vjp-global

http://972mag.com/we-will-overcome-arson-mourning-at-jerusalems-bilingual-school/99428/ The mixed Jewish-Arab school has been the target of racist attacks in the past, but for the parents, students and teachers of the 'Hand in Hand' school, this feels different. 'This time, the fire was ignited inside our home.'... Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

11-26-2014 Nationalism vs. Imagination: Beinart   vs. Vilkomerson square off on two-state solution   - Phillip Weiss Mondowiess   http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/nationalism-imagination-vilkomerson?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=4cc24477e4-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-4cc24477e4-398495333   Only one session has been put online, a plenary from October 12 on How to Solve the Conflict in a just manner. The excitement in this session was the direct disagreement between liberal Zionist Peter Beinart and Jewish Voice for Peace head Rebecca Vilkomerson over one state or two. I have not seen such a vigorous debate between a liberal Zionist and a non-Zionist in a public forum in some time. (This is what Jewish discussion was supposed to be about!) Below are excerpts of that debate…   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

  http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/israeli-occupation-jerusalem?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=4cc24477e4-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-4cc24477e4-398495333   Relations between Israelis and Palestinians have descended into a dangerous melee of tit-for-tat attacks and killings, with the violence of the past few weeks centred on Jerusalem. The city, claimed by Israel as its "undivided capital", has been torn apart by clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian residents since the summer, when 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was burnt alive by Jewish extremists. Subsequent attacks by Palestinians culminated last week in a shooting and stabbing spree by two cousins at a synagogue that killed four Jews and an Israeli policeman. In this atmosphere, both sides have warned that the political conflict is mutating into a religious one. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, cautioned that Israel's inte

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/justiceformikebrown-ferguson-palestine?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=4cc24477e4-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-4cc24477e4-398495333 Detroit Lions running back Reggie Bush posted a photo of Palestinian photo-journalist Hamde Abu Rahma  on his Instagram page 2 days ago. Abu Rahma held a sign reading "The Palestinian people know what mean to be shot while unarmed because of your ethnicity #Ferguson #Justice." Reggie Bush wrote : No matter who you are, what color skin you have, where you live, we are all in this together! this isn't a Ferguson problem it's a Global Problem! We need change NOW! What happened to humanity? #JusticeForMikeBrown TMZ picked it up and it's going viral… Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

11-17-2014 This is not yet an intifada, Palestinians say - Philip Weiss Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/netanyahus-intifada?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=3819b326ea-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-3819b326ea-398495333 There is not yet a third intifada, Palestinians in East Jerusalem say. But there could be an organized uprising if Jewish zealots' incitements about the Al Aqsa mosque continue. In interviews, these Palestinians say that Israel's escalation of violence in East Jerusalem has isolated and terrified neighborhoods. "There is no security. You are afraid economically, politically, and physically." And the individual acts of violence by maddened Palestinians who feel they have nothing to lose reflects the universal demand for human dignity…   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/israels-illegal-settlements?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=3819b326ea-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-3819b326ea-398495333 The Israeli government's recent announcement that it had authorized the building of another 1,000 settlement homes in East Jerusalem left the US government seeing red, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psakicalling the settlement activity "illegitimate" and "incompatible with the pursuit of peace." But the announcement must have left the US-based real estate giant RE/MAX "seeing green," ready to cash in on the sale and rental of more illegal settlement homes. Among the 90 countries with RE/MAX franchises is in Israel. Since its entry into the Israeli market in 1995, RE/MAX has become the largest network of real estate agencies in Israel, boasting 100 branches and over 900 real estate agents in this small country roughly the size of New Jers

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/destroys-bedouin-village?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=a61c088177-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-a61c088177-398495333 World Bulletin reported that Israeli forces on Monday razed the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in Negev Desert for the 78th time on the pretext that it had been built illegally, eyewitness said. Local resident told Andalou agency that "Dozens of Israeli forces backed by five bulldozers stormed the village at dawn today and began demolishing homes and other structures, the soldiers were heavily armed. They drove us out under the rain before they demolished our homes for 78th time in four years." The village was demolished for the first time in July 2010, before being rebuilt with metal and wood. The Israeli government classifies approximately 40 villages in the Negev Desert as "unrecognized," arguing that the roughly 53,000 Palestinian Bedouins living

ht tp:// mondoweiss.net/2014/11/fight-village-continues Wadi Fukin is a small agricultural town in the West Bank. It is situated on just over 700 acres of land and is squeezed in on two sides – by the Israeli settlement Beitar Illit, to the south and Tzur Hadasa, a small Israeli town just over the Green Line to the north. On August 31st the Israeli Civil Administration – a governing body that controls most of the West Bank - declared that almost 1000 acres, near the villages of Jab'a and Wadi Fukin would become state land. The announcement marks the largest attempt in decades to expropriate territory in the West Bank. As the yearly olive harvest comes to a close, Palestinians here are worried they are being cut off from the rest of the West Bank and may lose the means to support themselves if their farmland is seized…     Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/despair-senseless-violence?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=a61c088177-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-a61c088177-398495333 ...Israel is not in "the grip of a terrorist onslaught," as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated in this press conference tonight; it is in the grip of senseless violence spawned by despair and repression... Israel, having given up all pretense of seeking a just solution, has answered Palestinian despair with pure, atavistic repression...   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/world/middleeast/israeldemolishes-family-home-of-palestinian-driver-who-killed-2-pedestrians.html?_r=0 Excerpt: "Our position is it's illegal and it's also immoral," Ms. Michaeli of B'Tselem said in an interview. "It's a deliberate policy for harming the innocent. The people responsible for these attacks are either dead or facing trial."   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/israeli-university-academic?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=3819b326ea-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-3819b326ea-398495333 Close to 13,000 Palestinian and international students go through at least one of 600 checkpoints in the West Bank to attend Al Quds University, the only Arab University in East Jerusalem. Established in 1984, the Abu Dis campus now houses 13 academic faculties, and has more than 30 centers and institutes…Al Quds University is unique for another controversial reason: the campus community is under constant threat due to methodical and ideologically-based attacks by the Israeli military. During 2012, 2013 and 2014, the total number of attacks on Al-Quds University main campus was 31. During these attacks 2473 people were injured, 5121 teargas canisters and bullets were shot, and 276 people were called by the Israeli intelligence for investigation… academia at Al Quds

http://forward.com/articles/208868/can-internship-program-build-high-tech-bridge-betw/?p=all   …Some West Bank entrepreneurs say that the major impediment to tech development in the Palestinian territory isn't young techies' lack of exposure to high-tech firms so much as the Israeli occupation itself. On the one hand, the West Bank tech industry has made strides in recent years, attracting millions of dollars in startup investments, and now accounts for six percent of the Palestinian economy. "There is a sense that given the whole political context, tech could be an industry that would be relatively stable," said PIP's Fenster. "All you need to have a startup company is laptops and an internet connection and so the feeling is that there is an agility and flexibility with high tech that could be useful within the Israeli-Palestinian context." But on the other hand, Israel's restrictions have inhibited the Palestinian tech in

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/reminder-implicates-history?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=57f44319b8-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-57f44319b8-398495333   lan Pappe's October 25 lecture in Chicago, " The Ongoing Nakba ," promoting his new book, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge , emphasized two things that stood out to me in particular: Israel's importing of European pine trees and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. [1]  Though these issues are not new to the discourse on Palestine, Pappe reminds his audience that the land is as alive as the indigenous people who inhabited it.  The mind, body, and spirit of both land and people are still victims to Israel's current goal of de-Arabizing Palestine, "which has gotten worse for the Palestinians every year since 1882."...   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://972mag.com/israeli-petition-to-european-lawmakers-recognize-palestine/98807/ Nearly 700 prominent Israelis, including former ambassadors, academics, IDF officers, top playwrights and poets, winners of the Israel Prize and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman have signed a letter appealing to the parliaments of various European countries to recognize Palestine in upcoming votes… How long can America really hold out if, one by one, European countries tip the scales in favor of Palestine? Does it want to be 'just the U.S., alone with the occupation? Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/17/one-state-reality   Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin, the new President of Israel, is ardently opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state. He is instead a proponent of Greater Israel, one Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.   … since Rivlin was elected President, in June, he has become Israel's most unlikely moralist. Rivlin—not a left-wing writer from Tel Aviv, not an idealistic justice of the Supreme Court—has emerged as the most prominent critic of racist rhetoric, jingoism, fundamentalism, and sectarian violence, the highest-ranking advocate among Jewish Israelis for the civil rights of the Palestinians both in Israel and in the occupied territories. Last month, he told an academic conference in Jerusalem, "It is time to honestly admit that Israel is sick, and it is our duty to treat this illness."...   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=2613   … It is no surprise that virtually every Israeli academic institution came out in support of the Israeli military during the summer onslaught on Gaza, and universities promised faculty and student reserve soldiers actively involved in the massacre in Gaza various perks and  privileges  as rewards for their contribution to the state's "security."   The list of complicity is too long to recount here.   Some prominent examples include: - Technion , which prides itself on developing many of the weapon systems, particularly drone technologies, which are employed by the Israeli occupation forces in attacking Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory; - Tel Aviv University (TAU), which has not only designed tens of weapons used by the Israeli military in enforcing the occupation and apartheid regime, but houses the Institute for National Security Stu

sofisrael.com/israel-reportedly-plans-to-take-3000-acres-near-jerusalem/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=55dae12a14-2014_11_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-55dae12a14-54479733 IDF soldiers gave out orders Saturday informing Palestinians of Israel's plans to confiscate 3,176 acres (12,852 dunams) around the West Bank village of Beit Iksa for military purposes, Palestinian media reported... The orders gave the residents until the end of 2017 to leave the land in question. They also said that soldiers informed the Beit Iksa residents that an IDF liaison would come on Monday to explain which parcels of land would be confiscated… The village is sensitive for several reasons. It is located less than a kilometer from Route 1, the main artery running from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. In addition, it is surrounded by land purchased by Jews before the establishment of Israel, and captured by Jordan during Israel's 1948

http://972mag.com/israeli-government-votes-to-support-annexing-west-bank-settlements/98604/   What does would that mean, you ask? For 47 years, the primary source of law in the West Bank has been the IDF military law code. Applying civilian law to parts —or all — of the West Bank would be tantamount to annexation, or at least be a creeping but concrete step toward that goal. Irrespective of whether or not this latest proposal is ever passed , the vote itself broadcasts to the entire world that the majority of ministers in the Israeli government support annexing West Bank settlements — a " unilateral move " if there ever was one...   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/praising-israelis-tactics?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=c36468224d-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-c36468224d-398495333   Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, went against the Obama administration's own line when he said Thursday that the Israeli military acted "responsibly" and went to "extraordinary lengths" to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties during Operation Protective Edge last summer. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed Friday during a daily press briefing in Washington that the administration still believes "Israel could have done more to prevent civilian casualties" during the offensive on the Gaza Strip… Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/opinion/naftali-bennett-for-israel-two-state-is-no-solution.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0 ...Lastly, I propose applying Israeli law in Area C, which is the part of the West Bank controlled by Israel under the Oslo agreement. The Palestinians who live there would be offered full Israeli citizenship. We can start with the known settlement blocs that everyone agrees will remain part of Israel even under a final status agreement. By applying Israeli law and asserting national sovereignty in those blocs, while upgrading Palestinian autonomy in Areas A and B, we will reduce the scope of territory in dispute, making it easier to reach a long-term agreement in the future... [This plan, basically annexation of the settlements, is from  Naftali Bennett, Israel's minister of the economy and the leader of the na

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/world/middleeast/for-a-packed-part-of-jerusalem-expansion-plans-have-built-mostly-outrage-.html?mabReward=RI%3A8&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=Recommendation&src=recg&pgtype=article&_r=0   …Built two decades ago on land captured from Jordan by Israel in the 1967 war, Ramat Shlomo has become a prime symbol of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and, especially, its diplomatic confrontations with Washington and the rest of the world. On Monday, after an Israeli committee approved about 500 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, the Obama administration condemned the measure — for at least the sixth time since expansion plans were unveiled during a 2010 visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr….   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.mossawacenter.org/my_Documents/pic002/183_The_New_Wave_of_Israel%27s_Discriminatory_Laws___Report_FINAL_2014.pdf   …Central to Israel's discriminatory laws and policies is the way in which the Israeli government routinely privileges the Jewish over the democratic character of the state. This has resulted in the development of a two ‐ tiered system of rights and entitlements under Israeli law; one for Jews and one for Palestinian Arabs. It has resulted in the subjugation of Palestinian Arab citizens as unequal and second ‐ class citizens. This report will examine this two ‐ tiered phenomenon in Israeli law by exploring Israel's constitutional and citizenship law, land and planning regime, as well as th e system of political and socio ‐ economic rights…   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member  

She was working on phoning, too.  A new resident, like Marilyn Jonas.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/11/demonstrate-collective-punishment?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=bfcf529a3a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-bfcf529a3a-398495333   …Kids are being arrested in the middle of the night, pulled out of their homes, interrogated without their parents, threatened while under arrest, and in some cases, held under house arrest once they're released from jail so they can't return to school," said Rothman-Zecher. "If you look at the pattern of what's going on, these children's arrests, they're not remedial efforts, but part of this policy of collective punishment. The goal is that every young boy in Silwan, even as young as 7-years-old, should be too afraid to dare to challenge the occupation in any form because he knows that so many people have been arrested and he knows that he could be arrested at any time." This systematic atta

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/20/gaza-murderous-melodrama/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+internet+Gaza+Borges&utm_content=NYR+internet+Gaza+Borges+CID_df5428a598402b55da12fd7a00ed61b0&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Gaza%20The%20Murderous%20Melodrama   … If anyone has any doubt about the veracity of the [intelligence officers'] reports, he or she has only to read the superb Palestine Speaks , edited by Mateo Hoke and Cate Malek, a collection of documentary interviews with ordinary Palestinians living on the West Bank or in Gaza. It's all there: the regime of surveillance and blackmail, the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and likely torture, the continuous theft of land, and the more mundane, but no less tormenting, reality of the roadblocks, state-inflicted terror, random violence, lack of legal recourse, and disenfranchisement…     Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/15053-obama-threatens-netanyahu-with-us-veto   US President Barack Obama has threatened to lift the ban on the veto given to Israel, a decision that many view as a threat to Israel's existence, Israeli news sites reported today... The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Netanyahu supporters are worried at what they feel is Obama's betrayal of Israel at the United Nations.  Maariv quoted an Israeli politician as saying: "Obama intends to abandon Israel as it faces the UN Security Council in an effort to block Israel's decision to build on Palestinian territory that has been occupied since 1967."...   …The power of the US veto is what has ensured Israel's stability in the region thus far and it remains essential to its position within the region, as it has been in past agreements with Egypt following the 1973 war."

http://972mag.com/major-israeli-construction-company-pulls-out-of-settlement-industry/98089/   …The opposition took the form of protests, pressure on the British government to cut business ties with [Lev] Leviev, and divestment from his company. Between the profit he could make off the occupation and the profit he could lose in the rest of the world, Leviev chose the world. This is another huge victory for the boycott movement and the activists who choose to fight against the occupation nonviolently. This is a victory for those who want to tell Israelis that even if the occupation is currently profitable, things can easily change. Africa Israel's decision won't stop the settlement enterprise, and its impact will likely be marginal. However, the message continues to permeate.   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member  

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/conference-highlights-palestine Kristian Davis Bailey writes on SJP's national conference at which connections between oppressions were lifted up. A good follow-up to AIME's forum of last weekend. Submitted by Donna Hicks, AIME member