Long before the ‘intractable conflict’ between Israeli Jews and Palestinians gets resolved, climate change will have thrown everything up for grabs — literally. It already has.
That awful A-word, preceded by the adjective ‘Israeli’. Israel boosters scream ‘antisemitism’ when they hear or read the phrase. Mainstream media avoid it like the plague. The international legal community has no difficulty likening Israel’s system of governance in the colonized West Bank to the South African prototype. Listen to my conversation with Professor Dugard.
A roof over one’s head. A home. Other than food and water, nothing is more essential to human life and health. Conversely, save forced starvation, there’s no better way to eliminate a people than to reduce their homes to rubble. No one knows this better, or carried out the practice more ruthlessly and efficiently, than the State of Israel.
An extended trip to Palestine can be a recipe for despair. How else to respond to the forcible evictions, home demolitions and nighttime arrests routinely reported on social media, or witnessed first hand by the intrepid journalist or political tourist? Despair has an antidote: the realization that what brought down apartheid South Africa will also bring an end to the more advanced and sophisticated Israeli version. More and more people are heeding the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. David Harel is one of these — albeit in nuanced fashion.
Interviews that go sideways, or south. They tend to end suddenly, in response to the question that shouldn’t have been asked. Such was the case in this conversation with Ha’aretz columnist Amira Hass, in response to a question Amira didn’t let me finish, about the international community’s declared, though deceitful support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. Thankfully, our conversation continued. Very lively.
Is justice served by defending someone’s right to a tiny slice of judicial relief, if victory means a vastly larger act of injustice is sustained, perhaps even consolidated, or should a principled attorney walk away from such a mug’s game? For Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, the answer is clear.
Some hoaxes — the Alien Autopsy, Fiji Mermaid, Disappearing Blond Gene and Geostationary Banana Over Texas tales come immediately to mind — declare themselves at the door to all but the most pitifully gullible. Now we’ve got the “Deal of the Century,” a snake oil claim if ever there was one.
Why is Israel so afraid of Khalida Jarrar? Does it think she threatens its existence? Or has Israel jailed the 56-year-old Palestinian legislator, feminist, and human rights activist on three occasions simply as a show of power?
Kufr Qaddum is a village of 5000, halfway between the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Qalqilya. Its agricultural lands encompass about 19,000 dunams (acres), 11,000 of which fall within Oslo ‘Area C’ and are therefore under complete Israeli military control. I travelled to to Kufr Qaddum to observe one of their weekly protests, against the closure of their ancient road.
One day feels like a week in Hebron.The quickest way to get to this beautiful but conflicted West Bank town, from Jerusalem, is from West Jerusalem’s cavernous downtown bus station. Read and listen to the story here.
Canadian Rabbi David Mivasair was arrested yesterday (May 3, 2019), along with other Jewish-American, Israeli and Palestinian activists, while helping to repair a road used by Bedouin pastoralists in the hills south of Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Local Zionists tried their darndest to block Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour from speaking at an event, yesterday evening, in Canada’s prairie capital, Winnipeg. Sarsour is an antisemite, they screamed, and denies Israel’s “right to exist”! Winnipeg social justice activists pushed back. On the evening of Friday, April 26, Sorry Not Sorry: Unapologetically Working for Social Justice unfolded without a hitch, exceeding expectations.
It’s a perfect storm: horrific, bone and tissue-pulverizing wounds from high velocity sniper rounds, a health care system crippled by over a decade-long military siege, and multi-drug resistant infections.
Michael Lynk is the 7th UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory. In this capacity, he issues two reports annually on human rights in the OPT. Listen to our conversation.
Montreal-based lawyer and activist Dimitri Lascaris was on his way to Gaza on the latest Freedom Flotilla when appendicitis struck. I reached Dimitri by Skype in his Algiers hospital. Listen to our chat.
The State of Israel faces no greater struggle than winning the hearts and minds of young American Jews. Judging from the outcome of a recent trip to Israel by several dozen Jewish college students, it’s no longer a slam-dunk.
That Israel is an apartheid state, commits outrageously illegal acts against the Palestinian people, seems to have become a mainstream idea. Listen to this conversation with Israeli scientist David Harel.
Israeli-American anthropologist, writer and activist Jeff Halper speaks with the Green Planet Monitor about the new One Democratic State campaign he and a group of Palestinian and Israeli folks have come up — and will soon be taking on the road.
Tourists come to Al-Walaja from around the world to enjoy the lovely surrounding landscape. A huge olive tree, reputedly over 5000 years-old, is a big draw. For political tourists, Israel’s imposing “security barrier,” soon to enclose little Al-Walaja in a cage, is a must-see.
When Michael rows his boat ashore in the old camp fire song, across a Jordan River chilly and wide, he discovers a land of milk and honey. The descendants of shepherds he might have greeted are now the victims of land confiscation, property destruction and assault.
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