU: "Arab Lives Matter: How a Police Killing in Jaffa Could Spark a Movement” (Haaretz, Aug 2, 2017): click here!
Mass demonstrations in Jaffa following Israel Police’s killing of an unarmed Arab man resemble Black Lives Matter resistance to police brutality and discrimination throughout the U.S.
- Charlie ZIMMERMAN: "Jewish resistance to occupation is also fighting for the future of Judaism itself” (Mondoweiss, July 31): click here!
In May of 2017, I traveled to the West Bank as a member of a delegation organized by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV). We were 130 Diaspora Jews, mostly Americans, working in partnership with Palestinian and Israeli resistance organizations to peacefully oppose the occupation of the East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
- Alex SINCLAIR: "Israel's Exporting Its Ultra-nationalist, Religious Right, and Diaspora Kids Are the Target” (Haaretz, July 28): click here!
Liberal Diaspora Jews have no idea how politicized and fundamentalist Israel's religious education system is. Thanks to Naftali Bennett, Israel's education minister, they’re about to find out.
- Gideon LEVY: "Hero of Israel" (Haaretz, July 27, 2017): click here!
The latest hero of Israel killed two civilians: a physician, for no reason, and a teenager who threatened him with that doomsday weapon, the screwdriver.
- Amira HASS: "Israel's Cloned Security Guards" (Haaretz, July 26, 2017): click here!
The four elements you can find in every Israeli soldier, policeman and guard which allow them to shoot Palestinian children, teenagers and women bearing knives, when they don’t pose any threat.
- Salim BRIK: "Israeli Druze in the Line of Fire " (Haaretz, July 26, 2017): click here!
When populist MKs go up to the Temple Mount and provoke the Muslim world, they know who will pay the price: the weaker elements of society, many of whom are Druze.
- David ROSENBERG: "“Which Is the Real Israel: Startup Nation or Jewish Nation?” (Haaretz, July 25, 2017): click here!
The startling disconnect between fanaticism, bloodshed and stunning technology exits can't persist forever.
- Yossi GURVITZ: "Sorry American Jews, you don’t have a birthright” (Mondoweiss, July 25, 2017): click here!
A colloquial expression in Hebrew is “tzeh li me’havrid” – “get out of my veins”: you are too pushy, too close, you’re brutally invading my space. It’s an aggressive expression, and aggression is not my intention, so I’ll go with “American Jews, kindly get out of my veins.” As a left-wing Israeli, the last thing I want is your intervention in my politics – or, rather, your intervention as Jews.
- Asa WINSTANLEY: "Israel’s covert terror campaign against human rights groups says a lot about the regime" (MEMo, July 23, 2017): click here!
Last month, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon made a disgusting and dangerous speech to the media outside the Security Council. In it, he continued a long-running campaign of incitement and hatred against human rights organisations...
- Reuters: "How the ultra-Orthodox Could Bring Down Israel's Economy” (Haaretz, July 21, 2017): click here!
Failure to integrate Haredim into the workforce could eventually threaten the county's very existence, experts warn.
- Chemi SHALEV: "Israel's Gay Paradise Lost ” (Haaretz, July 19, 2017): click here!
Government officials tried to blame society's intolerance for their refusal to recognize same-sex adoptions - but the fault is in themselves.
- Ilana HAMMERMAN: "The Biggest Attack in Jerusalem ” (Haaretz, July 18, 2017): click here!
It began in 1967 with the expulsion of hundreds of Arab Jerusalemites from the area of the Western Wall, and continues with a series of Jewish triumphalist projects seeking to blot out the presence of Arabs.
- Sylvain CYPEL: “Comment l’occupation a fini d’imposer la mentalité coloniale à la société israélienne” (ORIENTXXI 13 juillet, 2017): click here!
En 1967, le rêve sioniste d’une « société juive » régnant exclusivement sur une terre qui n’appartient qu’à elle s’est évanoui, avec la conquête de nouveaux territoires qui bouleversent le rapport démographique entre juifs et Palestiniens.
- Haaretz Editorial: “Israel Sides With anti-Semites” (July 13, 2017):
click here!
The more nationalistic Israel becomes, the more its affection will grow for those who promote nationalism and xenophobia, even if they are anti-Semites, as seen in Netanyahu's dealings with Hungary's government.
- Gideon LEVY: “Religious Indoctrination Isn't the Real Threat in Israel” (Haaretz, July 13, 2017): click here!
The settlers have caused Israel much more damage than the Haredim, and nationalism is a lot more dangerous than religious indoctrination.
- Asher SCHECHTER: “When Right-wing anti-Semites Call, the Jewish State Answers” (Haaretz, July 12, 2017): click here!
The George Soros-Hungary scandal isn’t the first time the Israeli right has coddled overseas far-right extremists and turned a blind eye to their blatant anti-Semitism.
- Chemi SHALEV: “In Netanyahu’s World, George Soros’ Politics Justify Throwing Him to Hungary’s anti-Semitic Dogs” (Haaretz, July 12, 2017): click here!
Nationalistic and xenophobic Israelis increasingly identify with like-minded countries and often share their distaste for liberal, universalist Jews.
- Hillel BEN-SASSON: "Attacking Soros: Israel’s Unholy Covenant With Europe’s anti-Semitic Ultra-right” (Haaretz, July 12, 2017): click here!
To crush ‘the ‘enemy within’, its leftist critics, Israel’s government will go all the way – complicity with Hungary’s anti-Soros campaign and spitting in the face of the Jewish diaspora included.
- Bradley BURSTON: "Netanyahu's New Start-up Nation: Israel, the Anti-Jewish State” (Haaretz, July 12, 2017): click here!
Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of a sinking Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel presents: The Protocols of the Elders of Zionism.
- Judy MALZ: "Prominent Orthodox Rabbis From U.S. Among Those on Israeli Chief Rabbinate's Blacklist” (Haaretz, July 9, 2017): click here!
The rabbis, whose rulings on 'who is a Jew' the Rabbinate doesn't recognize, include Nefesh b'Nefesh's director. Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi 'shocked' that list was published without his approval.
- Aaron RABINOWITZ: "Are Haredim Really Taking Over?” (Haaretz, July 6, 2017): click here!
New Study Reveals How Secular Israelis Have Eroded the Religious Status Quo. Seventy years ago, David Ben-Gurion laid the foundation for the relationship between religion and state in Israel - or in other words, the status quo. What's left of it?
- Mikhael MANNEKIN: "Lost in Translation: The Israeli-U.S. Jewish Anti-occupation Alliance Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?" (Haaretz, July 6, 2017): click here.
While right-wing ties deepen, relations between progressives - against the occupation, for liberal democracy and pluralism in Israel - are fraying. We need a new way to make political change, together.
- Shakked AUERBACH: "No One Actually Knows Where Israel Ends and the Palestinian Territories Begin” (Haaretz, July 6, 2017): click here!
Israel has worked hard since 1967 to erase the Green Line from public consciousness, even as the invisible border became increasingly impenetrable to Palestinians.
- Yarden ZUR: "Survey: Half of Arabs in Israeli Universities Suffer Racism” (Haaretz, July 5, 2017): click here!
Some 40 percent of Arab students said they suffer racism from faculty, 60 percent said they had forged ties with Jewish students unconnected to their studies.
- Akiva ELDAR: "How Israel’s education minister inserts ideology into schools” (Al-Monitor, July 4, 2017): click here!
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett is working diligently to insert nationalistic and right-wing ideology contents into the schools’ curricula.
- Bradley BURSTON: "Israelis Who Hate American Jews ” (Haaretz, July 4, 2017): click here!
They're not saying 'Oh, please, come to Israel so we can all live together as soul-mates.' They're saying, 'We hate you. We don't want your kind here.' They want you to walk away, to abandon the playing field to them.
- Jonathan LIS: "“Israeli Arab Lawmakers Vow to Step Up Boycott Calls Over Wave of Pro-settlement Legislation”” (Haaretz, July 4, 2017): click here!
MK Haneen Zoabi tells fellow Mks 'without punishment, sanctions and boycott by the Europeans and the international community, Israel will continue unhindered and will even get worse'.
- Ahmad MELHEM: "Israel's controversial citizenship law persists” (Al-Monitor, June 29, 2017): click here!
With the extension of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law for the 14th year in a row, Palestinians in the West Bank will continue to be blocked from reunifying with family members in Israel.
- Judy MALZ: "U.S. Professors Who Fight Boycott of Israel Slam Plans to Gag Political Speech in Academiat” (Haaretz, June 28, 2017): click here!
The proposed ethics code for Israeli professors would radically circumscribe the authority of Israeli academic institutions to do their work, Alliance for Academic Freedom says.
- Judy MALZ: "Outraged at Netanyahu Over Western Wall, Jewish Agency to Rethink Ties With Israeli Government” (Haaretz, June 26, 2017): click here!
'Support for Israel doesn't necessarily mean support for the Israeli government,' says agency's new chairman, Michael Siegal.
- Jonathan LIST: "Israeli Ministers Expected to Okay Bill That Would Ban Private Jewish Conversions” (Haaretz, June 25, 2017): click here!
Two ultra-Orthodox parties are pushing the bill, to be discussed Sunday, but Yisrael Beiteinu and Reform movement blast move.
- Chemi SHALEV: "Netanyahu to American Jews: Drop Dead” (Haaretz, June 25, 2017): click here!
With Trump in office, the prime minister feels free to renege on Western Wall deal and stab liberal Jews in the back.
- Chemi SHALEV: "Before Dismantling Democracy, Israeli Right Breaks Rule of Law ” (Haaretz, June 25, 2017): click here!
Police probe of Breaking the Silence spokesman is part of overall campaign to politicize Israel’s legal system.
- Uri BLAU: "Firebrand Anti-leftist Group, Which Slams Foreign Funding of Israeli NGOs, Received Over $1M From U.S. Donors ” (Haaretz, June 23, 2017): click here!
Majority of funding in 2015 to Im Tirtzu, a frequent and outspoken critic of Israeli human rights organizations, came from two U.S. groups close to Netanyahu and the GOP.
- David SHULMAN, « Israel’s Irrational Rationality » (The New York Review of Books, June 22, 2017 issue): click here!
This June, Israel is marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day War. Some Israelis, including most members of the present government, are celebrating the country’s swift victory over Egypt, Jordan, and Syria as the beginning of the permanent annexation of the entire Palestinian West Bank; others, like me, mourn it as the start of a seemingly inexorable process of moral corruption and decline,...
- Gideon LEVY: "Only Israelis, Not Palestinians, Are Entitled to Mourn Their Dead” (Haaretz, June 22, 2017): click here!
A single line passes between the death and bereavement ritual for the Israeli dead and the display of indifference, inhumanity and gloating over the other nation’s dead – a line of dehumanization.
- Amir TIBON: "Israel’s Ethics Code for Professors Would Encourage More Academic Boycotts, Warns U.S. Union Head” (Haaretz, June 22, 2017): click here!
Almost as if Naftali Bennett ‘wants the backlash and damage,’ says Randi Weingarten, president of America's largest teachers' union.
- Haaretz Editorial, “Not Forgetful, but Afraid” (June 20, 2017): click here!
Israelis have no real reason to be concerned about the state of the prime minister’s memory, but his fear of the settlers should keep them awake at night.
- Marianne AZIZI, “Israeli human rights lawyer in detention without defence or trial, a victim of judicial abuse” (Redress Information & Analysis, June 18, 2017): click here!
An Israeli human rights lawyer who for over seven years wrote to the United Nations requesting help for children and families damaged by Israeli judicial corruption is now himself a victim of illegal arrest and detention.
- Yossi KLEIN, “Arab-Free Theocracy: Veteran Settler Offers Rare Glimpse Into Religious-Zionist Vision for Israel” (Haaretz, June 16, 2017): click here!
Daniella Weiss opens up to the Haaretz writer who called her movement more dangerous than Hezbollah.
- Judy MALTZ, “Why Israel Is Spending Millions on Orthodox Missionary Work — and How This Empowers the Settlers” (Haaretz, June 15, 2017): click here!
The idea isn’t so much to turn Israelis into Orthodox Jews, but to get them to identify with the worldview of a party identified with settlements, says one critic.
- Yotam BERGER, “How Many Settlers Really Live in the West Bank? Haaretz Investigation Reveals” (Haaretz, June 15, 2017): click here!
Over the last 30 years, eight new settlements have been built and Israeli population in West Bank grew by 330,000 - The settlements, from 1967 till today - an in-depth analysis.
- Chemi SHALEV, “In Israel, Democracy Dies in Daylight” (Haaretz, June 14, 2017): click here!
The Palestinian occupation has infected Israel with dangerous viruses that have long incubation periods but cause deadly disease.
- Zehava GALON, “Thus Haaretz Legitimized a Pro-apartheid Lawmaker” (Haaretz, June 13, 2017): click here!
Where are the red lines of our camp? If even explicit calls for transfer and a tyrannical regime over the Palestinians are not a red line, then what is?
- Bernard AVISHAI, “The Creeping Fascism of Israel’s Right-wingers” (Haaretz, June 12, 2017): click here!
It’s not by chance the latest government target is Israel’s universities: Academia offers a constant challenge to their dream of social discipline in the Jewish state.
- Chaim LEVINSON, “Netanyahu Seeks to Clamp Down on Human-rights Groups and Bar Funding From Foreign States” (Haaretz, June 11, 2017): click here!
Netanyahu says the current law, which only requires disclosure of foreign gov't funding, is too weak.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Declaring War on Academia" (Haaretz, June 11, 2017): click here!
Im Tirtzu has taken over political discourse in Israel, and injected into it the crazy idea of the internal enemy.
- Or KASHTI: "Proposed Ethics Code Is Bennett’s Attempt to Stifle Debate" (Haaretz, June 11, 2017): click here!
The purpose is to curtail discussion of controversial issues, but nothing is more political than the pretense of being apolitical".
- Or KASHTI: "Israeli Education Minister's Ethics Code Would Bar Professors From Expressing Political Opinions" (Haaretz, June 10, 2017): click here!
The code would forbid academic staff from calling for boycotts of Israel, and would prevent institutions from collaborating with political organizations.
- Yarden SKOP: "Israeli University Heads Blast New Ethical Code as Undermining Academic Freedom" (Haaretz, June 10, 2017): click here!
The code of ethics is expected to ban professors from voicing political opinions in classrooms or supporting BDS
- Tine DANCKAERS: "Palestijnen in Israël, een weeffout in de Joodse staat” (MO*, 9juni 2017): click here!
Eén op de vijf inwoners van Israël is Arabisch, of Palestijns. Ze mogen dan wel meer vrijheid en privileges hebben dan de Palestijnen in de Bezette Gebieden, hun Israëlische regering schijnt hen eerder als een vergissing uit het verleden te zien dan als volwaardige burgers.
- Chaim LEVINSON, “Israeli Education Chief Orders 'Ethics Rules' for Professors Aimed at Curtailing 'Political Preaching” (Haaretz, June 8, 2017): click here!
Bennett asks former IDF ethics chief to take on 'ongoing situation of overlap between academic and political activity.'
- Gideon LEVY: "Good Arab, Dead Arab” (Haaretz, June 7, 2017): click here!
In Israel, police killing a demonstrator is a marginal story, only because the victim is an Arab.
- Yofi TIROSH: "The 'Pious' Men and 'Dangerous' Women of the Israeli Army" (Haaretz, June 2, 2017): click here!
It is women who pay the price for the Israel Defense Forces' increasing gender segregation and modesty.
- Michael SFARD: "Israel Is Not a Democracy" (Haaretz, May 31, 2017, AURDIP): click here!
A democracy doesn't deny millions their civil rights, plunder their land and resources and deprive them of independence and of a say in their future.
- Ilan LIOR: "15,000 Rally in Tel Aviv in Support of Two-state Solution" (Haaretz, May 27, 2017): click here!
Palestinian President Abbas' message read at rally: Time for Israel to recognize Palestine, end the occupation; opposition leader Herzog booed by demonstrators.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Jerusalem Obsession" (Haaretz, May 18, 2017): click here!
Of all of Israel’s whims, this is the craziest of all. A country trying look secular, Western and modern is going nuts over a wall.
- Jonathan COOK: "Israel tutors its children in fear and loathing" (Redress Information & Analysis, May 17, 2017): click here!
The purpose of exposing children at an impressionable age to so much gore and killing is not hard to divine. It creates traumatised children, distrustful and fearful of anyone outside their tribe. That way they become more pliant soldiers, trigger-happy as they rule over Palestinians in the occupied territories.
- Jonathan LIS: "Ultra-Orthodox Lawmakers Stall Bill Defining Israel as 'National Home of Jewish People'" (Haaretz, May 15, 2017): click here!
Vote on bill that would subordinate Israel’s democratic character to its Jewish identity postponed due to Haredi party's opposition.
- Seraj ASSI: "Eliezer Ben-Yehuda Is Turning in His Grave Over Israel’s Humiliation of Arabic " (Haaretz, May 15, 2017): click here!
The humanist reviver of modern Hebrew, who explicitly sought help from "her sister, Arabic", would not recognize the idea the two languages are each other's nemesis, as Israel’s nation-state bill seems to imagine.
- Yagil LEVY: "What if Israel Had Withdrawn From the Occupied Territories in 1967?" (Haaretz, May 13, 2017): click here!
Israel’s most serious problems are often attributed to its protracted rule in the
occupied territories. But would it really be better off without them?
- Uri AVNERY: "A Curious National Home" (Gush-Shalom, May 13, 2017): click here!
THE PRESENT Israeli government coalition consists of 67 (out of 120) members of the Knesset. Each member wants to be elected again (and again and again. In order to be reelected, he or she must attract the attention of the public.
- Shany LITTMAN: "Anti-Zionist Hasidic Father of 16 Pays Hefty Price for Rejecting Israel" (Haaretz, May 11, 2017): click here!
The ironic fate of an ultra-Orthodox vegetarian who ran a Jerusalem community slaughterhouse.
- Judy MALZ: "New Bill Would Reject All Israeli Conversions Performed Outside Orthodox-sanctioned State System" (Haaretz, May 11, 2017): click here!
While Reform, Conservative conversions performed abroad would still be recognized according to the Law of Return, citizenship would be denied to such converts already in Israel.
- Akiva ELDAR: "Netanyahu’s vision of one-state-one-people solution" (Al-Monitor, May 11, 2017): click here!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promoting neither the two-state solution nor one state for the two people, but one state on Israeli and West Bank territories, only for the Jews.
- Jonathan COOK: "Israel’s Jewish Nation-State bill ‘declaration of war’" (J.C., May 11, 2017): click here!
New legislation to cement the definition of Israel as a state belonging exclusively to Jews around the world is a “declaration of war” on Palestinian citizens of Israel, the minority’s leaders warned this week.
- Sawsan ZAHER: "Israel's Message to Its Palestinian Citizens: Jewish Rights Are Superior" (Haaretz, May 11, 2017): click here!
The nation-state bill means, for the first time in its history, Israel's unwritten constitution will explicitly exclude Palestinian citizens from the right to equality and collective rights.
- Jonathan OFIR: "The ‘nation state of the Jewish people’ bill is just more Apartheid with a veil" (Mondoweiss, May 11, 2017): click here!
Yesterday, the bill titled “Nation State of the Jewish People” (NSJP) was passed by the Israeli Knesset in a preliminary vote (48-41). This is a major hurdle, and while it’s not done yet, it’s getting close.
- Muhammad AMARA: "Israel's Campaign Against Arabic" (Haaretz, May 11, 2017): click here!
The Knesset bill to demote Arabic will have ruinous consequences within Israel and in the region. When will Israel start seeing Arabic as an asset, not a threat?
- Abed L.AZAB: "Israel's Admission of Racism" (Haaretz, May 9, 2017): click here!
The new nation-state bill seeks to cancel Arabic’s status as Israel’s second 'official language,' one of the most ludicrous lies heard here in decades. When was Arabic actually an official language in Israel?
- Haaretz Editorial: "A Cornerstone of Apartheid" (Haaretz, May 8, 2017): click here!
Israel's 'nation-state' law must be stopped - the only way to preserve a democratic Israel is to enshrine equality among all its citizens in law.
- Jonathan LIS: "Israeli Ministers Greenlight Nation-state Bill: Arabic Isn't an Official State Language" (AURDIP, mai 8, source Haaretz, May 7, 2017): click here!
New nation-state bill holds that the State of Israel is 'the national home of the Jewish people,' and that 'the right to realize self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.'
- B.MICHAEL: "The Legend of Israel's Enlightened Declaration of Independence" (Haaretz, May 4, 2017): click here!
If not for the UN, who knows what it would have said? (We can guess, though)
- Chemi SHALEV: "The Miracle of Occupation Nation " (Haaretz, May 3, 2017): click here!
It's easier to celebrate Independence Day when you blot out millions of disenfranchised people living right next door.
- Gideon LEVY: "Why I Won't Fly the Israeli Flag on Independence Day" (Haaretz, April 30, 2017): click here!
Since it began flying in the territories, it has become the flag of apartheid. This is the flag you want me to fly? How can I?
- Hagai EL-AD: "B'Tselem Doesn't Take Orders From Netanyahu. Nor Does the World" (Haaretz, April 26, 2017): click here!
An entire army of politicians and judges, PR flacks and diplomats, prison guards and Shin Bet security service agents, police officers and soldiers, bureaucrats and clerks is invested in the occupation. And still, Netanyahu is afraid.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Netanyahu Is Harming Israel" (Haaretz, April 26, 2017): click here!
Unlike the prime minister, the rights groups he seeks to silence are fulfilling Zionism's precepts heroically.
- Ravit HECHT: "With Ultimatum to German FM, Netanyahu Gives World a Simple Choice " (Haaretz, April 25, 2017): click here!
The choice Netanyahu has given the world and above all Israelis is simple: maintaining control of the territories, probably through an apartheid regime, or accepting an Israel in its 1967 borders.
- Amira HASS: "The Holocaust for Daily Use" (Haaretz, April 24, 2017): click here!
Jews were murdered in the Holocaust because they were Jews. Not so that a state would be established that day after day keeps proving the anti-Zionists right.
- Reuven RIVLIN: "Full transcript: President Rivlin Says Seeing Every Criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism Is 'Fundamentally Wrong, Dangerous'" (Haaretz, April 24, 2017): click here!
Dear brothers and sisters, survivors of the Holocaust. The first evening of Hanukkah 5704, 1943, in the prisoner’s hut in Bergen-Belsen, the Bluzhover Rebbe, Rabbi Israel Spira, recited the blessing over the lighting of the Hanukkah candles.
- Judy MALTZ: "Young Israelis Actually Know Very Little About the Holocaust. Here’s Why" (Haaretz, April 24, 2017): click here!
A Haaretz reporter spent two days at the Yad Vashem remembrance center, where questions like ‘What happened on Kristallnacht?’ stumped plenty of high school students and soldiers.
- Akiva ELDAR: "Why is this year different for Israeli civil society organizations?" (Al-Monitor, April 13, 2017): click here!
As the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War approaches, some Israeli civil society organizations are rallying efforts to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank.
- Amos HAREL: "Israel Arrested 400 Palestinians Suspected of Planning Attacks After Monitoring Social Networks" (Haaretz, April 16, 2017): click here!
The Shin Bet and Military Intelligence have developed a method to identify suspects using online clues, significantly reducing the number of attacks.
- Asa WINSTANLEY: "The failure of Brand Israel" (Middle East Monitor, March 30, 2017): click here!
More than a decade ago, the Israeli government launched a new strategy that it dubbed “Brand Israel”. This began in 2006 as an effort to improve Israel’s negative image overseas, “by downplaying religion and avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians.”
- Jonathan OFIR: "Israel’s ‘right to exist’ and the Palestinian right to resist" (Mondoweiss, April 9, 2017): click here!
Israel’s demand that Palestinians recognize it as a ‘Jewish State’ is a demand for legitimizing Apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and Palestinians certainly have a right to resist it. So does everyone else.
- Tom SUAREZ: "Israel, naked under the microscope in Cork" (Mondoweiss, April 7, 2017): click here!
“Phew! If you receive this…” it means the Conference is actually happening — so began the letter that welcomed us at the three-day International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Exceptionalism and Responsibility conference in Cork, Ireland, so tenuous and troubled was its genesis.
- Barak RAVID: "Israel Slams EU: 32 Humanitarian Crises in the World and Europe's Obsessed With Palestinians" (Haaretz, April 5, 2017): click here!
The criticism comes after the European Union demanded that Israel stop demolishing Palestinian homes in Area C of the West Bank.
- Akiva ELDAR: "How Israel's culture minister threatens national film industry, democracy" (Al-Monitor, April 4, 2017): click here!
Culture Minister Miri Regev is examining state funding of Israeli films with the intention of withholding support to productions she considers anti-Israeli.
- James NORTH: "New book by Larry Derfner, the American-turned-Israeli journalist, crushes liberal Zionism" (Mondoweiss, April 4, 2017): click here!
It takes tremendous courage to recognize that the political views that you have held for your entire adult life have been at least partly mistaken. Larry Derfner, a prominent American-turned-Israeli journalist now in his mid-60s, has such courage.
- Ofer NEIMAN: "A show of weakness: The ‘Israeli Peace Movement’ marches in Jerusalem" (Mondoweiss, April 3, 2017): click here!
Several hundred people, possibly 1,000, predominantly Jewish Israelis, took part in a demonstration in Jerusalem on Saturday night (April 1), carrying and chanting anti-occupation and pro-peace banners and slogans.
- Israel HAREL: "Cultural McCarthyism as Old as Israel Itself" (Haaretz, April 3, 2017): click here!
The days of McCarthyism in literature, culture and arts are nothing new, in fact they go back to the pre-state days of the Yishuv.
- Peter BEAUMONT: "Israeli guidelines point to largely unconstrained settlement expansion" (The Guardian, March 31, 2017): click here!
Plan outlined by Benjamin Netanyahu would allow building within boundaries of existing blocks, adjacent to them, or close to the blocs.
- Nirit ANDERMAN & Or KASHTI: "Prominent Israeli Arts Fund Requires Filmmakers to Avoid Dishonoring Israel" Haaretz, March 29, 2017): click here!
To obtain funding, filmmakers working with the Rabinovich Foundation must declare their films won't present Independence Day as a day of mourning or insult symbols of the state.
- Amira HASS: "Are Israelis More or Less Violent Than Their Potential?" Haaretz, March 29, 2017): click here!
Why should someone who for three years of their lives, at least, the most natural gesture was to load a rifle and aim it at a civilian population, not conclude that attacking women is their birthright?
- Rami YOUNIS, “The cultural terrorism of Miri Regev” (+972, March 28, 2017): click here!
By threatening the livelihood of Palestinian theater workers, Regev is committing cultural terrorism: she is putting people’s livelihoods at risk — people whose only sin is holding different political principles.
- Larry DERFNER, “Israel’s Next War Is Always ‘Inevitable’” (The New York Times, March 28, 2017): click here!
MODIIN, Israel — In this country, people have learned to accept that one war follows another, every two or three years. “An Inevitable Conflict in Gaza,” ran a headline in the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot earlier this month. “With Lebanon no longer hiding Hezbollah’s role, next war must hit civilians where it hurts, Israeli minister says,” Haaretz reported a few days later.
- Or KASHTI & Nitay STERN: "Israeli Film Industry Accuses Government of McCarthyism, Blacklists After Increasing Oversight of Funding" Haaretz, March 28, 2017): click here!
A committee set up by Israel's culture minister is requesting the names of screenwriters, directors and producers, as well as the names of officials who approved or turned down each script and why.
- "Poll: Majority of Jewish Israelis oppose ending 50-year military occupation" (Ma'an, March 28, 2017): click here!
A new poll was released by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on Tuesday, revealing that the majority of Israelis oppose any Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, while 79 percent of Israelis believe its important to maintain a unified Jerusalem under Israeli control, in contradiction to longstanding international peace negotiations and international law.
- Richard FALK: "Anger at my Israel 'apartheid' report puts free speech at risk" (Haaretz, March 27, 2017): click here!
Israeli leaders have warned for decades that, if a separate Palestinian state wasn't established, their country would become an apartheid state.
- David ZONSHEINE: "The Conscientious Objectors Threatening the Israeli System" (Haaretz, March 18, 2017): click here!
It would have been easy for three young women to avoid military service. Instead, they're taking a prinicipled stand against the occupation.
- Amira HASS: "In Precedent-setting Ruling, Israel's Top Court Recognizes East Jerusalem Arabs as 'Native-born Residents'" (Haaretz, March 16 2017): click here!
Over 14,000 Arabs have had their residency rights revoked since 1967 because they were absent from Jerusalem for more than 7 years. Court ruling challenges practice that treated them like immigrants in their own city.
- "Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, Executive Summary" (UNESCWA, March 2017): click here!
This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law".
- "Palestine and the Israeli Occupation, Issue No. 1: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid" (UNESCWA, March 2017): click here!
The authors of this report, examining whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole, fully appreciate the sensitivity of the question. Even broaching the issue has been denounced by spokespersons of the Israeli Government and many of its supporters as anti-Semitism in a new guise.
- Haaretz Editorial: "An Arab-free Knesset" (Haaretz, March 12, 2017): click here!
It is outrageous to demand that the elected representatives of Israel's non-Jewish minority swear loyalty to the 'Jewish state.'
- Noam SHEIZAF: "New entry law a reminder that Palestinians live in Israel's prison" (+972, March 7, 2017): click here!
The reality in the West Bank is one that resembles a prison, where the prisoners are held for as long as humanly possible. Their release will carry a price — and Israelis are not willing to pay it.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Settlers Won the Battle, but the War Isn't Over" (Haaretz, March 5, 2017): click here!
Despite what the Zionist left might be saying, the settler enterprise is still alive and, well, flourishing. If only we could say the same about the left.
- Akiva ELDAR: "Israel's chronic impunity disorder" (Al-Monitor, March 2, 2017): click here!
Thousands of words have been written and spoken about the report issued Feb. 28 by the state comptroller on the 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. Bereaved parents wept as they read the document describing how the country’s leadership sent their children to their deaths with barely a thought.
- Stanley L.COHEN: "Jim Crow is alive and well in Israel" (Al-Jazeera, March 1, 2017): click here!
Long before Israel erected separate communities, the United States perfected the art of the artificial divide.
- "February: List of inflammatory comments and incitement by Israeli officials and leaders" (Palestine News Network, March 1, 2017): click here!
The PLO department of Culture & information has issued the monthly incitement report for the month of February 2017, which showcases examples of inflammatory comments and incitement by Israeli officials and leaders.
- Uri AVNERY: "When and How the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi Rift Was Born" (Haaretz, Feb 28, 2017): click here!
We learned from the Elor Azaria case that only after we get rid of the occupation will we be able to devote our intellectual and social resources to healing the great schism in the nation.
- Emma GRAHAM-HARRISON: "Netanyahu criticised in damning report on 2014 Gaza war" (The Guardian, Feb 28, 2017): click here!
Israel’s main government watchdog has criticised the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a damning report on the 2014 Gaza war, saying the country was badly prepared for the threat of Hamas tunnels, and that many senior cabinet members were kept in the dark about vital information.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israeli Opposition Leader's 10-point-plan for Peace Missing 11th Point" (Haaretz, Feb 26, 2017): click here!
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog deserves praise for the 10-point plan he published in Haaretz on Thursday. His 10 points reveal a vision and create a horizon of great hope. I would like to add just one tiny additional point to them, one that would turn his plan into the peak of perfection: the 11th point.
- Paul GOLDMAN: "Arab Israelis Are Joining the IDF in Growing Numbers: Officials" (NBC News, Feb 26, 2017): click here!
- Akiva ELDAR: "The Israeli right's judicial shakedown" (Al-Monitor, Feb 23, 2017): click here!
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has scored a victory in the ongoing campaign of the Israeli right to gain control over the Supreme Court.
- Aluf BENN: "With Supreme Court Picks, Netanyahu's Government Launches Anti-constitutional Revolution" (Haaretz, Feb 23, 2017): click here!
Israel's justice minister has created a court that will serve her political aim of perpetuating the occupation and annexing the West Bank without granting the Palestinians citizenship.
- Bethan McKERNAN: "Five children who got longer sentences for throwing stones than Israeli soldier who shot incapacitated Palestinian dead" (The Independent, 22 Feb, 2017): click here!
An 18-month jail sentence handed down to an Israel Defence Force (IDF) recruit for the killing of a wounded Palestinian has prompted for widespread criticism for its apparent leniency in light of the severity of his crime.
- Amira HASS: "Hebron Shooter's Lenient Sentence Again Shows Palestinian Lives Are Cheap" (Haaretz, 22 Feb, 2017): click here!
The judges were following a long, safe trail of legal precedents which determine that Jewish military occupation constitutes law and order, while the struggle against it is a crime.
- Haaretz Editorial: "The Era of Purity of Arms Has Ended" (Haaretz, 22 Feb, 2017): click here!
The exceptionally lenient sentence handed to Elor Azaria looks like it was tailored as a kind of political compromise, staining the fundamental norms that guide the military justice system.
- EISHTON: "Pallywood: The dark matter of the Zionist universe" (+972, Feb 17, 2017): click here!
Two recent cases of Israeli troops caught murdering Palestinians demonstrate the power, and limitations, of an entire nation deciding to believe what it wants to believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
- Amira HASS: « Pour nous, Juifs, notre cadastre des terres est avec Dieu. » (Pour la Palestine, 8 février, 2017): click here!
Il y a un nom, pour la réalité dans laquelle un gouvernement, qui se perçoit comme le représentant d’une seule et unique nation, détermine l’avenir de deux nations et crée deux systèmes séparés et inégaux. Cela s’appelle de l’apartheid.
- Allison Kaplan SOMMER: "Explained: Israel's New Palestinian Land-grab Law and Why It Matters” (Haaretz, Feb 7, 2017): click here!
Israel's parliament voted on a bill that expropriates private Palestinian land in the West Bank. What does the new law change, who is affected and why is it such a big deal?
- Jonathan COOK: "Land law is final nail in the two-state solution coffin” (The Nation, Feb 7, 2017): click here!
The Israeli parliament passed the legalisation law on Monday night – a piece of legislation every bit as suspect as its title suggests. The law widens the powers of Israeli officials to seize the last fragments of Palestinian land in the West Bank that were supposed to be off-limits. Now, almost nowhere will be out of the settlers’ reach.
- Aaron TORDJMAN: "Israël est, par définition, une colonie européenne" (Union juive française pour la paix, UJFP, 6 février, 2017): click here!
Comment se fait-il que la Palestine, partie intégrante du Moyen-Orient, et morceau de terre habité depuis l’Antiquité par une population orientale ayant adopté, depuis plus d’un millénaire, la culture et la langue arabe, à l’instar de la Syrie, de l’Égypte ou de l’Algérie, soit, en une centaine d’années, devenue un État peuplé de migrants venus du monde entier ?
- Haaretz Editorial: "Voting 'Yes' for Theft” (Haaretz, Feb 6, 2017): click here!
If the vote takes place, the majority of our lawmakers will raise their hands to approve a bill that will steal land from Palestinians.
- Jonathan COOK: "Netanyahu scandals reflect corruption at the heart of Israeli society” (Mondoweiss, Feb 3, 2017): click here!
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in danger of being brought down, possibly soon, over what initially appears to be little more than an imprudent taste for Cuban cigars and pink champagne.
- Shlomo SAND: "How Israel Went From Atheist Zionism to Jewish State” (Haaretz, Jan 21, 2017): click here!
The synthesis of Zionism and socialism has disintegrated, making way for a winning symbiosis of religion and strong ethno-nationalism.
- Budour YOUSSEF HASSAN: "Reprisal home demolitions target Palestinians in Israel” (The Electronic Intifada, Jan 13, 2017): click here!
Hassoun Makhlouf spent years washing cars to save enough money to build his own house. But in just minutes, on 10 January, Israeli bulldozers razed that dream to the ground. Makhlouf, 56, had spent most of his life in rental accommodation.
- Carlo STRENGER: "Why Nationalist and Jewish Orthodoxy Are Taking Over Israel” (Haaretz, Jan 12, 2017): click here!
An interesting debate has been taking place in Haaretz on “what has gone wrong with secularism” and “why is Israel becoming more religious?” The trigger is largely Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s transformation of the national education system into a clone of the religious-Zionist system, replacing civics with Jewish indoctrination and introducing ever more religious Jewish content.
- Jonathan COOK: "The Triumpth of ‘Settlerism’: Fury at Azaria Verdict is Israel’s Trump Moment” (The Palestine Chronicle, Jan 11, 2017): click here!
The United Kingdom has Brexit. The United States, an incoming president Trump. And Israel now has Elor Azaria. It may not have the same ring, but ultimately the turning point could prove as decisive.
- Ali ABUNIMAH: "Israel’s global standing continues to sink, top strategists say” (The Internet Intifada, Jan 4, 2017): click here!
Israel’s global standing is continuing to deteriorate, a new report from some of the country’s top strategists concludes. “Israel’s image in Western countries continues to decline, a trend that enhances the ability of hostile groups to engage in actions aimed at depriving Israel of moral and political legitimacy and launch boycotts,” the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University states in its 2016-2017 Strategic Survey for Israel.
- Hatim KANAANEH: "The challenges of being a Palestinian doctor in the ‘Jewish state’” (Mondoweiss, Jan 3, 2017): click here!
Makbula Nassar, our proud journalist, community activist and prime instigator of Arrabeh’s claim to medical leadership, in numbers of doctors if not in institutions, is quoted giving me credit as the first Western trained MD in my village for inspiring its flood of local physicians.
- Sami PERETZ: "Punishing the World for UN Vote Will Be Worse for Israel Than BDS” (Haaretz, Dec 27, 2016): click here!
After the settlements censure, Israel's consul general in New York suggested linking Israeli know-how to diplomatic support. But that would be like cutting off our nose to spite our export markets.
- Jonathan OFIR: "Israel’s political left also condemns the UN’s anti-settlement resolution” (Mondoweiss, Dec 26, 2016): click here!
“This is a difficult night for Israel,” said opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) in wake of the recent UN Security Council resolution condemning all Israeli settlements, which he opined the United States should have vetoed. Herzog said the resolution “seriously harms our capital Jerusalem, the settlement blocs and Israel’s status and diplomatic achievements accumulated over the years.”
- Akiva ELDAR: "Is Israel’s education minister abandoning secular schools?” (Al-Monitor, Dec 8, 2016): click here!
Recent data indicate that Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett is using his budget to inject more orthodox and national values into schools, reducing the budget for teaching democratic and pluralistic values.
- Yaser ABU AREESHA: "For Palestinian citizens, Israel was and remains a Shin Bet state” (+972, Dec 1, 2016): click here!
Israel’s military rule over its Palestinian citizens may have ended in 1966, but the long arm of the Shin Bet and the police continues to meddle in our private affairs. I know from personal experience.
- Jonathan COOK: "The real link between Israel’s forest fires and muezzin bill” (Redress Information & Analysis, Nov 29, 2016): click here!
Israeli legislation ostensibly intended to tackle noise pollution from Muslim houses of worship has, paradoxically, served chiefly to provoke a cacophony of indignation across much of the Middle East.
- Ben CASPIT: "Netanyahu’s new target: Israel's media” (Al Monitor, Nov 9, 2016): click here!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved beyond his traditional enemies of Iran and Palestine and has designated the Israeli media as his new nemesis.
- Ofer ADERET: "60 Years After Massacre, Kafr Qasem Doesn’t Want an Apology From the Israeli Government” (Haaretz, Oct 28, 2016): click here!
The 1956 massacre of 48 innocent villagers by Border Policemen remains a festering wound in Israeli Arab society. Its current residents are launching an audio-visual spectacle to convey the message: Take responsibility for what happened here.
- Jonathan COOK: "Israel: Settlers' takeover of security posts 'alarming'” (Al Jazeerea, Oct 27, 2016): click here!
The gradual infiltration of religious settlers into the police has mirrored a similar process in the Israeli army that began two decades ago.
- Hagai EL AD: "B’Tselem klaagt 49 jaar bezetting Palestina aan in VN-Veiligheidsraad” (De Wereld Morgen, 25 okt, 2016): click here!
Op 14 oktober 2016 hield Hagai El-Ad, directeur van de Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisatie B’Tselem, een indrukwekkende toespraak voor de VN-Veiligheidsraad. In 2017 is de bezetting van de Palestijnse gebieden 50 jaar oud. In een bevlogen betoog neemt El-Ad zijn toehoorders mee naar wat dat betekent voor miljoenen Palestijnen.
- Larry DERFNER: "Amos Oz, to the Barricades: How to Bring Down the Occupation” (Haaretz, Oct 25, 2016): click here!
The Israeli peace camp has not exhausted all possible means to end the occupation of the Palestinians. Far from it. We need to start raising some non-violent hell, and keep it up.
- Haaretz Editorial: "We Are All B'Tselem Head Hagai El-Ad” (Oct 23, 2016): click here!
'The occupation must end' — that’s the flag that must unite Israel's opposition. Those who don’t wave it are helping make the status quo in the territories permanent.
- Haaretz Editorial: "It Was B’Tselem’s Duty to Go to the UN” (Oct 18, 2016): click here!
It was under the UN's aegis that Israel was established, and it must also be the organization that acts to end the occupation.
- Raoul WOOTLIF: "Labor party activist files treason complaint against B’Tselem” (The Times of Israel, Oct 16, 2016): click here!
After contentious UN presentation, attorney alleges human rights NGO trying to damage sovereignty of state, give away land and cause a war.
- Jack KHOURI & Yarden SKOP: "Israeli Arabs Propose Enhanced Curriculum for Teaching Palestinian Historical Narrative” (Haaretz, Oct 16, 2016): click here!
Higher Arab Monitoring Committee claims the enhancements concerning historical events related to the conflict would improve the future of Israeli Arabs and their aspirations for equal citizenship.
- Hagai EL AD: "B'Tselem Head: Why I Spoke Against the Occupation at the UN” (Haaretz, Oct 16, 2016): click here!
There is no chance Israeli society, of its own volition and without any help, will end the nightmare. Too many mechanisms insulate the violence we conduct in order to control the Palestinians.
- Merav Alush LEVRON and Ron GERLITZ: "Mizrahim and Arabs, Time for a Correction” (Haaretz, Oct 11, 2016): click here!
The present government may be deepening the alienation between Jewish and Arab citizens, and Jewish-Arab coexistence may be in deep crisis, but let’s not make light of steps that have been taken to correct the injustice.
- Kobi NIV: "Needed: A 'Secularism Officer' for Israel's Army” (Haaretz, Oct 10, 2016): click here!
The IDF's consideration of 'beliefs, values and way of life' extends only to their religious variant, which means the ultra-Orthodox nationalist variant, and none other.
- Mazal MUALEM: "Can Israel's becoming more Jewish make it more democratic?” (Al Monitor, Oct 7, 2016): click here!
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked's claim that the more Jewish Israel becomes, the more democratic it will be, actually challenges the Zionist idea of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
- Tal NIV: "Israelis Should Heed Their Declaration of Independence” (Haaretz, Oct 3, 2016): click here!
We mustn't use the Palestinians’ non-recognition of a Jewish state as an excuse for not saving Israel from itself. Israeli democracy needs a constitution based on equality before the law.
- Nadia NASER-NAJJAB: "A Palestinian perspective on the legacy of Shimon Peres” (+972, Sept 29, 2016): click here!
The distrust with which Palestinians treat the Israeli peace camp frequently appears as something of a surprise, and even affront, to international observers. But the difference between Israeli left and right is all too frequently one of degree, rather than kind.
- Ilan PAPPE: "Shimon Peres from the perspective of his victims” (The Electronic Intifada, Sept 28, 2016): click here!
The obituaries for Shimon Peres have already appeared, no doubt prepared in advance as the news of his hospitalization reached the media. The verdict on his life is very clear and was already pronounced by US President Barack Obama: Peres was a man who changed the course of human history in his relentless search for peace in the Middle East.
- Ben WHITE: "Shimon Peres: Israeli war criminal whose victims the West ignored” (MEMo, Sept 28, 2016): click here!
Shimon Peres, who passed away Wednesday aged 93 after suffering a stroke on 13 September, epitomised the disparity between Israel’s image in the West and the reality of its bloody, colonial policies in Palestine and the wider region.
- Haggai MATAR: "IDF Censor redacts 1 in 5 articles it reviews for publication” (+972, Sept 26, 2016): click here!
The Israeli military censor has redacted, in full or in part, over 17,000 articles since 2011. While fewer articles have been censored in 2015 and 2016, the new IDF Censor is attempting to redact already-published information with alarming frequency.
- Sam BAHOUR: "Don't Call Us 'Israeli Arabs': Palestinians in Israel Speak Out” (Haaretz, Sept 26, 2016): click here!
Palestinian citizens of Israel are its Achilles’ heel; they refuse to become Zionists, refuse to leave Israel, and refuse to vanish into thin air. And, increasingly, they are refusing to remain silent.
- Zeev STERNHELL: "Israel's Left Barely Exists, While Its Political Center Is Filled With Cowards and Sycophants” (Haaretz, Sept 19, 2016): click here!
If Israel had a real left, it would say that Zionism was needed to rescue European Jewry, not a campaign to liberate sacred stones.
- Akiva ELDAR: "Ultra-Orthodox minority beats out secular Israelis in Sabbath battle” (Al-Monitor, Sept 15, 2016): click here!
Slowly and gradually, ultra-Orthodox are changing Israel’s character, turning it into a religious state.
- Carolina LANDSMANN: "Israel Allocated the Work of the Occupation Unfairly, but That's Changing” (Haaretz, Sept 9, 2016): click here!
There won’t be a critical mass for change as long as the dirty, contemptible work of maintaining the occupation isn’t divided equally among all classes of society.
- Yakov HIRSCH: "It’s war between Netanyahu and the generals (and the PM may just have lost the corporal)” (Mondoweiss, Sept 8, 2016): click here!
The trial in Israel of Sergeant Elor Azaria for the killing of a Palestinian lying incapacitated on the street in Hebron last March may not be news in the United States, but it is causing huge divisions inside Israel, with one former security official warning of an impending civil war in Israel between Jewish factions.
- Mazal MUALEM: "Why it's crunch time for the Israeli left” (Al Monitor, Sept 8, 2016): click here!
These are difficult days for the Israeli left and its leaders, much more so than it seems. It appears that the left-wing camp, which was previously also known as the peace camp, has become illegitimate and post-Zionist. This is of course a misrepresentation, because the Israeli left, including Meretz, which is far left, includes citizens who are no less Zionist than Culture Minister Miri Regev of Likud.
- Kobi NIV: "What Israeli Civil War? It Takes Two Sides to Tango” (Haaretz, Sept 7, 2016): click here!
Anyone who dreams of a civil war in Israel should remember that it needs two sides. Here, only one side is present – the national religious, Messianic, zealot right.
- Assaf DAVID: "What is Israel's place in the Middle East?” (+972, Sept 6, 2016): click here!
It’s time for Israel to recognize that it can coexist with its neighbors without fear or feelings of superiority. Academia can lead the way.
- Nora BARROWS-FRIEDMAN: "Why Israel’s actions can be called genocide” (EI, Sept 6, 2016): click here!
Israel lobby groups recently reacted with outrage against the Movement for Black Lives policy platform which refers to US complicity in Israel’s “genocide” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people.The president of the liberal Zionist organization J Street condemned the use of the term genocide as “outrageously incorrect and deeply offensive.”
- Rogel ALPHER: "Why I'm Not Proud of My Country, Israel” (Haaretz, Sept 5, 2016): click here!
Face facts: there won’t be a Palestinian state, and Israel will no longer be the state of the Jews.
- Noam ROTEM: "In the Jewish state, most prisoners are Arabs” (+972, Sept 2, 2016): click here!
Figures obtained by Local Call reveal that the number of Arab prisoners is more than twice the number of Jewish ones, even though they make up only 20 percent of the general population.
- B.MICHAEL: "Why Israelis Are Stampeding to the Right” (Haaretz, Sept 1, 2016): click here!
And therefore, there is only one way to heal: to stop the occupation. All of it. At once. With an agreement or without. Get out. First the army, with its power and budgets, then the settler nests.
- Or KASHTI: "Bennett's 'Practical' Way to Impose Religious Views on Secular Schools” (Haaretz, Sept 1, 2016): click here!
Shattering the universal dimension in education is a pretty good recipe for increasing the gaps between the different groups that make up Israeli society.
- Kamel HAWWASH: "If Israel wants to be treated like a normal state, it should act like one" (MEMo, Aug 29, 2016): click here!
Israel claims to be a Western-style “democratic” state but only certain inhabitants of the land it has controlled since 1967 - basically all of historic Palestine - have a right to vote in its elections.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israel: Where the Media Will Blindly Buy What the Ruling Authorities Dictate" (Haaretz, Aug 27, 2016): click here!
A thousand reports are published about every West Bank settler who is murdered, yet Friday's killing of an innocent man evoked one big yawn. It's not terror, or apartheid, or racism or dehumanization. It's only killing a subhuman.
- Rogel ALPHER: "Zionism Today Is an Illusion" (Haaretz, Aug 27, 2016): click here!
Anyone ever expecting Israel to end the occupation, either voluntarily or via international pressure, needs to think again. We are on course to become a binational state, and Jews should plan accordingly.
- Akiva ELKDAR: "Will 50 years of occupation unite Israel's peace camp?" (Al-Monitor, Aug 25, 2016): click here!
A May 15 letter sent by the Israeli Education Ministry’s pedagogic administration to school principals throughout the country announced that “50 Years of a Unified Jerusalem” will be the theme of the upcoming school year, which starts Sept. 1. The heads of the educational institutions were informed that they will have at their disposal a “program to deepen the students’ affinity and connection to Jerusalem.”
- Maren MANTOVANI & Jamal JUMA': "The “S” in BDS: Lessons of the Elbit Systems Campaign" (Al-Shabaka, Aug 24, 2016): click here!
Israel’s biggest military companies last year rang alarm bells over a decline in international contracts, citing smaller budgets, more competition, and less desire for Israeli-made products as among the reasons. Is this an indicator that Israel’s arms industry might not be as invincible as it seems?
- Sam BAHOUR: "US fuelling Israel's civil war" (Middle East Eye, Aug 24, 2016): click here!
“US should withhold military aid until Israel recognises Palestinian sovereignty.
- Ramzy BAROUD: "Punishing the messenger: Israel’s war on NGOs takes a worrying turn" (Ma'an, Aug 24, 2016): click here!
“You deserve to see your loved ones suffer and die. But, maybe, you would be hurt before them,” was part of a threatening message received by a staff member at Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights group. The photo attached to the email was of the exterior of the activist’s home. The gist of the message: ‘we are coming for you.’
- Andy SIMONS: "Segregated schooling still for Palestinians in Israel" (Middle East Eye, Aug 22, 2016): click here!
Segregated schooling makes university education - and the search for jobs afterwards - difficult for Palestinian citizens of Israel.
- Ruth SCHUSTER: "Stop Encouraging Big Families: Israel Is Full, Demography Expert Warns" (Haaretz, Aug 22, 2016): click here!
“Unless sacred cows are slaughtered, and fast, life in super-crowded Israel will get worse", says BGU Prof. Alon Tal, but adds: Israeli society has changed attitudes before and can do it again.
- Jacques TARDI: "Prévention des attentats : pourquoi Israël n'est certainement pas le modèle à suivre" (Le Plus, 19 août, 2016): click here!
Depuis le massacre du 14 juillet à Nice, l'attention s'est tournée vers Israël et ses techniques pour prévenir les attentats. Écrivains, dessinateurs, cinéastes, entre autres, signent cette tribune. Ils appellent à la vigilance face à la confusion des termes, et nous mettent en garde : "Non, Israël n’est certainement pas le 'modèle' à suivre."
- Israel HAREL: "Israel Forgets Reform Judaism Is the Last Barrier to Assimilation" (Haaretz, Aug 19, 2016): click here!
Surging assimilation, which threatens the continued existence of the Jewish people in the U,S, has brought about a reckoning within the Reform establishment - but Israel has failed to take notice.
- Jacclyn ASHLY & Yumna PATEL: "‘It’s like we’re born with guns in our hands’: Young Israelis face prison as they resist military conscription" (Mondoweiss, Aug 18, 2016): click here!
After a total of 155 days inside a cell and over the span of six separate stays in an Israeli military prison, 19-year-old Tair Kaminer was released in July as the longest serving female conscientious objector to the Israeli military service.
- Tzvia GREENFIELD: "No Joke: Many Religious Zionists Strive to Rebuild Jerusalem's Temple" (Haaretz, Aug 14, 2016): click here!
Now that the settlement enterprise has lost some of its initial luster the zealots of Jewish national rebirth have found an absurd new focus.
- Shlomo SAND: "Israel Isn’t Fascist, but It Still Needs the World to Save It From Itself" (Haaretz, Aug 13, 2016): click here!
We are in a dangerous situation that can deteriorate into the expulsion of some of the residents of the territories, and even, in the face of serious armed resistance, into acts of mass slaughter.
- Gideon LEVY: "Religious Zionism Has Given Israel Nothing but Trouble" (Haaretz, Aug 14, 2016): click here!
My colleague Ari Shavit’s comments that the settler movement is exciting show that even the country’s ‘radical centrist’ is unenlightened.
- Susan ABULHAWA: "Israel’s desalination miracle, Santa Claus and other fairy tales" (AURDIP, Aug 10, 2016): click here!
The ’making the desert bloom’ myth has long masked Israel’s occupation and degradation of Palestinian natural resources
- Haaretz Editorial: "How to Cure Israel's Diplomatic 'Leprosy'" (Haaretz, Aug 9, 2016): click here!
Precisely because Israel is considered a legitimate state and a longstanding, proper member of the family of nations, the entire world demands that it follow this family’s accepted rules.
- Yuli NOVAK: "Elor Azaria is exposing the occupation, but he's no silence breaker" (Haaretz, Aug 8, 2016): click here!
In testimony at his manslaughter trial for summarily executing a disarmed Palestinian attacker, Elor Azaria is openly describing the violence, de-humanization, hatred, and settler domination that defines the occupation. But make no mistake, he’s not breaking his silence.
- Amira HASS: "In Israel, the Bedouin Victim Is at Fault" (Haaretz, Aug 8, 2016): click here!
The attacker, if he is a police officer, has immunity because his baton, fists and handcuffs are the servants of the state.
- Barak RAVID: "World Sees Israel as a Pariah State, Senior Gov't Official Says" (Haaretz, Aug 7, 2016): click here!
Strategic Affairs Ministry aims to change the way Israel is perceived in the international arena, director general Sima Vaknin tells lawmakers; says victory will be achieved when Israel won't be equated with apartheid.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Masses - Not Netanyahu - Are the Real Censors of Israel's Free Press" (Haaretz, Aug 7, 2016): click here!
The media is therefore the big collaborator in the occupation, allowing it to exist without raising questions. It is the senior partner in the demonization of the Palestinians, and it aids in the concealment and denial of the crimes of the occupation.
- Jonathan COOK: "The shocking story of Israel’s disappeared babies" (J.Cook, Aug 5, 2016): click here!
New information has come to light about thousands of mostly Yemeni children believed to have been abducted in the 1950s.
- Jonathan COOK: "Israeli racism unmasks Netanyahu goodwill video" (Redress, Aug 3, 2016): click here!
Was it meant as an epic parody or an insult to his audience’s intelligence? It was hard to tell. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took to social media to apologise for last year’s notorious election-day comment, when he warned that “the Arabs are coming out to vote in droves” – a reference to the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian.
- Gideon LEVY: "Stop Living in Denial, Israel Is an Evil State" (Haaretz, July 31, 2016): click here!
Israel may not be Nazi, nor even a fascist state. Yet it is a member of the same terrible family, the family of evil states. Just consider these acts of evil perpetrated by the state...
- Almog BEN ZIKRI: "Protesters, Police Clash at Israeli Arab Village Set to Be Razed for Jewish Town" (Haaretz, July 31, 2016): click here!
Three cops and one civilian wounded and several arrests made as violence erupts at Umm al-Hiran, where bulldozers and earth removal equipment began digging near the homes of the unrecognized Bedouin village.
- Yotam BERGER: "Secret 1970 Document Confirms First West Bank Settlements Built on a Lie" (Haaretz, July 28, 2016): click here!
In minutes of meeting in then-defense minister Moshe Dayan’s office, top Israeli officials discussed how to violate international law in building settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.
- Mazal MUALEM: "'Ultra-Orthodox run government,' Israeli lawmaker warns" (Al Monitor, July 28, 2016: click here!
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Yesh Atid Knesset member Aliza Lavie claims that the new laws excluding many Israelis from ritual baths and undoing the core curriculum requirements for ultra-Orthodox children are ominous signs of the ultra-Orthodox stranglehold on the government.
- Gideon LEVY:“What Sort of Society Feels Absolutely Nothing After Killing Hundreds of Children?“(Haaretz, July 28, 2016): click here!
“Israel killed 546 Palestinian children over the course of only 50 days in Gaza in 2014. Of those, 180 were babies and toddlers under the age of five.”
- Gideon LEVY: "The Late Palestinian National Poet Will Continue to Haunt Israel" (Haaretz, July 23, 2016: click here!
Mahmoud Darwish insists on mentioning what Israelis don't want to acknowledge: A great sin took place here when the State of Israel was founded in 1948.
- Tyler LEVITAN: "Yakov M. Rabkin Asks 'What Is Modern Israel?'" (Huffington Post, July 21, 2016: click here!
This is an interview I conducted with Professor Yakov M. Rabkin of the Université de Montréal, author of the recently published 'What Is Modern Israel'.
- Jonathan LIS: "After Stormy Debate, Knesset Approves Law Allowing Ouster of Lawmakers" (Haaretz, July 20, 2016: click here!
Law, which allows expulsion of lawmakers for incitement to racism and support of armed struggle against Israel, has been criticized by the left of targeting Arab lawmakers.
- Marianne AZIZI: "Secret Israeli committee uses US federal agents to hunt down down Israeli journalist and snuff out free speech" (redressonline, June 23, 2016: click here!
Freedom of speech is the new war in Israel. Lory Shem Tov, a prolific journalist and blogger, has written tirelessly about the human rights abuses of corrupt judges in the corrupt judicial system of Israel.
- Jonathan LIS: "Despite Global Criticism, Israel Approves Contentious 'NGO Law'" (Haaretz, July 11, 2016: click here!
Critics say law, which mandates special requirements for NGOs that get most of their funding from foreign governments, disproportionately targets human rights organizations.
- Gideon LEVY: "I Thought Israeli Soldiers Weren’t Supposed to Shoot Palestinian Girls Anymore" (Haaretz, July 7, 2016: click here!
But the executions – there’s no other way to describe them – of girls and boys, women and men, keep coming.
- Or KASHTI: "For Jews and Arabs, Israel’s School System Remains Separate and Unequal" (Haaretz, July 7, 2016: click here!
Naftali Bennett likes to tweet that he’s “the education minister of all Israeli children.” But the decision to give Arab teachers’ colleges in the north only about half the funding per student compared to other teachers’ colleges casts doubt on that statement.
- Michael SCHAEFFER OMER-MAN: "How Israel is turning anti-occupation activists into dissidents" (+972, July 4, 2016: click here!
Israel is seeing a worrying resurgence of attempts to curtail and suppress dissent, particularly among anti-occupation and human rights activists. That process does not take place in a vacuum.
- Gabriel PERALTA: "Militaire historie van joods Israël tot en met 1949" (Jaffadok, 4 juli, 2016: click here!
De vorming van het zionistische gedachtegoed door Theodor Herzl rond 1880 was de voornaamste drijfveer van met name ultra-orthodoxe joden om te vertrekken naar Palestina. Rond 1904, na de dood van Herzl, werd de focus op vestiging in Palestina van joden een algemeen geaccepteerd idee. De eerste groepen Joden vestigden zich rond 1885 in Palestina.
- Nadeem SHEHADEH: "A New Israeli Law Turns Its Arab Citizens Into Enemy Aliens" (Haaretz, June 30, 2016: click here!
In practice, the Knesset approved a deeply problematic law that apparently derogates too much from basic rights, such as the right to due process, and to freedom of expression.
- Jonathan LIS & Haaretz: "Netanyahu Vows to Work to Oust Israeli Arab MK Who Called Soldiers Murderers" (Haaretz, June 29, 2016: click here!
Ethics Committee expected to severely punish Zoabi in the next few days and sources in coalition say her comments could help bill allowing MKs to be removed to turn into law.
- "Modified version of controversial NGO bill approved by Knesset, enters final vote" (Ma'an, June 28, 2016: click here!
A modified version of a controversial NGO "transparency" bill received approval in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on Monday, paving the way for the bill to enter its second and third readings which could potentially see the contentious legislation incorporated into Israeli law, according to various Israeli media outlets.
- Ravit HECHT: "President Rivlin Is Israel’s Only Opposition to Extremism" (Haaretz, June 21, 2016: click here!
In recognizing that you don’t need to be a Zionist in order to be Israeli, Reuven Rivlin proved himself a shining light in a dingy democracy.
- Jack KHOURY: "Israeli Arabs Cry Foul on Move to Tie Funding to Home Demolitions" (Haaretz, June 20, 2016: click here!
Community vows not to cooperate with new government move, tied to budget pledge, to destroy widespread illegal construction in their own locales.
- Asa WINSTANLEY: "Israeli calls for ethnic cleansing grow louder" (MEMo, June 19, 2016: click here!
Israel is a state that owes its very existence to ethnic cleansing, massacres and seemingly perpetual wars.
- "Ehud Barak accuse le gouvernement Netanyahu d’installer l’apartheid" (Voltairenet.org,Juin 17, 2016: click here!
L’ancien Premier ministre israélien Ehud Barak, retiré de la vie politique, a accusé le gouvernement Netanyahu de « fascisme » (mais pas au sens des années 30 et 40 a-t-il précisé).
- Stephen LENDMAN: "Israel’s Discriminatory Land Policies" (Global Research, 31 July 2009): click here!
Israel’s late 1947 -1948 “War of Independence” took six months to create a new Jewish state, excluding Arabs to the greatest extent possible. To accomplish it, widespread war crimes and atrocities were committed as about 800,000 people were brutally uprooted, ethnically cleansed, or murdered in cold blood. In addition, 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other cities were destroyed and erased except in the collective memories of their inhabitants and descendants who’ll always consider them their rightful homes.
- Charlotte SILVER: "Israel incorporates British colonial rules into its law" (The Internet Intifada, June 16, 2016: click here!
Israel’s parliament adopted a sweeping law on Wednesday that critics warn further criminalizes Palestinian political activity by expanding what it defines as “terrorism.”
- Yair ASHKENAZI: "Israel Asks Culture Institutions to Declare if They Hold Performances in Settlements" (Haaretz, June 15, 2016: click here!
Israeli cultural institutions received a form from the government on Monday asking them to state whether they had or hadn’t offered performances last year in the Negev, the Galilee or West Bank settlements.
- "Only Solution to Palestinian Terrorism Is the End of the Occupation" (Haaretz Editorial, June 10, 2016: click here!
In the wake of the deadly Tel Aviv attack, ministers voice empty bravado and call for collective punishment, thereby just pushing more Palestinians to violence. It's time Israel learned the lesson: Terrorism will continue as long as the occupation does.
- "Under Israeli pressure, Facebook and Twitter delete large amounts of Palestinian content" (MEMo, June 9, 2016: click here!
Facebook and Twitter have recently deleted thousands of posts, pages and accounts in response to demands from the Israeli ministry of justice, Quds Press reported on Wednesday.
- Allison Kaplan SOMMER: "In Tel Aviv Terror Attack, Scholar of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Becomes Its Victim" (Haaretz, June 9, 2016: click here!
Dr. Michael Feige, who spent his career writing and lecturing about the effects of war and terrorism on the Israeli psyche, was one of the victims of Wednesday night’s terror attack in Sarona Market.
- Ariel Ben SOLOMON & Lahav HARKOV: "Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai: Palestinian celebrations of terror result of 'occupation'" (The Jerusalem Post, June 9, 2016: click here!
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai and Joint List lawmakers found the culprit for the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv that took four lives – not just the two terrorists from Yatta, but the “occupation” and the government they said Thursday.
- Amira HASS: "Israel's Right to Sweep Away Palestinians " (Haaretz, June 8, 2016: click here!
Expelling Palestinians is a paradigm that’s alive and well in the Jews’ state - a plan that was carried out and that is always waiting to be replicated.
- Adam KELLER: "Israel 2016: A house divided" (The Jerusalem Post, June 6, 2016: click here!
Israelis who still adhere to such concepts as democracy, or human rights, or simply common decency, increasingly feel beleaguered and threatened – and not only left-wingers.
- Chemi SHALEV: "The IDF General Who Challenged Netanyahu’s Suffocating Holocaust Analogies" (Haaretz, June 6, 2016: click here!
By pointing to intolerant trends in Israeli society, the deputy army commander deviated from the accepted script of Jews as eternal victims.
- Shlomi ELDAR: "Israel's smartest student is an Arab" (Al-Monitor, June 3, 2016: click here!
Mohammed Zeidan, from the Arab community of Kafr Manda in northern Israel, is the only Arab in Israel who has been able to get the ultranationalist Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi from the Joint List to exchange warm greetings. Zeidan, 19, scored an 800 on Israeli's Psychometric Entrance Test, the highest possible score. Tibi praised his achievement on Twitter, and Bennett was quick to retweet Tibi’s greeting, leading the two political foes to exchange kind words.
- Asa WINSTANLEY: "The growing influence of Israel’s most hard line settlers" (MEMo, June 1, 2016: click here!
With the assent of Israel’s hard-right new defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, the man he replaced warned of the direction Israeli political life is now taking. “Extremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement,” Moshe Yaalon said gravely.
- Michael SCHAEFFER OMER-MAN: "Leading Israeli rights group to stop cooperating with the IDF" (+972, May 25, 2016: click here!
The Israeli military justice system acts only to ‘cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators,’ B’Tselem says, citing 25 years of experience working with the military. Palestinian rights expert welcomes the move.
- B'Tselem: "The Occupation's Fig Leaf: Israel's Military Law Enforcement System as a Whitewash Mechanism" (B'Tselem, May, 2016: click here!
The military law enforcement system is supposed to handle complaints filed against soldiers for harm caused to Palestinians in the West Bank, including cases of violence and gunfire that resulted in injury or death. Such harm is endemic to the occupation, which has been in place for nearly fifty years.
- "A Death Penalty Only for Palestinians" (Haaretz Editorial, May 22, 2016: click here!
There are so many reasons to oppose capital punishment. But Avigdor Lieberman's attempt to adopt it is particularly odious.
- Lawrence DAVIDSON: "The Widening Cracks in Zionism" (CommonDreams, May 21, 2016: click here!
Zionism has imposed an ideological orthodoxy that seeks to lock Jews – and Western politicians – into unquestioning support for whatever Israel does, but more people are beginning to break ranks.
- Rik RUTTEN: "Israël wil Brussel leren strijden tegen terrorisme, maar voedt zelf de frustratie" (MO*, 12 mei, 2016: click here!
Het is de prijs van het veiligheidsgevoel van Israëliërs: tegenover het voorkomen van grote aanslagen staat een groot aantal misstanden en mensenrechtenschendingen. Willekeurige arrestaties, het vernietigen van huizen als straf voor de families van aanslagplegers, het onrechtmatig doodschieten van Palestijnen aan checkpoints en daarbuiten: het jaarverslag van Human Rights Watch leest als een waslijst mensenrechtenschendingen.
- Mira SUCHAROV: "As They Celebrate Independence, Israelis Should Remember the Nakba" (Haaretz, May 11, 2016: click here!
Despite the Israeli government’s attempt to legislate into silence any Palestinian national mourning through the 2011 Nakba Law, in most ways it’s hard to think of one narrative without the other. Israel’s founding constituted a moment of elation for Zionists just as it violently dislocated the Palestinians.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Israeli Generals Who Shoot and Cry and Shoot Again" (Haaretz, May 8, 2016: click here!
These nice and principled military figures are beloved on the center-left, which has always dreamed about ethical generals who make eloquent Holocaust Remembrance Day speeches, but they are nothing more than empty salves to the conscience of the purportedly enlightened tribe.
- Eli MASSEY: "Ilan Pappe: Israel Is the Last Remaining, Active Settler-Colonialist Project." Ilan Pappe discusses Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders and the post-Zionist movement (interview, In These Times, May 5, 2016: click here!
- Akiva ELDAR: "How education became an Israeli political tool" (Al-Monitor, April 28, 2016: click here!
Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his colleagues from other Orthodox parties know that teaching their ideology to school children will benefit themselves politically in the long run.
- Nada ELIA: "The end of apartheid in Israel will not destroy the country, it can only improve it" (Mondoweiss, April 21, 2016: click here!
...what kind of person would view the abolition of institutionalized racism as a loss, a disappearance, rather than a global victory? What kind of person actually believes South Africa was finished, after the end of white supremacy there?
- Robin DE WEVER: "Israëls leger wordt steeds religieuzer en zionistischer" (Trouw, 19 april 2016: click here!
Langzaam maar zeker verschiet het Israëlische leger van kleur. Religieuze zionisten roeren zich steeds vaker en nadrukkelijker - tot chagrijn van seculiere dienders en de legerleiding. Zij vrezen dat nieuwkomers de koers van het leger veranderen. Dat hun loyaliteit niet bij het vaderland ligt, maar bij God.
- Shraga BLUM: "Unesco: « Le peuple juif n’a aucun lien religieux avec le Mont du Temple et le Mur occidental »!" (LPH Info, 16 avril 2016: click here!
Le comité directeur de l’Unesco a adopté en fin de semaine dernière une résolution proposée par l’Autorité Palestinienne fixant qu’il n’y a aucun lien religieux entre le peuple juif et le Mont du Temple ainsi que le Mur occidental! La résolution se réfère au Mont du Temple comme à un lieu exclusivement musulman.
- Ahmad MELHEM: "Controversial bill threatens Israel's Arab MKs with suspension" (Al Monitor, April 14, 2016: click here!
The Knesset ratified the first reading of Israel's suspension bill, which allows the suspension of Knesset members and targets Arab lawmakers on charges of committing treason or supporting any terror or hostility toward Israel. Lawmakers voted 59-53 in favor of the bill March 28.
- Noam ROTEM: "The Israeli Right's historic ties to European fascism" (+972, April 14, 2016: click here!
The ruling Likud party welcomed to Israel members of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, whose founders were high-ranking officials in the Third Reich. But the Israeli Right’s ties to fascist movements stretches back as far as the 1920s.
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: "Netanyahu: Ethnic Cleanser" (Tikun Olam, April 13, 2016: click here!
“Israel should have exploited China’s suppression of the demonstrations [Tienanmen Square], at a time when the world’s attention was devoted to events in that country, in order to conduct mass expulsions of the Arabs [sic] of the Occupied Territories."
- Tomer AVITAL: "True extent of Israeli public spending on religious services, revealed" (Haaretz, April 13, 2016: click here!
First-of-its-kind study shows religious allocations in 2016 amount to $2.3 billion - or 2.3% of total state budget - spread across several ministries.
- Jonathan OFIR: "Zionism is not really secular" (Mondoweiss, April 8, 2016: click here!
Whilst the State of Israel marks itself as the Jewish State, many Zionists and particularly liberal Zionists, often make a strong separation between Judaism and Zionism, noting that Zionism is essentially a secular ideology, and that its manifestation, Israel, is essentially a secular state.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Difference Between Israel's 1948 Generation and Today's" (Haaretz, April 7, 2016: click here!
My uncle, who we buried this week, fought alongside other children of refugees who believed this was a war for the liberation of their nation. What does today’s 'war' of occupation have to do with that?
- Peter BEINART: "Why Rabbi Sacks Is Wrong: Palestinians Don’t Have to Be anti-Semites to Be anti-Zionists" (Haaretz, April 6, 2016: click here!
The former British chief rabbi is a wise and brilliant man, but his recent essay does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews: it dehumanizes them.
- Engelbert LUITSZ: "Nationalistische mythen van het zionisme" (Alexandrina, April 5, 2016: click here!
- Jonathan COOK: "Execution of Palestinian exposes militarism and racism of Israeli culture" (Mondoweiss, April 4, 2016: click here!
It might have been a moment that jolted Israelis to their senses. Instead the video of an Israeli soldier shooting dead a young Palestinian man as he lay wounded and barely able to move has only intensified the tribal war dance of the Israeli public
- Philip WEISS: "‘Zionism is nationalism, not Judaism,’ a former Hebrew school teacher explains" (Mondoweiss, April 4, 2016: click here!
The media have at last taken up an important discussion: the relationship of Judaism and Zionism. Many supporters of Israel say that to be Jewish means to be a Zionist; and therefore it’s anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist.
- Jonathan OFIR: "Israelis don't exist" (Mondoweiss, March 25, 2016: click here!
The “Jewish State”, by its very definition, has to keep its population separated in definition, so that it would always reserve for itself the possibility of discriminating against a “sector” of the population on a quasi-religious-quasi-racial basis, without it appearing as if it favours one “Israeli” more than another “Israeli” – simply because for the State of Israel, ISRAELIS DON’T EXIST.
- Akiva ELDAR: "Israel's war between the Jews" (Al-Monitor, March 15, 2016: click here!
While the international community keeps trying to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, many Orthodox Israelis reject not only Arabs but all also other Jews.
- Tristan DUNNING: "Israel: Just another crackpot regime in the Middle East" (The New Arab, March 10, 2016: click here!
Israel claims to be the only democracy in the region, but its institutional racism demonstrates the state's tangential grasp on reality.
- Michael SCHAEFFER OMER-MAN: "Ethnic cleansing poll a dangerous sign for Israel" (+972, March 9, 2016: click here!
The vast majority of Jewish Israelis don’t want to give up their privilege. But nobody has the right to ‘democratically’ deny rights to another.
- Marissa NEWMAN: “Nearly half of Jewish Israelis want to expel Arabs, survey shows”, (The Times of Israel, March 8, 2016): click here.
Pew study finds 79% believe Jews should get preferential treatment over Arab citizens; number of those who believe settlements are helpful to Israel’s security growing; majority identify as centrist.
- "Israel’s Religiously Divided Society" (Pew Research Center, March 8, 2016: click here![For the full PEW report (pdf, 237p.): click here!]
Deep gulfs among Jews, as well as between Jews and Arabs, over political values and religion’s role in public life.
- Haaretz Editorial: "Israel's Culture Minister's War on Culture " (March 7, 2016: click here!
Miri Regev proved once again that she has no interest in real dialogue with the country’s cultural institutions and its creators, and is hostile to those who engage in the creative arts
- Philip WEISS: "‘We wasted 40 years talking about nothing, doing nothing’ — Pappe demolishes peace process" (Monoweiss, March 4, 2016: click here!
For decades, intellectuals tried and failed to explain the root of the conflict as a settler-colonial project. Now at last that paradigm has come into fashion in academia; and it is acute and powerful, and helps explain the relevance of Palestine to the Middle East and the world at large.
- Ruth EGLASH & William BOOTH: "Israel to launch one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, with U.S. help" (The Washington Post, March 3, 2016: click here!
TEL AVIV — A joint exercise now being conducted between thousands of Israeli troops and the U.S. European Command represents a final test before Israel begins to deploy one of the most sophisticated missile defense systems in the world.
- Yesh Din, written by Yossi Gurvitz: "The right to own property — for Jews alone" (+972, March 4, 2016): click here!
The government never authorized the wholesale annexation of the West Bank. That’s why it’s doing it behind everyone’s backs.
- William A. COOK: "Israel Defies UN Efforts to Bring it into Compliance with Int’l Law"(Deliberation, Feb 24, 2016): click here!
There is only one logical and civilized way to determine the owners of the land of Palestine and that is in the United Nations and its charters as agreed upon by 194 nations. Boycotts, divestments and sanctions may be the only route to compel Israel to understand that fact.
- David PALUMBO-LIU: "Israel Unleashes an Onslaught on Human-Rights NGOs, Artists, and Writers"(The Nation, Feb 26, 2016): click here!
Israel has long fought against its most vocal critics. But what we see unfolding now both in terms of repressive laws and also of strategic attacks coming from the far right is unprecedented in recent history, and thus warrants our close attention.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israeli racism is evolving, but it's okay, because the joke is being told about Arabs" (Haaretz, Feb 25, 2016): click here!
Here’s a joke. David Levy, a former Israeli minister who hailed from Morocco, is walking down the street with his wife and son. The kid falls into a pit. Levy asks his wife: “Should we get him out, or make another one?”
- Ben WHITE: "In Israel racism is the law" (Al Jazeera, Feb 25, 2016): click here!
On January 3, two Palestinians were removed from an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv, after Jewish Israelis claimed that they constituted a "security risk".
- Jonathan COOK: "Israel is on the brink of a tyranny of the majority" (The National, Feb 23, 2016): click here!
Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Tel Aviv is drafting legislation that ought to resolve in observers’ minds the question of whether Israel is the democracy it proudly claims to be. The bill empowers a three-quarters majority of the Israeli parliament to oust a sitting MP.
- Tal NIV: "Israeli Military Relinquishes the Role of 'The World's Most Moral Army'" (Haaretz, Feb 22, 2016): click here!
The brutal video footage in which Border Policemen empty a magazine into a Palestinian last week proves that the IDF now needs to take 'defense' out of its name.
- Samah SALAIME: "What about us ‘beasts’ living inside the Villa in the Jungle?" (+972, Feb 21, 2016): click here!
Netanyahu’s magic solution for all of Israel’s problems is to fence the state in. But he will still be left with over a million Arabs, potential beasts of prey, and all the incitement in the world will not remove them.
- Peter BEINART: "How to Stop Israel’s 'Delegitimization' Among American Progressives "(Haaretz, Feb 16, 2016): click here!
Israel’s treatment of the stateless Palestinians over which it rules is not a public relations problem. It is a moral problem.
- Oren YIFTACHEL: "Call Apartheid in Israel by Its Name" (Haaretz, Feb 11, 2016): click here!
Citizenship here is reminiscent of South Africa's in the past: Jews are 'white' citizens, Arabs in Israel have 'colored' (in other words, partial) citizenship; and Palestinians in the territories have 'black' citizenship, without political rights.
- Jonathan LIS: "Knesset Approves 'NGO Transparency Bill' in First Reading", (Haaretz, Feb 9, 2016): click here!
The contentious bill, sponsored by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi), demands that NGOs which receive funding from foreign governments specify that in all their official publications, along with the names of the countries that contribute.
- Neve GORDON: "Israeli Labor Party adopts the apartheid mantra" (Al Jazeera, Feb 9, 2016): click here!
It does not seem likely that a just solution to the Palestinian plight will come from within Israel... Indeed, at this historical juncture, international pressure is perhaps the only hope and is desperately needed.
- Jonathan OFIR: "To my fellow Israelis: We can stop this" (Mondoweiss, Feb 8, 2016): click here!
An open letter to my fellow Israelis:
This is probably a culmination of nearly a decade’s reviewed study of our history. At some point, beyond the singular stories, cases and arguments, I feel something unequivocal and very generally encompassing needs to be said about our Israeli “miracle”, the manifestation of the Zionist “dream”.
- Michel WARSCHAWSKI: "The State of Israel is changing its nature" (alternativenews.org, Feb 8, 2016): click here!
It sounds like fascism, it smells like fascism, it looks like fascism.
- Jonathan COOK: "Behind Israel’s campaign to vilify peace groups" (Middle East Eye, Jan 29, 2016): click here!
Far-right activists spying on Israeli human rights community received hidden funds from Netanyahu government.
- Shir HEVER: "Privatising Israel's arms industry" (Middle East Eye, Jan 27, 2016): click here!
Long before the state of Israel was founded, Israeli Military Industries (IMI) was established in 1933 to provide arms for the Jewish militias in Palestine. The company grew to become Israel’s fifth largest arms company and 45th largest industrial company in Israel. IMI employs about 3,600 workers, and produces ammunition, electronic systems and mobile military bridges. It also attempts to enter the “homeland security” market, and has confidential lines of production.
- Ben LYNFIELD: "Blacklist of artists and intellectuals published by Israeli right-wing group prompts warnings of 'McCarthyism'" (The Independent, Jan 29, 2016): click here!
Novelist Anat Einhar, recipient of the prime minister's award for literature last year and a figure on Im Tirtzu's blacklist for participating in the Breaking the Silence event, told the Independent that Im Tirtzu is targeting independent thought... She thinks that Mr Netanyahu "is enjoying this. Im Tirtzu are the hunting dogs of Netanyahu's rule. He cannot express himself as they do, he has to be more statesmanlike. But they serve him and there is a complete fit between the messages of fear that Netanyahu projects in order to stay in power and the activities of Im Tirtzu."
- "Israeli Petition on EU Labeling of Settlement Products by "Indication of Origin" Contributes Significantly to the Future of Israel and to Peace" (pdf): click here!
Signed by over 550 prominent Israelis that welcomed the union’s decision and called on other nations to follow suit. Among the signatories was Avishai Margalit, a former recipient of the Israel Prize in philosophy, and Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Israeli Knesset.
- "Im Tirtzu's New Campaign 'Outs' Leftist Artists, Including Oz and Grossman" (haaretz.com, Jan 27, 2016): click here!
After previous campaign singled out members of human rights groups as foreign 'moles,' new campaign will release names of hundreds of artists linked to leftist causes.
- Uri AVNERY: "Extreme, extremer, extremest" (gush-shalom, Jan 23, 2016): click here!
...In Israel proper, the government belongs to the extreme Right, with some elements that would be called "fascist" anywhere else. The Center and Left are impotent. The only real political fight is between the radical Right and the even more radical extreme Right.
- Noam SHEIZAF: "It's open season on anyone opposing the occupation" (+972, Jan 23, 2016): click here!
There is a campaign being carried out against anyone actively opposing the occupation in Israel, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an activist in the field, a human rights attorney or a former soldier talking about what you were ordered to do.
- Edo KONRAD: "These are the anti-occupation activists jailed under gag order" (+972, Jan 21, 2016): click here!
Israeli authorities arrest prominent activists Ezra Nawi, Guy Butavia, and Nasser Nawajah. At least one of them was barred from meeting with his attorney for days. In court, one activist says his interrogators used materials taken directly from a right-wing organization.
- Adri NIEUWHOF: "Arrests signal intensifying crackdown on Israeli human rights groups" (The Electronic Intifada, Jan 21, 2016): click here!
Israel has arrested three human rights defenders amid what appears to be a concerted campaign, backed by authorities, to sabotage domestic organizations documenting Israeli abuses of Palestinians. Last week, Israeli forces arrested Ezra Nawi, a member of Taayush, a Palestinian and Jewish activist group that defends the rights of Palestinian farmers in the South Hebron Hills area of the occupied West Bank.
- Orly NOY: "The Israeli Left must realize it is at war" (+972, Jan 20, 2016): click here!
It is unthinkable that we will play according to the “rules of democracy” as fascism becomes the new state religion. Our silence today will only serve as the basis upon which our friends will be arrested tomorrow. Now is the time to break that silence.
- Akiva ELDAR: "The black flag over Israel's democracy" (Al-Monitor, Jan 19, 2016): click here!
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the massacre carried out by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces against the Arab Israeli village of Kafr Qasim, during which 49 residents died, including women and children, who were making their way home from their fields. In anticipation of the 1956 military campaign over the Sinai Peninsula, Israel had declared a curfew for Arab villages on that day. The villagers were returning from the fields half an hour after the declaration, unaware of the curfew.
- Assad ABDI: "Isaac Herzog: the other ugly face of Netanyahu" (Medium.com, Jan 20, 2016): click here!
Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog’s “New Diplomatic Plan” is nothing but an attempt to present a Netanyahu-with-a-Prettier-Face Plan. Palestinians will get 100% more of nothing.
- Meron RAPOPORT: "Israel: The enemy within" (Middle East Eye, Jan 18, 2016): click here!
Even veteran members of the Israeli left-wing camp cannot remember when they were last subject to such a concerted, prolonged and vicious assault as the one they have faced in the last few weeks. There were times in which Israel's radical left was smaller, but rarely was it put to such an institutionalised and almost official campaign of delegitimisation.
- Sawsan KHALIFE': "Why Palestinians aren't standing up for Israeli leftists" (+972, Jan 18, 2016): click here!
The Israeli Left with which most Palestinians are familiar speaks the same language as the Right — of segregation and safeguarding a racist regime. The ‘other Left’ needs to develop a new discourse, and we should all hope it succeeds.
- Michael Schaeffer OMER-MAN: "Why it's scarier this time around" (+972, Jan 17, 2016): click here!
There is nothing new about the multi-pronged attack on human rights and anti-occupation activists in Israel, but there’s something different this time. Something scarier.
- Sayed KASHUA: "Welcome to the Israeli Arab Ghetto" (Haaretz, Jan 15, 2016): click here!
Why do these shootings keep happening in your communities, I'm asked sometimes. That's what happens, I respond, when the state ignores your existence, and violence mediated by criminals is used to resolve disputes.
- Ben WHITE: "Israel’s unwillingness to dismantle the settlements, crushes the ‘Palestinian State’ solution" (Newsweek Middle East, Jan 13, 2016): click here!
An Israeli political leadership deeply committed to the expansion of West Bank settlements, including outposts and isolated colonies, combined with the growing influence of national-religious Jews within the military, makes the prospect of any large-scale removal of settlers a fantasy. When will global decision-makers wake up?
- Oren YIFTACHEL: "Call Apartheid in Israel by Its Name" (Haaretz, Jan 11, 2016): click here!
Citizenship here is reminiscent of South Africa's in the past: Jews are 'white' citizens, Arabs in Israel have 'colored' (in other words, partial) citizenship; and Palestinians in the territories have 'black' citizenship, without political rights.
- Padraig O'MALLEY: "It’s too late for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine" (The Conversation, Jan 7, 2016): click here!
Many obstacles stand in the way of a two-state solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. At the moment, negotiations are a nonstarter for all parties.
- "Democracy: ‘disastrous for the Jewish people’". "Likud MK Miky Zohar introduces ‘the law of Sabbath’ bill in the name of fighting democracy" (Alternative Information Center, Jan 6, 2016): click here!
- Carolina LANDSMANN: "Israel's Ethical Terrorism and Special Brand of Morality". "It’s terrorism, Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledges, but not exactly. It’s evil, but not entirely. And Jewish evil is always the exception that proves the rule" (Haaretz, Dec 31, 2015): click here!
Just as the Israeli army is the most moral army in the world, Israel’s terrorism is the most moral terrorism in the world. Its political persecution, torture, racism and censorship are the most moral in the world. Its apartheid is the most moral.
- Alon IDAN: "By Banning Book, Israel Maintains Purity of Blood". "Jews and Arabs are forbidden to have sex, love, marry, have families or live with one another, according to the Education Ministry" (Haaretz, Dec 31, 2015): click here!
We’ll have to do some decoding to properly understand what Dalia Fenig, the acting chair of the Education Ministry’s pedagogic secretariat, was saying when she disqualified the novel “Borderlife,” the story of an Israeli and Palestinian who fall in love in New York, for use in advanced high school literature classes.
- Natasha ROTH: "There's no such thing as a moral army" (+972, Dec 24, 2015): click here!
The army is everything in Israel: its foundation, its heart, its history, its future and its compass — both moral and directional. For anyone to question the army’s actions and motives is the most wounding criticism anyone can direct at Israel, because it strikes at the country’s soul. The IDF is the most revered of Israel’s many sacred cows.
- Gideon LEVY: "Religious Ultranationalist Zionists Have Taken Over Israel" (Haaretz, Dec 25, 2015): click here!
First they established the foundation of their existence, the settlement enterprise. After they achieved their goal – the killing off of any diplomatic agreement and destruction of the two-state solution – they were free to turn to their next target: taking control of the public debate in Israel on the road to changing its power structure, character and substance.
- Marc H. ELLIS: "Will Israel’s policies fail of their own accord?" (Mondoweiss, Dec 22, 2015): click here!
With another New Year approaching and no positive movement on the ground, the word from the Israeli left, at least what remains of it, is foreboding. The indefatigable reporter, Amira Hass, is on her own non-violent warpath. Avraham Burg, a former architect of the apartheid he now sees as the end of Israel as a Jewish state, isn’t mincing words either.
- Amira HASS: "My Message to Diaspora Jews: Don't Become Accomplices to Israel's Crimes". "I tell my audiences exactly what they don't want to hear – and to Jews outside Israel I say: Don't make aliyah" (Haaretz, Dec 21, 2015): click here!
- Avraham BURG: "The Only Semi-democracy in the Middle East". The time has come to fight for the sake of a secular democracy that belongs to all its citizens (Haaretz, Dec 20, 2015): click here!
- Perry ANDERSON: "The House of Zion" (The New Left Review, 96, Nov-Dec 2015): click here!
- Or KASHTI: "Education Minister Bennett Bars Breaking the Silence From Schools" (Haaretz, Dec 15, 2015): click here!
Organization, which exposes army misconduct in the territories, spreads 'lies and incitement' against the IDF, Bennett says; Breaking the Silence: Bennett's message is that veterans are only good for cannon fodder.
- Chemi SHALEV: "Im Tirtzu and the Proto-fascist Plot to Destroy Israeli Democracy" (Haaretz, Dec 16, 2015): click here!
The group's video portraying human rights activists as terrorist-supporting traitors is a symptom of a rapidly spreading, potentially terminal disease.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israel Is Already a Binational State, and Has Been for a Long Time" (Haaretz, Dec 13, 2015): click here!
The debate must begin to shift now. No more proclaiming 'two states' and 'Jewish state.' The task now is to make it just.
- Nurit CANETTI: "The radicalization of Israel" (Al-Monitor, Dec 2, 2015): click here!
"“Academia is keeping mum, a shocking silence. Where are the humanities? Social sciences? Judaic studies? Law? There is an ongoing neglect of the world of concepts. The intellectual arena is suffering from a conceptual bankruptcy that facilitates the growth of competing visions in the public space."
- Alaa TARTIR: "Israel, ISIS and the Paris attacks" (Open Democracy, Nov 24, 2015): click here!
"The recent spate of terror attacks around the world have given Israel an opportunity to showcase its military and intelligence capabilities — and to further crack down on Palestinians.".
- Mohammed ALHAMMAMI: "Zionism is blocking the path to peace" (Mondoweiss, Nov 23, 2015): click here!
"The most dangerous threat Palestinians face in their struggle for freedom and human rights, besides the Israeli war machine, is the absence of historical context, or any context for that matter, in political discussions and media coverage of the conflict. This deliberate omission is demeaning, demonizing and dehumanizing".
- Ilana HAMMERMAN: "Germany and the Jews, Israel and the Palestinians. One Must Compare". We live in a society that cultivates the feeling, from kindergarten to old age, that every stranger is an enemy (Haaretz, Nov 20, 2015): click here!
"...This control, which was a covert ideology for many years, is now the product of an overt, official, nationalist and racist ideology. Yes, there is a basis of comparison between a society that allows all these things to happen, by deed or indifference, and a society that could allow the pogrom 77 years ago to happen. Though we may hope that no concentration camps await in the end.".
- Richard SILVERSTEIN: "Israeli Border Police Brutally Assault Black Hebrew" (blog, Nov 14, 2015): click here!
"This is not a one-off act of racism by an lone-wolf Israeli police bully. This is official racism and brutality. This is official sanctioned violence by the state against its own citizens. Though they happen to be citizens who are not White and therefore not worthy of the full rights of every other Israeli citizen. Israel is a state seeped in racism and violence: not just against Palestinians (which is half to be expected) but against its own Palestinian and Black citizens".
- Gideon LEVY: "This Is What the Moral Decline of Society Looks Like". "A sane society wound not incarcerate children as young as 12, but would instead try to treat the roots of their motivation" (Haaretz, Nov 8, 2015): click here!
We’ve lost. On the day a 13 year-old is questioned as if he were the head of a crime organization; on the day when Israeli thugs surrounded him, screaming “die, you son of a bitch”, as he lay bleeding; on the day young parents and newscasters on television call an 11-year-old boy a “terrorist” without even thinking of their own children.
- Amjad IRAQI: "Can we call it one state and be done with it?" (+972, Nov 8, 2015): click here!
The debate over whether we are living in a single state is irrelevant – the answer is a resounding yes. The real problem is that freedom and equality are only extended to some of its subjects.
- Edo KONRAD: "Why the 'hijacking' of Israeli democracy is a myth" (+972, Nov 8, 2015): click here!
We often hear that that Israeli democracy is being ‘hijacked’ by a group of right-wing extremists. Too bad the alternatives aren’t any more appealing.
- Haggai MATAR: "No Netanyahu, we refuse to keep living by the sword" (+972, October 26, 2015): click here!
The Israeli prime minister says Israelis are doomed to a permanent state of war. It’s time to show him that we aren’t willing to come along for the ride — that we believe in a future for us and our children.
- Odeh BISHARAT: "Apologies to the Fuhrer" (Haaretz, October 22, 2015): click here!
Netanyahu’s attempt to place the mufti at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows just how bankrupt the extremists in Israel have become. It’s a declaration of all-out war on the Palestinian people. It’s ‘us or them.’
- Assad ABDI: "So you thought 'Israel is a democracy?'" (Medium, October 19, 2015): click here!
For those who are still under the illusion that Israel is a democracy, or “the only democracy” in the region, here’s another example of how far this “democracy” is becoming a dictatorship under the present government.
- Gideon LEVY: "The Single-state Solution Is Already Here" (Haaretz, October 17, 2015): click here!
Now, of all times, out of the fire and despair, we must start talking about the last way out: one Israeli state with equal rights for both Jews and Arabs.
- Eric DRAITSER: "Israel, the Media and the Anatomy of a Sick Society" (CounterPunch, 15 October 2015): click here!
"...The video of 13 year old Palestinian Ahmed Manasrah bleeding to death on the pavement of an East Jerusalem neighborhood has been described as “shocking,” “disturbing,” and “painful to watch.” The callous verbal abuse and insults from Israelis watching the child writhe in agony are variously characterized as “heartless” and “cruel”; and indeed they are. “Die you son of a whore. Die! Die!” the Israeli onlookers can be heard shouting in the video which has since gone viral on social media...".
- "Israel May Be Taking First Steps Toward Becoming a Halakhic State" (Haaretz Editorial, 11 October 2015): click here!
In haze of current security situation, Ministerial Committee for Legislation is slated to consider a bill that would inject elements of Jewish law into Israeli law.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israel's Lawless Death Penalty Without Trial Buoyed by Cheers of the Masses" (Haaretz, 11 October 2015): click here!
"The people of Israel see these pictures and most of them are filled with delight and pleasure, as the media inflames their animal urges. That’s the real incitement. Adults and children see how Arabs are shot like stray dogs at the roadside and learn the lesson. In this way, one of the main reasons for this uprising’s eruption is demonstrated - the dehumanization of the Palestinians, whose life and death are worthless to the Israelis."
- Shlomo SAND: ‘I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew’ (The Guardian.com, 10 October 2015): click here!
His past was Jewish, but today he sees Israel as one of the most racist societies in the western world. Historian Shlomo Sand explains why he doesn’t want to be Jewish anymore.
- Jonathan COOK: "Israel's army and schools work hand in hand, say teachers" (Middle East Eye, Sept 27, 2015): click here!
Close ties means Israeli pupils are being raised to be "good soldiers" rather than good citizens. [...] All the teachers noted that schools have come under mounting pressure to actively participate in the army programme. Each school is now graded annually by the education ministry not only on its academic excellence but also on the draft rate among pupils and the percentages qualifying for elite units, especially in combat or intelligence roles.
- Ofri ILANY: "Justifying War Crimes in the Name of Judaism" (Haaretz, Sept 25, 2015): click here!
In contemporary Israel, the idea of the universal mission of the Jewish people has morphed into something else – and all in the name of the Jews’ supposed moral supremacy.
- Daoud KUTTAB: "Israel attempts to redefine terrorism, but is its definition too broad?" (Al-Monitor, Sept 23, 2015): click here!
Some observers are concerned that a draft Israeli law's wide-ranging definition of what constitutes terrorism could outlaw opposition to the occupation and suppress political opposition in Israel.
- Gideon LEVY: "How Netanyahu’s Uncle Left Israel and Saved His Children From Becoming Jailers" (Haaretz, Sept 19, 2015): click here!
His cousins lead calm, secure lives as he turns all Israel into the former Gaza settlements — fenced in on all sides, an army battalion for every family. [...] Young Israelis are being drafted into the army to serve as jailers and policemen over a conquered people. They’re trained to be ignorant, xenophobic and arrogant about the whole world, these members of the chosen people. The democracy they live in is also foundering. No hope peers over the horizon, mainly because of Netanyahu.
- Gideon LEVY: "Do Most Israelis Really Want Separation of Religion and State?" (Haaretz, 15 September, 2015): click here!
"Israelis like to think they live in a progressive country. But they know their lives are governed with religion, and they don’t really mind.
- Gideon LEVY: "Israel's 'Jewish Majority' Obsession" (Haaretz, 13 September, 2015): click here!
"It's all based on an obsession: Israel must be a Jewish state at any cost. Just or unjust, good or not good, flourishing or not flourishing — the main thing is that it be Jewish. And as with any obsession, few can explain why and no one is allowed to doubt it.
- Ben CASPIT: "Israel, the Fortress" (Al-Monitor, 9 September, 2015): click here!
"When Israel completes the construction of its eastern fence, it could finally declare itself a well-fortified stronghold in the heart of the Middle Eastern jungle".
- Dan COHEN & David SHEEN: "Haaretz’s Or Kashti on the rightwing religious takeover of the Ministry of Education" (Mondoweiss, September 8, 2015): click here!
"(Kashti) painted a grim outlook for Israeli society in which the education system is anti-intellectual, Jewish identity is exploited to serve political Zionism, and non-Zionist perspectives are eliminated. Perhaps most frightening is Kashti’s warning that within twenty years, first graders will be ill-equipped to simply understand the world around them.
- Avi ISSACHAROFF: "The end of the two-state solution" (The Times of Israel, August 6, 2015): click here!
It’s time to say it out loud: The Israeli right has won — a temporary, pyrrhic victory that has set Israel on the path to becoming a Muslim-majority state.
- Jonathan COOK: "Hasbara Industry: Why Israel’s Army of Spin-Doctors is Doomed to Defeat" (CounterPunch, July 7, 2015): click here!
- Jonathan COOK: "Israel’s behaviour will bankrupt it over time" (The National, June 15, 2015): click here!
Two recent reports suggest that Israel could face catastrophic consequences if it fails to end the mistreatment of Palestinians under its rule, whether in the occupied territories or in Israel itself.
- Gili IZIKOVICH: "David Grossman: 'Culture minister turning Israel into a militant, fundamentalist sect'" (Haaretz, June 15, 2015): click here!
Prominent author says Miri Regev does not understand her job, favors Jewishness and Israeliness over freedom of expression. "Controversy surrounding Israel's new culture and sport minister, Miri Regev – among other things, because she has threatened to cut funding for a Jaffa children’s theater – has spawned sharp protest among the country's arts community [...] Also on Sunday, more than 3,000 artists signed a petition, entitled “the blacklist,” rejecting the authorities’ recent decisions targeting cultural institutions.“We protest against the anti-democratic measures taken by government ministries toward creators whose art or views aren’t in line with the views of these ministries,” said the petition, which was signed by actors Gila Almagor and Itay Tiran, architect Amnon Rechter, and writers Tsruya Lahav and Shoham Smith, among others."
- Noam SHEIZAF: "How every Israeli profits from the occupation" (+972, June 9, 2015): click here!
"The bottom line is very simple: Israel — its government, economy and citizens — regularly exploits everything it can from the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians the bare minimum for survival. There is no such thing as “democratic Israel” to the west of the Green Line and “occupying Israel” to its east. Occupying Israel exists in Tel Aviv as well."
- Salman MASALHA: "If Sephardic Jews Want to End Their Discrimination, They Must Become Proud Arabs" (Haaretz, April 1, 2015): click here!
Ashkenazi Zionism, which established the country in an ongoing confrontation with the Arab world, created a serious emotional crisis for Jews from Arab countries.
- Michael SCHWARTZ: "L'énergie, nerf de la guerre au Moyen-Orient" (Middle East Eye, Feb 27, 2015): click here!
Israël est plus désespéré que jamais en matière énergétique. A l’horizon pointe la possibilité de guerres généralisées pour le gaz, et les ravages qu’elles pourraient provoquer.
- Ali ABUNIMAH: "Does Israel Have a Right to Exist as a Jewish State?: An excerpt from Ali Abunimah’s ‘The Battle for Justice in Palestine’” (Mondoweiss, March 14, 2014): click here!
The following is an adapted excerpt from The Battle For Justice In Palestine. Copyright © 2014 by Ali Abunimah. Reprinted with permission of Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL. You can buy the book here.
- Sami MICHAEL: "Israel is the most racist state in the industrialized world" (+972, August 9, 2012): click here!
The following is the translation of a speech delivered by prominent Israeli author Sami Michael at a conference in Haifa in June 2012. It is a ‘cri de coeur’ that is full of love and grief.
- Jack KHOURY & Jonathan LIS: "Knesset Passes Two Bills Slammed as Discriminatory by Rights Groups" (Haaretz, March 24, 2011): click here!
One bill allows communities to screen potential new residents, and another bars public funding of entities that 'undermine foundations of the state and contradict its values.' Known as the "Nakba Law," its original intent was to sentence to prison anyone who marks Israeli Independence Day as a day of mourning or who holds memorial events for the Palestinian "Nakba" (destruction ).
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Current Affairs
- * "Why Do Children in Gaza Write Their Names on Their Hands?" (The Palestine Chronicle, Oct 19, 2023).
- DCI-P: "Israeli airstrikes kill at least 140 Palestinian children in Gaza" (DCI-P, Oct 12, 2023).
- Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Israel kills six Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza" (EI, 20 Sept, 2023).
- Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Israeli forces kill two in Aqbat Jabr camp" (EI, 15 August, 2023).
- DCI-P: "Israeli forces kill, withhold body of 15-year-old Palestinian boy" (DCI-P, August 2, 2023).
- "Israeli Forces Kill Two Palestinian Teenagers" (teleSUR, 21 July 2023).
- DCI-P: "Israeli forces blind 3 Palestinian children with live ammunition, stun grenade" (DCI-P, 20 July, 2023).
Ali ABUNIMAH: "Israel seeks revenge with Jenin invasion" (EI, 3 July, 2023). Amira HASS: "Adam, Fuad, Abdullah, Omar: The 28 Palestinian Kids Killed by Israeli Forces This Year" (Haaretz, 12 June 2023). Tamara NASSAR: "Israel kills municipal worker, resistance fighters in Balata refugee camp" (EI, 22 May 2023). "Israeli Soldiers Kill A Palestinian Child, Injure Two Young Men, In Refugee Camp In Jericho" (IMEMC, April 10, 2023). Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Israeli death squad kills four in Jenin" (EI, 16 March, 2023). "Teen among four Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in West Bank raids" (Middle East Eye, 9 March, 2023)."2023 Huwara rampage" (Wikipedia, 3 March, 2023). Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Israel kills 11 in daytime raid on Nablus" (The Electronic Intifada, 22 Feb 2023).Tamara NASSAR: "Israel kills another child in the West Bank" (The Electronic Intifada, 9 Feb 2023). "Un assassinat par jour : c’est ça le colonialisme israélien que nous devons combattre !" (CAPJPO-Europalestine, 17 janvier, 2023). Tamara NASSAR: "Israel kills three children as 2023 dawns" (The Electronic Intifada, 5 January, 2023). Mariam BARGHOUTI: "Invading Israeli forces assassinate 5 more Palestinians in two days, including 16-yr-old" (Israel-Palestine News, Dec 8, 2022). "Israel soldier executes Palestinian youth in cold blood " (MEMo, Dec 2, 2022). Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: "A Palestinian Boy Went Out With Friends. An Israeli Soldier Shot Him in the Head" (Haaretz, Oct 15, 2022). Yumna PATEL & Mariam BARGHOUTI: "Israeli forces kill four Palestinians in occupied West Bank, including two brothers" (Mondoweiss, Nov 29, 2022). Motasem A DALLOUL: "Who's going to stop the madness of extremist ministers of next Israeli government? " (Haaretz, Nov 11, 2022). Jack KHOURY & Hagar SHEZAF: "14-year-old Among Two Palestinian Teens Killed Within Hours of Each Other by IDF Fire in West Bank" (Haaretz, Nov 11, 2022). Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: "This Palestinian Teen Was Shot Twice, Cuffed and Detained by Israeli Troops – Then Released" (Haaretz, Sept 2, 2022). "Invading Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian photographing them, Injure 17 in Jenin" (Israel-Palestine News, Sept 6, 2022). Defense for Children International-Palestine: "Israeli settler, soldier shoot and kill Palestinian boy" (DCIP, August 1, 2022). Tamara NASSAR: "Israeli forces kill fleeing Palestinian child" (EI, 6 July, 2022). Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Israel executes three Palestinians in Jenin" (The Electronic Intifada, June 18, 2022). "Thirteen Palestinian children killed in the West Bank since January 2022" (UNICEF, May 29, 2022). "Israeli forces use Palestinian girl as a human shield in Jenin" (Defense for Children International-Palestine, May 19, 2022). Shatha HAMMAD: "Israeli forces fatally shoot two young Palestinians in occupied West Bank" (Middle East Eye, April 13, 2022). "Israel kills Palestinian boy in Jenin raid" (MEMo, March 31, 2022).Staat van Beleg: " Israëlische Schendingen februari 2022 " (7 maart 2022). Jesse Rosenfeld, Oren Ziv & Ahmad Al-Bazz : "Triple West Bank assassination recalls darkest days of the Intifada" (+972, Feb 15, 2022).Jack Khoury & Yaniv Kubovich: "Man Killed by Israeli Fire Near Ramallah, Palestinian Health Ministry Says" (Haaretz, Feb 15, 2022). "Israel’ Issues 1595 Administrative Detention Orders Against Palestinians In 2021" PalestineOnline, Jan 2, 2022)."Israel a tué 357 Palestiniens, dont 79 enfants et 69 femmes en 2021 " EuroPalestine, 2 janvier 2022).Gideon LEVY: "A Brief History of Killing Children " Haaretz, Nov 20, 2021). Allison WEIR: "Israeli forces have killed 39 Palestinian men, women, & children since May" (Israel-Palestine News, Oct 19, 2021). "Israel settlers open fire on Palestine homes in West Bank" (Middle East Monitor, September 11, 2021). Gideon LEVY: "Yes, the Palestinian Prison Escapees Are Freedom Fighters” (Haaretz, Sept 9, 2021; archive.today). "Developing news: Six Palestinian political prisoners liberate themselves from colonial Israeli prison” (Samidoun, Sept 5, 2021). "Israeli troops kill Palestinian teen in West Bank clash” (Middle East Eye, July 24, 2021). Tamara NASSAR: "Israeli gunfire takes lives of two more Palestinian teens” (+972, July 15, 2021). Yuval ABRAHAM: "Joint militias: How settlers and soldiers teamed up to kill four Palestinians” (+972, July 15, 2021)."Palestinian boy loses eye after Israel soldiers shoot him” (Middle East Monitor, April 12, 2021).Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: "Palestinians Protested the Theft of Their Land. An Israeli Army Officer Shot One of Them in the Head” (Haaretz, March 26, 2021). "Israel to displace 1,550 Palestinians to build park in Jerusalem” (MEMo, March 18, 2021)."Reconstitution de l’exécution d’un Palestinien qui ne constituait aucune menace” (EuroPalestine, 27 février, 2021).Mairav ZONSZEIN: "Vaccination Under Occupation” (Jewish Currents, 12 Jan, 2021).Orly NOY: "Why B’Tselem is calling Israel an apartheid regime, from the river to the sea” (Mondoweiss, 12 Jan, 2021)."Deaf Palestinian man shot by Israeli soldiers dies of his wounds” (Israel Palestine News, Dec 11, 2020)."New Israeli ambassador in Britain describes Nakba as 'Arab lie'” (Middle East Monitor, Dec 8, 2020)."Israeli settlers flood Palestinian farmland with sewage” (Middle East Monitor, Oct 19, 2020).Ahmad MELHEM: "Family of Palestinian boy disfigured in 2015 firebomb attack still seeking justice” (Al-Monitor, Sept 20, 2020).Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Palestinian child shot by Israel dies in detention.” (The Electronic Intifada, August 21, 2020).Yumna PATEL: "Young Palestinian woman killed by Israeli forces in Jenin.” 23-year-old Dalia Samoudi is the 24th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in the occupied Palestinian territories this year (Mondoweiss, August 7, 2020)."Israeli Soldiers Demolish Under-Construction Covid-19 Testing Center in Hebron” (IMEMC, July 21 2020). "Mother of Slain Palestinian:“My Son Was A Child In A Man’s Body”" (IMEMC, June 31 2020).Sondos SALEH: "Mustafa Went to Tel Aviv for Hospital Tests. He Was Shot Dead" (Haaretz, May 19, 2020).Jonathan OFIR: "Slapping Israeli Apartheid — the sentencing of Yifat Doron" (Mondoweiss, May 15, 2020)."Israëlische politieman schiet Palestijnse jongen kogel in het gezicht" (The Rights Forum, 18 feb, 2020).Jonathan OFIR: "Getting away with murder: Why Israeli police left Bedouin teacher to bleed to death in 2017." Some murder cases are so full of lies, that every attempt to hide them from public view only brings more attention to the crime. Such is the case of the extrajudicial execution three years ago of Israeli Bedouin citizen Yaqub Mousa Abu al-Qia’an. (Mondoweiss, March 1, 2020).Amira HASS: "The Trump Plan’s Vision for the Palestinians: Israel’s Security Slave." Direct lines can be seen between the ‘deal of the century,’ the Oslo Accords and their fraudulent implementation, which led to the creation of separate Palestinian enclaves. (Haaretz, Jan 31, 2020)."B’Tselem: Israel soldiers ‘wantonly’ shoot Palestinian children" (Palestine Post24, Dec 18, 2019)."Lost count? Israel killed 43 Palestinians in November" (If Americans Knew, Dec 5, 2019).Jonathan COOK: "Israel prepares to turn Bedouin citizens into refugees in their own country" (Mondoweiss, Oct 16, 2019).A. Daniel ROTH: "Each morning brings the fear of losing everything" (+972, Aug 25, 2019).Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: "The Protest Dispersed. Then an Israeli Sniper Shot a 9-year-old Boy in the Head" (Haaretz, July 20, 2019, via IAK).Entsar ABU JAHAL: "Plenty of fish in Gaza sea, but not for Palestinians" (Al-Monitor, June 14, 2019).Myriam DEPREZ: "Susiya: The build-and-destroy dance of Israel’s demolitions" (Middle East Monitor, May 10, 2019).OCHA (oPt), Child labour increasing in Gaza" (OCHA - Monthly Humanitarian Bulletin, April 2019, May 14, 2019).Netta AHITUV, "Endless trip to hell': Israel jails hundreds of Palestinian boys a year. These are their testimonies" (Breaking the Silence via Haaretz, March 16, 2019).Tamara NASSAR: "Israel’s war on its Palestinian citizens" (The Internet Intifada, 26 Feb, 2019).Gideon LEVY: "In Land of Illegal Outposts and Hate Crimes, Another Palestinian Life Claimed" (Haaretz, Jan 27, 2019)."Report: Crimes against Humanity: Israel killed at least 45 Palestinian children in Gaza" (Ma'an News Agency, Jan 19, 2019).Yumna PATEL: "‘Waging War on Shufat’: Jerusalem municipality demolishes 21 businesses in East Jerusalem refugee camp" (Mondoweiss, Nov 22, 2018). Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Israeli soldier executed Gaza teen at close range: witness" (The Electronic Intifada, Oct 13, 2018)."September 2018 report: 378 Palestinians arrested as Khader Adnan, Omran al-Khatib continue hunger strikes" (Samidoun, Oct 11, 2018)."Palestinians Protest Planned Demolition of Khan al-Ahmar" (Telesur, July 28, 2018).Yumna PATEL: "Israeli forces kill 15-year-old Palestinian in refugee camp raid" (Mondoweiss, July 23, 2018).Amira HASS: "Night raids and attack dogs: For West Bank Palestinians, their homes are not their castles" (Haaretz, June 17, 2018).Neve GORDON: "Gaza's Passover massacre" (Al-Jazeera, April 1, 2018)"Israel killed 3 Palestinian civilians, injured 500, in first half of March" (Middle East Monitor, March 16)Omar KARMI: “Gaza in a vice” (The Electronic Intifada, Feb 13, 2018).Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: “Like a Safari: Israeli Troops in Jeeps Hunt a Palestinian Teen and Shoot Him in the Head” (Haaretz, Feb 9, 2018, now freely available via: If Americans Knew).Amira HASS: "On the Margins of the Murder”, (Haaretz, Nov 12, 2017): click here! "Israeli forces detain 11 Palestinians, including 4 minors, in overnight raids" (Ma'an, March 29, 2017).Amira HASS: "Israeli Settlers Kill a Sheep in Latest Escalation in Jordan Valley, Palestinians Say" (Haaretz, Feb 18, 2017)."Israel aims to ‘Judaize’ historical Bethlehem village" (Middle East Monitor, Jan 13, 2017).Nasouh NAZZAL: "Israel’s pesticide war on Gazan farmers" (Gulf News Palestine, Dec 26, 2016).Emily MULDER: "Israeli guard: 'Go from this land or I will kill you'" (Al Jazeera, Dec 26, 2016)."A six-year-old Palestinian girl killed after being run over by Israeli settler" (Middle East Children Alliance, 2016).Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: "In Some of the Israeli Army's Raids, Leaving Empty-handed Is Not an Option" (Haaretz, Aug 27, 2016)."Israeli settlers attack Palestinian girl in Ramallah, stab and kill her sheep" (Ma'an, Aug 5, 2016)."Un enfant palestinien [de 12 ans] tué par des soldats israéliens" (Libération, 19 juillet 2016).Kit O'CONNELL: "Israel Cutting Palestinians Off From Their Own Water Supply" (MintPress News, June 30, 2016)."Israeli Soldiers Kill A Palestinian Child Near Ramallah" (IMEMC, June 21, 2016).Edo KONRAD: "Tel Aviv mayor says the occupation is a cause of Palestinian terror" (+972, June 9, 2016)."After being shot three days ago by IOF, Palestinian youth dies from injuries" (Palestinian Information Center, June 6, 2016).Palestine PMO: Israel’s destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure is atrocious (Palestine News Network, May 26, 2016).Again, settlers burn Palestinian farms in West Bank (Days of Palestine, May 16, 2016).Michal ZAK: "Third intifada, terror wave, the 'situation': Just don't mention the 'O' word to Israelis" (Middle East Eye, March 13, 2016).Jon QUEALLY: "Brother and Sister, Children Aged 10 and 6, Killed by Israeli Bombing in Gaza" (Common Dreams, March 13, 2016).Jonathan COOK: "Aid subversion report makes for shocking reading" (The National, March 7, 2016)."Palestijns meisje van 13 geëxecuteerd" (alexandrina.nl, 23 jan, 2016)."UN decries Abu Nuwar demolitions, calls for immediate end to planned transfers" (Medical Aid for Palestinians, MAP, Jan 20, 2016).Julie PUTSEYS: "Palestijnse empowerment op Israëlische scholen." Geen gelijke kansen zonder evenwaardig onderwijs. Zo denkt de Arabisch-Israëlische professor Dalia Fadila er alleszins over. (MO*, 10 Jan 2016).Uri SAVIR: "Why solving Israel-Palestine conflict is still key for regional stability" (Al-Monitor, Jan 3, 2016).C.J.WERLEMAN: "The road to hell is paved with 'national security'". Israel is turning the West’s fixation on the Islamic State group into an opportunity to expand its apartheid laws and militarisation of the West Bank (Middle East Eye, Jan 1, 2016).Mazal MUALEM: "'Hate wedding' video offers glimpse at Jewish terror" (Al-Monitor, Dec 28, 2015).Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Catastrophe for Syrians and Palestinians alike in war-ravaged country" (The Electronic Intifada, Dec 23, 2015).Shlomi ELDAR: "Why the US is part of Middle East problem, not the solution". Interview with Ayman Odeh (Al-Monitor, Dec 14, 2015).Philip WEISS: "Obama’s ISIS czar says we can’t defeat extremism without resolving Palestinian issue" (Mondoweiss, Dec 14, 2015).Uri SAVIR: "How the Islamic State hurts Palestinian cause" (Al-Monitor, Dec 6, 2015).Al Jazeera: "Gaza's crumbling healthcare system" (Yahoo.com, Dec 8, 2015).Nurit CANETTI: "The radicalization of Israel" (Al-Monitor, Dec 2, 2015).Kate: "Prominent Israeli settler runs over 16-year-old girl, then shoots her dead" (Mondoweiss, Nov 23, 2015).Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?" Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).
Philip WEISS: "The best way for Americans to defeat the Islamic state is to end support for Jewish nationalism" (Mondoweiss, Nov 15, 2015).
Ahmed MOOR: "The Problem of Palestine is Zionism" (Fair Observer, Nov 11, 2015).
Miko PELED: "Zionism is racism: Notes from Tel-Rumeida, Hebron, El-Khalil" (American Herald Tribune, Nov 13, 2015).Megan HANNA: "‘It Has Become A Prison’: The ghettoization of Hebron" (Mondoweiss, Nov 11, 2015).Avigail ABARBANEL: "Netanyahu’s craziness is calculated, to drive out Palestinians" (Mondoweiss, Nov 5, 2015).Michel WARSCHAWSKI: "La jeunesse palestinienne à couteaux tirés avec Israël" (Orient XXI, 15 Oct 2015).Kamel HAWWASH: "Palestinians have a problem with occupiers not (with) Jews" (MEMO, Oct 30, 2015)."Palestijnse baby vermoord met traangas" (Alexandrina, Oct 31, 2015).Ali ABUNIMAH: "Israel’s executions of Palestinian teens must end, Amnesty says" (The Electronic Intifada, Oct 28, 2015).Killian REDDEN: "Hebron at eye of the storm as death toll rises" (Ma'an News Agency, Oct 26, 2015)."Netanyahu Shamelessly Exploits the Shoah to Stoke Fear of Palestinians" (Jewish Voice for Peace, Oct 21, 2015).
Amos GVIRTZ: "From Unilateral- to Bilateral War - or: How the Palestinians Fight to Prevent Being Expelled From the Country" (Occupation Magazine, Oct 20, 2015).Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context" (+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."Meron RAPOPORT: "The paradox of Jerusalem" (Middle East Eye, October 17, 2015).
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