vjp-global

https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/palestinians-against-humanity.html The Trump Plan is full of measures that constitute War Crimes in international law, and a systematic pattern of War Crimes is categorized as a Crime against Humanity. The latter term is the one appropriate to the Trump Plan. Here are the War Crimes the Plan proposes: 1 . Israel has flooded 400,000 of its citizens into the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, where they have stolen Palestinian land and built squatter-only settlements on it, where Palestinians are not allowed to live. These Israeli squatters are often armed and some of them routinely stage attacks on Palestinian villages or commit sabotage against Palestinian orchards and agriculture. This squatting on Palestinian land contravenes the  Fourth Geneva Accord of 1949  on Occupied Territories, which forbids transferring populations from the Occupying Power into the occupied lands. "The Occupyi...

  https://mondoweiss.net/2020/01/on-missed-opportunities/   A myth that the Palestinians keep " missing opportunities " to find lasting solutions is being revived from Jared Kushner, to Tony Blair, to Mohammed bin Salman .   The prime example that is often raised is the 2000 Camp David Summit between the late Chairman of the PLO Yasser Arafat and the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, where Palestinians turned down what was often reported as a "generous" or "unprecedented offer."    The question is whether those who defend Israel's generosity have even read Barak's offer? Barak never presented a plan in writing to the Palestinians who were skeptical of an oral, not documented, commitment. Palestinians were blamed, not the Israelis even though the latter is both the occupier and at the time Barak had failed to implement in full the agreements Israel had already signed onto during the Oslo Accords.   So, what was that offer?....

  https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-can-colleges-fight-israel-lobbys-threats/29376   A right-wing Israel advocacy group has accused progressive professors at a Brooklyn, New York, community college of anti-Semitism. It is threatening faculty members with legal action based on their perceived support of Palestinian rights. These accusations are part of an expanding attack on students and faculty at US universities by Israel lobby groups trying to criminalize Palestine solidarity organizing by conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry…   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-cuts-school-buses-bedouin-children Thousands of Palestinian Bedouin preschoolers haven't been in class for days after Israeli authorities halted their only means of getting to school.   00The Neve Midbar Regional Council announced on 12 January that buses would stop serving 20 villages in the southern Naqab (Negev) region the next day without prior warning.   As a result, some 2,200 Bedouin children had not been to school in over three days, according to Adalah , a legal advocacy group for Palestinians in Israel.   It is notable that 16 of the affected villages are "unrecognized," including Bir al-Hammam, al-Zarnouq, Abda and Rahma, among others.   Israel virtually bars unrecognized villages in the Naqab from building new structures…The rights of school children are also being violated elsewhere in the NaqaSome 500 students of the Tel Arad School have had no access to running water recently… ...

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/01/muzzlewatch-the-forces-of-censorship-are-unrelenting/ The new year is starting off fast, the forces of censorship are waxing.  This makes sense as there is a well-financed, coherent, state , NGO and private political campaign that is, as predicted, unrelenting.  At this writing, 28 US states now have some version of anti-BDS and/or explicitly pro-Israel laws on their books and these are not idle, toothless resolutions. Often these laws prohibit the state from entering into contracts with any entity or person that supports BDS.  These laws have the explicit goal of suppressing any kind of free speech and courts throughout the U.S. agree.   At the federal level, Trump's executive order on anti-Semitism empowers attempts, as we'll be discussing below, to, the maximum extent possible, suppress any US efforts to present a Palestinian perspective.   Here is a selected listing of some of the most egregious muzzling activities in this...

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/01/ny-private-school-fires-jewish-teacher-for-anti-zionist-statements/ Today the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the Fieldston School fired a Jewish history teacher, J.B. Brager, after Brager published anti-Zionist comments.   It is the second time in two years that a Jewish history teacher has been forced out of a private New York high school due to anti-Zionist statements. In 2018 longtime history teacher Joel Doerfler left the Riverdale Country School after administrators canceled his class on the history of the conflict because of his questioning of the official narrative.   In both cases, outraged Jewish donors to the schools are said to have pushed the school administrations to take a stand against anti-Zionism.   Brager was fired amidst a controversy at the school over a speaker, Kayum Ahmed of Columbia Law School, who said last November that Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians stems from Jewish persecution during the Holocaus...

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/01/adl-lies-about-me-so-as-to-shut-down-discussion-of-israels-role-in-soleimani-killing/   The ADL has lumped me and Max Blumenthal and Jeff Morley in with rightwing antisemites because we said that Trump killed Qasem Soleimani out of concern for Israel's interest. The ADL classifies us as the "anti-Zionist left," but it associates us with nationalist Jew-hating rhetoric that has undoubtedly made Jews less safe in the United States…The ADL doesn't want me to bring up the fact that Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, Trump's two biggest donors, hate Iran, and in fact Adelson called on the last president to strike Iran with a nuclear weapon. The ADL seems to believe that even mentioning these wealthy Zionists is going to foster antisemitism…No one is mentioning Adelson and Israel as factors in Trump's decision-making, even as he sides with rightwing Israeli militant policies again and again and again….The ADL…has ...

  https://mondoweiss.net/2020/01/palestinian-freedom-2020-student-activists-confront-democratic-candidates-over-aid-to-israel/   Last week, student activists with the group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were in Iowa as part of their Palestinian Freedom 2020 Bus Tour. The 14 Jewish and Palestinian students arrived in the state to demand that Democratic candidates stop funding Israel's occupation and embrace Palestinian rights. The trip was organized JVP Action, the political and advocacy wing of JVP…Hasan's observations line up with recent polling around these issues. According to two Data for Progress surveys from last year, a majority of Democratic voters support conditioning aid in an effort to curb the country's human rights abuses. "These results suggest that Democratic voters are not holding Israel to a different standard than they would hold any other recipient of US military aid dollars," Data for Progr...

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-students-arrests-israel-universities-west-bank …In the last months of 2019, the Israeli occupation has launched one of its most aggressive arrest campaigns against Palestinian students in recent years.   Statistics by Palestinian prisoners' rights organisation Addameer indicate that some 250 Palestinian university students are currently imprisoned by Israel. According to the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University , Israeli forces detained 30 students from the leading Palestinian institution alone over a period of four months…."Today, political parties are in fact an extension of the student movement. We, the politically conscious youth in the universities, are the ones leading the streets," he [student Hazem Aweidat] said. "That is why the occupation targets us."… Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

  https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/01/palestinian-eu-relations-international-diplomacy.html#ixzz6B4ujmy8y   The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation  reported Dec. 31 that Hamas has intensified its meetings with European and US officials in a bid to break its international political isolation and open new channels of communication with the West. A meeting was held in Doha between former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Robert Malley , president of the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Washington, who served as Middle East special adviser to President Barack Obama. This was not the first meeting between the two men... Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

https://icahd.org/2020/01/04/jeff-halper-on-the-us-killing-of-iranian-general-qassem-suleimani-3-january-2020/   We are in the midst of a prolonged anti-colonial struggle, against outside powers and our own "leaders" as one. Ending the Israeli occupation is a key to this. It is not just a local affair. Israel exploits every division and source of instability to maintain its control over the Palestinians and protect American hegemony in the region. In fact, the very practice of targeted assassinations -- illegal under international law -- has become normalized in US policy because of Israeli precedents against Palestinian leaders, civilian as well as military.  Casting Iran as the enemy serves to deflect attention from Israel's occupation, Saudi terrorism and global destabilization, the role of arms salesmen and the anti-colonial struggles of the region's peoples, including the Iranians...   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member ...

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwGCklMsQXgbvbZHRQdwbNCcjGV   Number of West Bank residents displaced as a result more than doubles: Last year saw a 45-percent increase in demolitions and confiscations of Palestinian homes in the West Bank compared to 2018, according to figures released by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.   A total of 393 Palestinian structures were destroyed or confiscated in Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control, compared to 271 structures in 2018. Of these structures, 116 were contributed by international agencies. The number of people removed from their homes also spiked in 2019 to 507, compared to 218 the previous year.    Of the structures demolished or confiscated, 128 were agricultural, 99 were inhabited and 53 were water pipes, wells or toilets… Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

https://www.972mag.com/zionist-left-meretz-labor/ The implosion of the Zionist left has caused many to recognize the necessity of Jewish-Arab partnership. But that partnership will require Israeli Jews to shed their privileges and allow Palestinians to take the lead….Now, however, the merger between Meretz and Labor has made everything clearer, and on Election Day progressive Israeli Jews will be forced to make a decision that many still find difficult. They will have to choose between various shades of Jewish supremacism or genuine civil and national equality.   The perpetual implosion of the Jewish left in Israel has caused many to internalize the necessity of Jewish-Arab partnership. Unfortunately, this has typically led to tokenizing Palestinian candidates while presenting a false symmetry between oppressor and oppressed. This strategy has been unable to forge real partnerships and enlist both new Arab supporters and new Jewish ones....

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-despite-hague-warnings-israeli-panel-to-discuss-annexing-the-jordan-valley-1.8354249 Sources tell Haaretz that reviewing the issue is meant to show that Israel has not abandoned the idea due to international pressure Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member