mondoweiss/website/2023/09/israel-hawk-robert-menendez-indicted-for-corruption-again.txt

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+For the second time in his career, New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez has been rocked by a corruption scandal. This one, at least initially, looks like it will sink AIPAC’s favorite Senate Democrat.
+
+Until this latest scandal erupted, Menendez’s corrupt past had been securely flushed down the memory hole. Today, he faces a wall of evidence that he took massive bribes of cash, gold, and even a $60 thousand Mercedes convertible in exchange for favors to Egypt that included passing along non-public information on military matters to the al-Sisi government, which had frequently come under fire in Washington for its abysmal human rights record. Menendez also allegedly clandestinely influenced the release of aid money to Egypt and used his position to help some “friends” of his against federal prosecutions.
+
+While the evidence is strong, Menendez might be able to win in court, as he did in 2015, because of the obstacles the conservative Supreme Court has put in place to protect legislators accused of corruption. But already, it is evident that the political atmosphere is different this time. Several of Menendez’s Democratic colleagues have called on him to resign from the Senate. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not, he offered only lukewarm support for Menendez. He clearly sides with Menendez but could only go so far, given the strength of the evidence that has already been made public.
+
+An AIPAC favorite
+
+In 2015, when Menendez faced accusations of corruption, he had a lot friends rally around him. Those friends included Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Haim Saban, Mortimer Zuckerman and Seth Klarman, all major pro-Israel donors, but, crucially, representative of donors to both Democrats and Republicans. Menendez also found support from Alan Dershowitz, and other leading pro-Israel figures, as that community rallied around a man who had done enormous service for their cause since his election to the Senate in 2006.
+
+The result of all of that was that the man who was accused of bribing Menendez, Saloman Melgen—a Florida ophthalmologist and major pro-Israel activist and donor who, separately, was also convicted of defrauding Medicare of some $50 million—went to jail, yet Menendez did not. The jury was unable to agree on Menendez’s crimes, and he got a mistrial. Melgen, who would have his sentence commuted by Donald Trump in 2021, was convicted, apparently, of bribing no one.
+
+When Democrats took the Senate back, Menendez once again became chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, having been the Ranking Member since 2018, after his corruption trial was concluded. By that time, his corruption scandal had been thoroughly buried, having faded from the headlines even by the time the trial ended.
+
+The American Jewish Congress notes some of his many pro-Israel accomplishments: “Senator Menendez opposed the Iran nuclear deal. He opposes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and cosponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act and the Combating BDS Act of 2017…He has condemned anti-Israel feelings and resolutions at the United Nations, including the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which claims that Israel’s settlements have no legal validity. He supported the Taylor Force Act…
+
+“Senator Menendez supported the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and cosponsored the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018, a legislation that supported full funding of security assistance to Israel as outlined in the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding. In 2019, he voted for the Strengthening America’s Middle East Security Act which, among other things, strengthened Israel’s security and allowed a state or local government to adopt measures to divest its assets from entities that boycott Israel.”
+
+At AIPAC’s 2018 conference, Menendez thanked the lobbying group for its support during his corruption trial, and told the audience, “Most of you know that I have resumed my role as the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I do not waver in my beliefs, even when others do not stand up for Israel.”
+
+His vote against the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 was a major concern for the Obama administration as they had to work to overcome Senate opposition to the deal and were being undermined by members of their own party. Menendez was a leading Democratic figure in that opposition.
+
+During that first corruption scandal, Greg Rosenbaum, who was then the chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council, and a close associate of AIPAC, said, “I think we’re pretty much lock step with his positions on issues that matter to American Jewish voters,” by which, of course, he meant Israel, and only Israel.
+
+What Menendez’s indictment might mean
+
+The new indictment comes at a very different political moment than the first one. With Donald Trump’s trials making headlines on a daily basis, Democrats are paying more attention to issues of criminality and ethics in Washington. It’s one of the main pillars they’re hanging their hats on in 2024, as their campaign themes are almost exclusively reliant on how corrupt, dangerous, and amoral the Republican party is. They certainly have a strong case, one the Republicans strengthen every day, and if a more positive campaign thrust might be more effective, the negative strategy allows Democrats to focus less on their own results, track record, and service to elites, all of which speak poorly of them but much worse of the Republicans.
+
+As a result, it is more important than ever that when a major corruption scandal like this one breaks, Democrats send the message, however disingenuous, that they will not tolerate such behavior within their own ranks. Doubtless, some of the condemnations of Menendez that have appeared in the first few days since the indictment was announced are sincere, but whatever the level of that sincerity, it’s clear that Menendez cannot count on the same level of support from his colleagues that he got eight years ago.
+
+But it’s not clear yet how the major Jewish institutions and pro-Israel lobby groups will respond to Menendez’s plight. Schumer’s statement that “Bob Menendez has been a dedicated public servant and is always fighting hard for the people of New Jersey. He has a right to due process and a fair trial,” might be the blueprint pro-Israel groups follow. It’s difficult to know for sure because of the timing, coinciding with the holiday of Yom Kippur, which probably has delayed the strategizing and public response from Jewish groups.
+
+Menendez is likely to be replaced for the moment by Maryland’s Ben Cardin as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cardin was SFRC Chair after Menendez was indicted the first time, and served as Chair and Ranking Member until Menendez took the leadership back in 2018. Cardin, like Menendez, is a major hawk on Israel and friend of AIPAC. But Cardin is also stepping down at the end of his term next year, so whatever the outcome is for Menendez, Cardin is not the long-term replacement.
+
+This means AIPAC could potentially be losing its two most powerful SFRC Democrats. Of course, there is still a majority on the committee, including all Republicans, that will back almost anything Israel wants, with Rand Paul being an occasional GOP exception. And among the Democrats, Chris Coons of Delaware is nearly as hawkish as Cardin and Menendez on issues related to Israel. But the rest of the Democrats range from moderate voices like Virgina’s Tim Kaine or New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen to occasional critics like Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Van Hollen, of course is the senator who has struggled to get to the truth of the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh.
+
+This represents an opportunity for lobbying on Palestine, depending on who eventually replaces Cardin and possibly Menendez on the committee. And, of course, it also depends on Democrats maintaining control of the Senate next year.
+
+One race to watch will be for Cardin’s successor in Maryland. Congressman David Trone is a leading contender. He is the co-founder and co-owner of Total Wine & More, which calls itself the largest independent wine retailer in the United States. They buy wines from Israel and make no secret of buying much of that wine from the settlements, and Trone himself is a major donor to AIPAC. Trone, who is largely financing his campaign himself, will surely try to get on the Foreign Relations Committee if he wins. His opponents—Angela Alsobrooks and progressive Will Jawando are the main ones—are almost certain to be better on Palestine than Trone, though this is also unlikely to be an issue in the Democratic primary in Maryland (which, in Maryland, will effectively be the election for the Senate seat), so we won’t know much for sure.
+
+Even if Menedez manages to beat the rap again, the stench of this accusation is very likely to hang over his re-election campaign next year. In 2018, the last time he ran, there were years between his indictment and the election, and the story had fallen from the headlines by the time his trial ended. Now, there will be mere months. Doubtless, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy—who has already called on Menendez to resign—relishes the idea of putting his own stamp on the Senate race in 2024 by appointing an interim replacement for Menendez, but this is unlikely to change much as Murphy is known as being staunchly pro-Israel as well.
+
+But if the SFRC loses both Cardin and Menendez, it would create an opening for Palestine advocates to press for more influence with the committee. People like Van Hollen, Merkley, and Murphy will all be receptive to a point, especially with Israel’s current far-right government, and they’ll all be more senior members of the committee with the two hawks at the top gone if they retain their seats on the committee.
+
+This may seem like small gains, and, given the massive plight of the Palestinian people and the stranglehold Israel has on the issue in Washington, it certainly is. But this is the only sort of progress that can be made in a dysfunctional Senate where pro-Israel advocates have not only spent millions but also worked for decades to build up their influence. Menedez’s corruption scandal is an opportunity, and advocates for Palestinian rights must take advantage of every one, large or small.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/its-time-for-u-s-church-leaders-to-challenge-israeli-apartheid.txt

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-Forty-seven years ago, leaders of the nation’s major churches organized a campaign to help end South African apartheid. They formed the Churches’ Emergency Committee on South Africa to press for comprehensive government economic sanctions and the boycott and divestiture of U.S. companies that refused to end their work in South Africa.
-
-The committee, representing 24 major denominations and 12 interchurch agencies, adopted a resolution that pulled no punches. “Apartheid is an unmitigated evil,” the resolution charged, “the product of sin and the work of the devil… We have heard the cries of anguish from our brothers and sisters in South Africa, and they have asked us to take this action.”
-
-The work was supported by an extraordinary diversity of churches representing a broad range of theologies, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, several Lutheran denominations, the Southern Baptists, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. These church leaders may have been playing catch-up; in the U.S., there had been a years-long grassroots campaign opposing South African apartheid. But according to one participant, a student at Union Theological Seminary at the time, the efforts of these church leaders contributed to a major push to override President Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in September 1986.
-
-“This is a historic gathering… an emergency gathering,” said the Rev. M. Lorenze Shephard, president of the Progressive National Baptist Church. “We can no longer stand idly by and allow our government to casually throw away a moral prerogative that it can exercise.”
-
-Now is the time for leaders of U.S. denominations to join together—as they did during the movement for civil rights in the 1960s, the Vietnam War in the early 1970s and then again in the 1980s—to raise their collective moral voice and chart a campaign to oppose Israel’s settler colonial apartheid.
-
-Israel’s laws, policies and procedures meet the three criteria that define an apartheid regime in international law: 1) the implementation of a system of separation or segregation based on race, creed, or ethnicity designed with the intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another; 2) the use of legislative measures to enforce separation and segregation, essentially legalizing separation from within its own legal system; 3) the commission of inhuman acts, human rights violations, denial of freedom, and forced ghettoization.
-
-It’s incumbent upon leaders of U.S. denominations to amplify the voices of Palestinians suffering under a brutal system of apartheid, to protect the Christian heritage in the Holy Land, and to work for the freedom and human rights of the Palestinian people.
-
-Just last month, eighteen well-known and -respected Palestinian Christian organizations issued a statement, “Standing Unwavering and Resolute: Together for the Protection of our Presence.” The statement addresses many things, including a description of Israel’s policy “to assert control over Jerusalem, to Judaize sacred lands, and to intimidate and displace Christians.” Most importantly, perhaps, the statement expresses grassroots Palestinian Christians’ impatience with their church’s leaders. The statement reads, “We call upon all Patriarchs and Church leaders, urging them to cooperate with us. It is imperative that we work hand in hand to protect our sacred sites… and our legitimate human right to exist.”
-
-Following their lead, it’s incumbent upon leaders of U.S. denominations to also “work hand in hand” to amplify the voices of Palestinians suffering under a brutal system of apartheid, to protect the Christian heritage in the Holy Land, and to work for the freedom and human rights of the Palestinian people. Those who know, know that U.S. support for Israel enables it to ignore international law and act with impunity.
-
-If U.S. heads of churches and their leading staff need further encouragement to gather, as did previous leaders in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, they may consider the following.
-
-But there is an even more significant imperative for our church leaders to rise up and act: the Gospel. While it’s essential to acknowledge that Israel’s laws, policies and practices satisfy the three criteria that define apartheid according to international law, the church’s prophetic voice is rooted in our faith in a just God.
-
-When leaders gather, they must be grounded in confession, prayer and a sound exegesis of our Scriptures, clearly rejecting theologies that favor one people over another. Leaders must listen to the voice of our Palestinian partners—expressed especially in their profoundly theological document, A Moment of Truth. As Palestinian Christians have insisted in that document and through many other cries for support that have followed, the church’s resistance to the evil of apartheid must be shaped with “love as its logic.”
-
-What might our leaders propose?
-
-Vigorous support for nonviolent resistance. Of the three options available to Palestinians as they struggle to gain their freedom and human rights—violence, nonviolence, and submission—the church must rush to support nonviolent resistance, especially the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. To anticipate and counter criticisms, church leaders can learn from South Africans who responded to the same narratives when they called for BDS.
-
-Opportunities for leaders across denominational divides to travel to Palestine/Israel, where they can see the realities of apartheid on the ground and meet with Jews, Muslims and Christians working for a just and lasting peace.
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-Opportunities for Palestinian Christians to tour U.S. churches, Christian universities, colleges and seminaries, where their voices can be heard.
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-United and active support for House Resolution 3103, “Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act”, and House Resolution 9291, the “Justice for Shireen Act.”  Many members of Congress, under the influence of the Israel lobby and Christian Zionists, are waiting for the church to rise up and insist that they address Israel’s illegal actions.
-
-An honest and thorough response to the resolution affirmed by the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches at its 2022 meeting in Germany, committing their communions to study and respond to the human rights reports naming and describing Israel’s apartheid.
-
-A program to see that existing church statements, resolutions and the campaign to be designed reach those in the pews and the classrooms of our denominational colleges, universities and seminaries.
-
-If not now, when?

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/jewish-settlers-stole-my-house-its-not-my-fault-theyre-jewish.txt

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-When we were growing up in occupied Jerusalem, the people seeking to expel us from our neighborhood were Jewish, and their organizations often had “Jewish” in their name. So were the people who stole our home, scattered our furniture in the street, and burned my baby sister’s crib. The judges banging their gavels in favor of our expulsion were also Jewish, and so were the lawmakers whose laws facilitated and systematized our dispossession.
-
-The bureaucrat issuing—and sometimes revoking—our blue ID cards was a Jew, and I especially despised him because a stroke of his pen stood between my father and my father’s great-great-grandfather’s city. As for the soldiers that were frisking us to check for those IDs, some of them were Druze, some Muslim, most of them Jewish, and all of them, according to my grandmother, were “godless bastards.” Those who administered the rifles and handcuffs, those who wrote the meticulous and murderous urban plans were—you guessed it.
-
-This was no secret. We lived under the rule of the self-proclaimed “Jewish State.” Israeli politicians have exhausted this line, and their international peers nodded along. The army declared itself a Jewish army and marched under what it has called a Jewish flag. Jerusalem city councilmen boasted “tak[ing] house after house” because “the bible says that this country belongs to the Jewish people,” and Knesset members sang similar tunes. These legislators weren’t fringe or far-right: the Israeli nation-state law explicitly enshrines “Jewish settlement” as a “national value … to encourage and promote.”
-
-Still, though this was no secret, we were instructed to treat it as such, sometimes by our parents, sometimes by well-meaning solidarity activists. We were instructed to ignore the Star of David on the Israeli flag, and to distinguish Jews from Zionists with surgical precision. It didn’t matter that their boots were on our necks, and that their bullets and batons bruised us. Our statelessness and homelessness were trivial. What mattered was how we spoke about our keepers, not the conditions they kept us under—blockaded, surrounded by colonies and military outposts—or the fact that they kept us at all.
-
-Language was more of a minefield than the border between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights, and we, children at the time, were expected to hop around them, hoping we don’t accidentally step on an explosive trope that would discredit us. Using the “wrong words” had the magical ability to make things disappear; the boots, bullets, batons, and bruises all become invisible if you say anything in jest or in fury. Even more dangerously, believing in “the wrong things” rendered you deserving of this brutality. Citizenship and the right to movement weren’t the sole privileges robbed from us, simple ignorance was a luxury as well.
-
-As Palestinians, we understand from a young age that the semantic violence we practice with our words dwarfs the decades of systemic and material violence enacted against us by the self-proclaimed Jewish State. A drone is one thing, but a trope—a trope is unacceptable. We learn to internalize the muzzle.
-
-So, I heeded these calls—what else is a 10-year-old supposed to do?—and I learned about Hitler and the Holocaust, I learned about the nose stereotype, the poisoned wells, the bankers, the vampires, the snakes and the lizards (I just found out about the octopus), and I learned that, when speaking to diplomats visiting our zoo of a neighborhood, the settlers squatting in our home must be the secondary point of my presentation, second to an effusive denunciation of global antisemitism. And when my 80-something grandmother addressed those foreign visitors, I corrected her mid-sentence whenever she described the Jewish settlers in our house as, well, Jewish.
-
-A decade and some years later and not much has changed. The boot remains there; so are the bullets and batons (and I would be remiss not to mention the innovative genius of the AI-powered robot firearms recently added to the Jewish State’s arsenal).
-
-The government titles its project in the Galilee as “the Judaization of the Galilee,” and its quasi-institutions do the same. As for the council members that promised to take “house after house,” alongside their success in stealing houses, in Sheikh Jarrah, the Old City, Silwan, and elsewhere, they routinely march in our towns with megaphones and flags, chanting “we want Nakba now.” The judges still bang their gavels to ensure the continuation of this Nakba; still rule in favor of Jewish supremacy. And, despite disagreeing with the Supreme Court on various things, parliamentarians legislate in accordance with that supremacist attitude. Some openly state the fact that Jewish life is simply “more important than [our] freedom” (and sometimes they’re even nice enough to apologize to Arab TV presenters as they deliver them these hard truths).
-
-A decade and some years later, the status quo remains as is. And we—how my heart breaks for us��we continue dancing among the land mines. We continue betting on morality and humanity, as they bet on their guns.
-
-A few weeks ago, 16 Israeli police officers turned off their body cameras and branded, as in physically etched, the Star of David into the cheek of 22-year-old Orwa Sheikh Ali, a young man they arrested from the Shufat refugee camp.
-
-Also a few weeks ago, MEMRI, a media watch group co-founded by a former Israeli military intelligence officer, released footage of PA President Mahmoud Abbas stating that Europeans “fought [the Jews] because of their social role” and “usury,” and “not because of their religion.”
-
-In response, a group of renowned Palestinian intellectuals, many of whom I admire and respect, published an open letter “unequivocally condemn[ing]”—guess what?—Abbas’ “morally and politically reprehensible comments.”
-
-One could call their joint statement a ‘strategic’ move to negate the belief that Palestinians are born bigoted. Others may say it represents what having a “consistent moral code” looks like. I’m certain some signatories believe our so-called moral authority makes it incumbent upon us to deplore historical revisionism “vis-a-vis the Holocaust,” and to lead by example in rejecting all forms of racism, no matter how rhetorical.
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-Whatever it is, when I read it, I felt a sense of deja vu. Here we are, caught in a discursive crisis once more, hastily responding to crimes we haven’t committed. The strategy of defending ourselves against the baseless charge of antisemitism has historically brought us closer to it. And, more than that, such an impulse inadvertently elevates the history of Jewish suffering, which is certainly studied, if not honored, above our present-day suffering, a suffering that is denied and disputed.
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-While the signatories of the letter, some who’ve criticized the PA since before I was born, did decry the “PA’s increasingly authoritarian and draconian rule,” and while they made note of the “Western and pro-Israel forces” supporting Abbas’ expired presidential mandate, neither of those things served as the catalyst for what appears to be the first joint statement condemning Mahmoud Abbas. The letter didn’t spell his collaboration with the Zionist regime as its headline, nor his brutalization of protesters and political prisoners, let alone the murder of Nizar Banat.
-
-The catalyst here was words. Mere words. And it always is. Again, a drone is one thing, but a trope is off-limits.
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-Ironically, both the joint letter and Abbas’ speech sought to distance themselves from antisemitism. Towards the end of the clip, Abbas wanted to “clarify” that he said what he said regarding “the Jews of Europe hav[ing] nothing to do with Semitism” because we ought to “know who we should accuse of being our enemy.”
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-What a burdensome impulse. Not only do we live in fear of displacement at the hands of a colonialism that professes itself as Jewish, not only are our people bombarded by an army that marches under what it claims is the Jewish flag, and not only do Israeli politicians over enunciate the Jewishness of their operations, we are told to disregard the Star of David soaring on their flag—the Star of David they carve into our skin.
-
-This impulse is decades, if not a century, old. In his handwritten transcript of a speech he gave in Cairo, October 1948, Palestinian scholar Khalil Sakakini struck through a fragment of a sentence that read “… the fighting between Arabs and Jews,” to replace it with “the fighting between us and the invaders.” Palestinian academics, the Institute for Palestine Studies, and the PLO’s Palestine Research Center (which was looted and bombed repeatedly in 1980s) have dedicated articles, books, and volumes for the study of antisemitism, its European roots, and its manifestations—European or otherwise—and its conflation with anti-Zionism.
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-The Palestinian People have consistently made it crystal clear that our enemy is the colonialist and racist ideology of Zionism, not Jews. Our capacity to produce such distinction is admirable and impressive, considering the heavy-handedness with which Zionism attempts to synonymize itself with Judaism.
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-However, this distinction isn’t our responsibility, and personally, it isn’t my priority. A Palestinian’s perceived resentment doesn’t have the backing of a Knesset to codify it into law. Tropes aren’t drones, nor can one convert conspiracy theories into nuclear weapons. We are past the early 1900s. Things are different, power has shifted. Words are not murder.
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-In the days between the 16 soldiers branding a man’s face with the Star of David and the release of the joint letter, an Israeli soldier killed a disabled teenager near a military checkpoint in Qalqilya; another shot a child in the head in Silwan; a young man previously shot in an Israeli raid of the Balata refugee camp died of his injuries; a sniper shot a Palestinian youth in the head in Beita; a 17-year-old was shot and killed south of Jenin; one more young man succumbed to his wounds following a invasion of the refugee camp; families of Palestinians whose corpses are held by the Occupation authorities marched with empty caskets in Nablus; a soldier killed a man near Hebron, police executed a 14-year-old boy in Sheikh Jarrah to the applause of hundreds of settlers; the police then tear-gassed his family in Beit Hanina; a Palestinian was killed after ramming Israeli soldiers in Beit Sira, killing one; in the north of Jericho, a Palestinian man was killed and a soldier was injured in a gunfire exchange; a soldier shot a man in the head in Tubas, killing him—and this is only the very tip of the iceberg.
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-Which of these caused a far-reaching debate? None. There was a lot of noise concerning Itamar Ben-Gvir stating that Jewish life is “more important than [Palestinian] freedom” on television, a lot less noise about the carving of the Star of David, and, of course, Mahmoud Abbas received the noisiest reaction of all. (This is true in general, not just in the case of the open letter).
-
-All three of those examples deal with aesthetics. Ben-Gvir’s statements were factual and true: Jewish life is worth more than ours under Israeli rule, but it was his explicit oration that triggered outrage rather than the institutionalized policies that have made his racist remarks the material reality on the ground. Even the physical deformation of a Palestinian’s face was only of note because of what the etching symbolized, not the etching itself—had the soldiers cut inconspicuous lines on his cheek, I doubt it would have garnered any attention at all.
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-As for Palestinian death, it is quotidian and negligible. If we’re lucky, our martyrs are communicated in sums on the pages of end-of-year reports. “Revisionism” on the other hand, warrants a cacophony of condemnation.
-
-Here is where I stand. There is a Jew who lives–by force—in half of my home in Jerusalem, and he does so by “divine decree.” Many others reside—by force—in Palestinian houses, while their owners linger in refugee camps. It isn’t my fault that they are Jewish. I have zero interest in memorizing or apologizing for centuries-old tropes created by Europeans, or in giving semantics more heft than they warrant, chiefly when millions of us confront real, tangible oppression, living behind cement walls, or under siege, or in exile, and living with woes too expansive to summarize. I’m tired of the impulse to preemptively distance myself from something of which I am not guilty, and particularly tired of the assumption that I’m inherently bigoted. I’m tired of the pearl-clutching pretense that should such animosity exist, its existence would be inexplicable and rootless. Most of all, I’m tired of the false equivalence between semantic violence and systemic violence.
-
-I know this essay is within itself a minefield. That it will be taken out of context and disseminated, but I’ll never be a perfect victim—there’s no escaping being accused of antisemitism. It’s a losing battle and, more importantly, a glaring red herring. And it is time we reevaluate this tactic. There are better things to do: we have coffins to carry. We have kin in Israeli mortuary chambers that we must bury.
-
-This essay was inspired by James Baldwin’s landmark 1967 article, “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White.”

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/netanyahu-biden-meeting-illustrates-the-political-madness-of-the-u-s-israeli-relationship.txt

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+The long-awaited meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took place on Wednesday. It hardly looked like what one might have expected years ago, but the tone and tenor should be cause for concern for many reasons.
+
+Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, both leaders were trying to balance the reality of significant differences over policy and their desire to maintain a strong U.S.-Israel relationship despite the fact that many of their constituents have lost faith in that relationship. Netanyahu leads a far-right Israeli coalition that wants to continue receiving the lavish gifts of military aid and other means of financial support, as well as defense cooperation and strategic alignment with the world’s sole military superpower. But that sector of the Israeli right only wants the gifts if they are completely free, and chafes at paying even the nominal price — often merely rhetorical, symbolic, or, at best, window-dressing “concessions” — Biden and his Democratic party demand.
+
+Biden, for his part, is leading a party that has grown increasingly disillusioned with the Israeli government and has increasingly recognized that the Palestinians are being treated very badly, and that this is happening with full American backing. Yet his party mainstream is desperately courting pro-Israel political PACs ahead of a 2024 presidential election, which they have, through their own choices, imperiled despite likely facing a twice-impeached opponent who will be fighting numerous indictments stemming from treasonous behavior while trying to get back into power. Despite the distaste with which many Democrats view the current Israeli government — including many who still define themselves as “pro-Israel” — Biden and the rest of the Democratic leadership continue to court Israel’s favor.
+
+While the two leaders spent most of the time at their meeting talking in private, their public statements give some sense of the flavor of their conversation. Netanyahu made his usual empty declarations about Israel’s cherishing of “democracy,” a concept that has never held in the Jewish state. And, to the extent that democratic structures exist for Jewish citizens, they are under constant attack by Netanyahu and his cronies.
+
+“I want to reassert here before you, Mr. President, that one thing is certain, and one thing will never change,” Netanyahu said. “And that is Israel’s commitment to democracy. We will continue to uphold the values that both our proud democracies cherish.”
+
+That statement stood in stark contrast to the words he uttered as he was leaving Israel, when he used the worst epithet he could against the protesters he knew were waiting for him in the United States. “But this time, we see demonstrations against Israel by people that are joining forces with the PLO, with Iran, and with others.” For an Israeli or supporter of Israel, there is nothing worse than being called a Palestinian or an Iranian. Such is the racism in play, and Netanyahu knows it very well.
+
+But this is typical of Netanyahu, who speaks very differently in Israel than he does when talking to an American audience, as he was on Wednesday. Of greater importance were his words regarding the Palestinians in the context of the desperate attempts by the Biden administration to broker a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel for normal relations between the two U.S. allies.
+
+Back to Israeli-Saudi normalization
+
+Netanyahu spoke of a “genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” but steered very clear of anything remotely hinting at a significant increase in Palestinian autonomy, let alone a state. Instead, his use of the word “peace” — a term long since rendered useless in the context of Israel’s domination and dispossession of the Palestinians — implies some accommodation that essentially codifies full Israeli control over the West Bank.
+
+A senior Israeli diplomatic source said that Netanyahu believes that “the Palestinians have to be part of the [normalization talks], but they should not have a veto on the process.” Essentially, what that means — since, by definition, the sovereign states of Israel, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia would all have “veto power,” as there can be no agreement without all of them — is that Netanyahu is ever so generously willing to allow the Palestinians to tell the Saudis what their price for not raising a ruckus over a normalization deal would be. Otherwise, however, they will have to accept whatever crumbs they are offered. In fact, what the Palestinian Authority is said to have asked for as the price for acquiescence to a normalization deal is little more than crumbs itself.
+
+The Saudis, for their part, continue to play the long game, a game they can play as they are the only party that has no need to see this deal get done soon. Over the weekend, Saudi media reported that the kingdom was suspending talks with the U.S. on normalization. Then, on Wednesday, Fox News aired an interview with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) where he said that “every day we get closer” to a normalization agreement.
+
+The mixed signals are part of the Saudi strategy to find a deal on normalization that will allow them to appear to have significantly moved the Palestinian cause forward and also bring them the other prizes they want: a defense pact with the United States, the ability to enrich uranium in their own country, and the ability to purchase more advanced U.S. weapons than they can now.
+
+All of that seems like far too much for the United States to pay for what will actually do very little, if anything, to advance U.S. interests. American officials claim that this would pull the Saudis away from China, but there is no reason to believe that is the case. On the contrary, it incentivizes both Saudi Arabia and Israel to cultivate their relationships with China in order to get the benefits of that relationship and also even more gifts from the U.S.
+
+Biden officials also claim that such a deal would enhance the stand against Iran, but that is already happening, as all of the Gulf states, the U.S., and Israel already work together on that front. All it would do is increase tensions with Iran.
+
+Biden and his team are also convinced that this would represent a significant foreign policy win and a big boost for the 2024 presidential election. As I have explained, that is a wildly mistaken assessment.
+
+Separating the Palestinians
+
+The two-paragraph White House readout of the Biden-Netanyahu meeting offered a sharp separation of the Palestinians from all other issues. The first paragraph was filled with the usual platitudes and self-destructive vows that the United States will continue to fund, arm, and support Israel unquestioningly, no matter how authoritarian, even criminal, Israel might be or become. “President Biden reaffirmed the unbreakable bond between the two countries…and the United States’ iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security,” the readout reported. There was also an ambitious listing of planned new ventures. Interestingly, these included an expectation that there would be a reconvening of the so-called “Negev Summit,” which was canceled (Israel likes to say it was merely “postponed,” but it was canceled) because of the difficulties Israel’s repeated and escalating violence against Palestinians was causing the Arab participants, particularly Morocco and Jordan.
+
+That mention highlighted the separation of the Palestinians from all other projects the U.S. and Israel are pursuing in the region. It’s a convenient fantasy, but that is all it is. The Palestinians have not disappeared from the Arab agenda, however much Arab dictators might wish it would. MBS is not keeping this question in the middle of normalization talks out of devotion to Palestine, but because he has to contend with the political realities in his country and region.
+
+In the second paragraph, the White House addresses the question of the West Bank in typical fashion, consistently employing “both sides” language and eliding the fact that it is Israel that has massively stepped up the violence. The attacks this week in Jenin and near Jericho served to emphasize that point, yet it remains lost in Washington. Laughably, the readout talks about the “agreements” made at Aqaba and Sharm el Sheikh, agreements which Israel publicly abrogated as soon as those meetings were over.
+
+In both cases, it was Israel that made the U.S. look like fools as they demonstrated in word and deed that they were never going to uphold the agreements struck at Aqaba and Sharm El Sheikh. But in the readout, Biden calls on “all parties to fulfill their commitments made during meetings held earlier this year in Aqaba, Jordan and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to include refraining from further unilateral measures.” The idea that the Palestinians even have the ability to take a unilateral measure is far distant from reality, but that has never stopped the United States, and Biden is more delusional than most of his predecessors.
+
+Biden said at the meeting that he “hoped” he and Netanyahu would meet in Washington before the end of the year. The readout goes further and commits the U.S. to that meeting, saying, “President Biden invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington D.C. before the end of the year to continue direct collaboration on this broad range of issues.”
+
+That should make it all clear. Biden is giving Netanyahu the one thing, the only thing he has withheld, despite the fact that Netanyahu has not backed off one bit in his government’s assault on Palestine, and has only increased his military’s protection of settlers as they assault and harass Palestinians. He is showering him with gifts despite the fact that Netanyahu has not backed off of the “judicial reforms” that supposedly angered the president and brought out protesters in Israel and the U.S.
+
+Is it because of domestic political concerns? That would seem to be the only answer, but if that is what is motivating him (or that along with Biden’s own romantic delusions about an Israel that is half a century in the past and was not, even then, what he seems to think it was), he is selling out his own country’s interest for something that will not help his electoral cause. The political madness that is the U.S.-Israel relationship has reached unprecedented heights.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/oslo-lives-death-to-oslo.txt

@@ -1,25 +0,0 @@
-In the past two years, a new world emerged with the hopes of displacing the one that came before it. The old world was situated within the remnants of a national liberation movement, now defeated and licking wounds that had festered ever since the end of the Second Intifada. It offered up many justifications to normalize its state of decay — the objective of state-building, “economic peace,” entrepreneurship, and consumption.
-
-The new world was different. It had grown tired of the narrative that the old world kept trying to sell it, which read agency into resignation and patriotism into collaboration even as the homeland it claimed to be building continued to shrink before its eyes. The new world was born out of the old one because it rejected taking pride in humiliation, daring to resist when most of society had convinced itself that “existence was resistance.”
-
-Glimmers of this world were already emerging nearly a decade ago in fits and starts — as far back as the 2015 “Knife Intifada” and the subsequent rise of “lone wolf” operations, the creation of a subversive commons in Jerusalem, and the multiple “popular upheavals” in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and beyond. At the time, it had many Palestinian detractors, variously characterizing the acts of resistance that emerged as futile, counterproductive, or even tragic, lamenting that the disaffected young were “throwing their lives away” for nothing. This common refrain became harder to repeat following 2021 when Palestinians from the river to the sea rose up in a fleeting moment of collective upheaval. But like its predecessors, the uprising either dissipated or was summarily put down by colonial authorities.
-
-In the aftermath of the “dignity upheaval,” the new world fully emerged in Jenin and Nablus. Young Palestinians turned to armed resistance for the first time since the Second Intifada — seemingly repudiating those who would write them off as part of the “Oslo Generation” — and set about the work of carving out strongholds for their nascent armed movements. Jenin refugee camp’s history as a haven of armed struggle meant it would soon become hostile terrain to both the Oslo regime and the colonizer. Nablus wasn’t able to establish the same kind of semi-autonomous space, but it did capture the imagination of a generation that made the continuation of resistance past the campaigns of assassination, arrest, and repression possible.
-
-For a time, the old world sat back in silence, watching as the new world came into being and hoping that it would fizzle out and die on its own, or that the settler colony would successfully wipe it out. But after a year of a relentless Israeli counterinsurgency campaign, the resistance not only survived extermination but was spreading. Now, the new world sprouted up in places like Aqbat Jabr refugee camp in Jericho, or Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps in Tulkarem.
-
-The new world wasn’t going anywhere. In its second year of existence, the defensive capabilities of the armed resistance in Jenin began to grow, making use of increasingly more sophisticated IEDs in army incursions into the camp. In one incident, the resistance was able to successfully take out a state-of-the-art armored troop carrier. This made the colonial authorities sufficiently worried that its army launched a full-scale invasion of the camp over the course of two days in early July, aiming to deal a blow to what it called the “infrastructure of terror.” It emerged with a handful of confiscated rifles and IED labs to show for it and a slain soldier from the elite Egoz unit, while the bulk of the fighting force of the Jenin resistance remained intact.
-
-The resistance was able to avoid extermination and, above all, preserve its capacity to resist. Yet the Jenin operation wasn’t over; its unofficial second phase was just getting started and was to be carried out by the guardians of the old world. But the new world resisted. It expelled a Fatah delegation from the funeral of the Jenin operation’s martyrs, and protestors confronted PA security forces in Jenin after the Israeli withdrawal. Not to be deterred, the old world made a show of force in the following days by imposing its presence in the camp and the neighboring area and entering as an ambassador of reconstruction and relief. It then embarked on a campaign of arrests of resistance fighters, determined to limit the new world’s reach and preserve its relevance and usefulness in the eyes of its colonial patrons.
-
-That campaign has continued to this day, and it has been underscored by the news that the U.S. recently sent a shipment of weapons and armored vehicles to the PA, presumably to help it regain control of the West Bank.
-
-A struggle of worlds
-
-These two worlds now exist simultaneously. For a time, they existed in parallel and did not intersect, but as the new world continued to expand its reach — both on the ground and in the minds of Palestine’s youth — it meant the rejection of Oslo and the world it created. The result is the emergence of two separate modes of being in Palestinian society, one based on the insistence on continuing a life of consumption and paper-thin “normalcy,” and the other characterized by the constant exposure to the colonial reality of settler encroachment and the death of friends and loved ones — and the desire to avenge them.
-
-Often, people will experience both modes of existence simultaneously in a maddening discrepancy. Some evade the contradiction by retreating into an uneasy form of escapism. Others who have the means settle into a comfortable and insular middle-class existence, and those who do not enjoy the same luxury might settle for a more precarious yet equally escapist trajectory. And others still choose to fight and reject all of it. Their names and faces adorn posters and necklaces.
-
-Yet the trouble with the features of Oslo’s world is that even though it has managed to ensnare a population in a web of dependency and the cycle of consumerism that it creates, it remains powerless and unable to shield that same population from the ravages of settler pogroms and colonial predation. Built into its structure is the domestication of the Palestinian political class and, along with it, its means of Palestinian self-defense. This was most jarringly apparent in the PA president’s entreaties to the international community in May to “protect us” as one would protect “an animal,” and in the enraged rebuke of the PA Prime Minister by an elderly man in Turmusayya — “either protect us or arm us!” — in the aftermath of a settler pogrom in June.
-
-The old world could only hold for so long. Out of necessity, the new world emerged, and it will continue to emerge in different ways even if the current resistance formations are put down and suppressed. But the structures that keep the old world together — propped up by the alliance of capital, clientelism, and totalitarianism — remain. They have proven durable in the face of this generation’s rage, hoping to outlast it, but that hope remains a gamble — because that rage, and the new world it creates, will continue to break out as the colonial reality persists and friends continue to be taken from one another.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/page/2.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,99 @@
+Jewish settlers stole my house. It’s not my fault they’re Jewish.
+
+By Mohammed El-Kurd
+
+September 26, 2023
+
+7
+
+Palestinians are told the words we use dwarf the decades of violence enacted against us by the self-proclaimed Jewish State. A drone is one thing, but a trope—a trope is unacceptable. No more.
+
+Biden administration expected to grant Israel entry into Visa Waiver Program
+
+By Michael Arria
+
+September 26, 2023
+
+2
+
+“Admitting Israel into the program after only a month-and-a-half-long trial after decades of discrimination, occupation, and apartheid is irresponsible,” AJP Action Advocacy Director Ayah Ziyadeh tells Mondoweiss.
+
+Palestine Letter: Preparing for the olive harvest
+
+By Yumna Patel
+
+September 26, 2023
+
+0
+
+October is around the corner, which means the olive harvest in Palestine will soon be in full swing. But rather than preparing for a time of joy, celebration, and community, Palestinians are gearing up once again to fight for their lives and their land.
+
+West Bank Dispatch: Settlers escalate harassment campaign, while army targets more resistance groups
+
+By Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
+
+September 26, 2023
+
+0
+
+Israeli settlers conducted attacks against Palestinians and their property across the occupied West Bank, including a settler’s ramming of a young disabled Palestinian man, and settlers pepper-spraying a four-year-old in the face.
+
+Normalization and co-resistance
+
+By Jonathan Kuttab
+
+September 25, 2023
+
+4
+
+Co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not possible under Israeli apartheid, but there is an opportunity to work toward a better future based on equality and genuine democracy through co-resistance.
+
+Oslo after thirty: A paradigm beyond partition
+
+By Lex Takkenberg
+
+September 24, 2023
+
+5
+
+Dr. Lex Takkenberg argues that we need to move beyond Oslo’s paradigm of partition and separation and to instead adopt a new-old vision for a single democratic state.
+
+AIPAC tries to distort and damage U.S. foreign policy beyond the Middle East
+
+By James North
+
+September 24, 2023
+
+4
+
+In the 1980s, AIPAC tried to weaken U.S. policy toward an African dictator. Is the pro-Israel warhorse deploying the same maneuver again today?
+
+Weekly Briefing: Who do you believe about Palestine, Victoria Nuland or Roger Waters?
+
+By Philip Weiss
+
+September 24, 2023
+
+4
+
+Victoria Nuland, deputy secretary of State, says a Saudi normalization deal with Israel will assure Palestinians that the “prospect of a two-state solution stay vibrant and strong.” She’s lying through her teeth.
+
+An Israeli pilot refusenik reflects on the state of Israeli fascism and apartheid
+
+By Jonathan Ofir
+
+September 23, 2023
+
+18
+
+Yonatan Shapira reflects on the Israeli drift to Judeo-Nazism, as well as a “60 Minutes” interview with an Israeli soldier who says in order to bomb houses with children in them, she has to be confident of the moral values of her commander.
+
+At UN Netanyahu says Israel is at ‘cusp’ of Saudi deal, brandishes map that erases Palestine
+
+By Michael Arria
+
+September 22, 2023
+
+21
+
+Speaking before the UN General Assembly on September 22, Netanyahu showed his vision for “reconciliation between the Islamic world and the Jewish state.” It means wiping Palestine off the map.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/page/3.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+Donate Now
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+
+Home
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+
+Search for:
+
+Archive
+
+Browsing
+
+Netanyahu-Biden meeting illustrates the political madness of the U.S.-Israeli relationship
+
+By Mitchell Plitnick
+
+September 21, 2023
+
+2
+
+Biden continues to shower Netanyahu with gifts while his government continues to slight U.S. wishes — proceeding with the judicial overhaul and escalating Israeli military and settler aggression against Palestinians.
+
+The charge that ‘Palestine Writes Festival’ is antisemitic is baseless
+
+By Alice Rothchild
+
+September 21, 2023
+
+4
+
+ADL, you do not speak for “The Jewish People”. Organizations that deem Palestinians as inherently threatening to Jews, solely because of who they are as human beings, do not represent a growing number of Jews who cannot tolerate the disinformation surrounding the mythology of the State of Israel.
+
+It’s time for Biden to get Netanyahu the Nobel Peace Prize
+
+By Philip Weiss
+
+September 21, 2023
+
+5
+
+Palestinians didn’t even get lip service from Joe Biden in his meeting with Netanyahu, promising a White House visit. Biden threw liberal Zionists and Israeli protesters under the bus to keep AIPAC’s support.
+
+The Shift: Joe Biden finally meets Benjamin Netanyahu
+
+By Michael Arria
+
+September 21, 2023
+
+3
+
+“I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world that’s secure. I think Israel is essential,” says Biden.
+
+West Bank Dispatch: Palestinian resistance responds to deadly Jenin raid
+
+By Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
+
+September 21, 2023
+
+0
+
+Israeli forces killed six Palestinians over the course of 24 hours. In the wake of Israel’s deadly operation in the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday, Palestinian resistance groups across the West Bank claimed responsibility for a number of operations targeting Israeli military posts in the occupied territory.
+
+Biden meets Netanyahu in New York, declaring U.S. support ‘ironclad’
+
+By Michael Arria
+
+September 20, 2023
+
+2
+
+Joe Biden met with Benjamin Netanyahu in New York, which some saw as a rebuke, but made clear his support for Israel remains “ironclad.” “I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world that’s secure,” Biden told reporters. “I think Israel is essential.”
+
+Israeli forces kill 6 Palestinians, assassinate fighters in Jenin camp with ‘suicide drones’
+
+By Yumna Patel
+
+September 20, 2023
+
+1
+
+Israel has renewed its deadly onslaught on the armed Palestinian resistance in Jenin and Aqbat Jabr refugees camps, while in Gaza, another Palestinian was martyred during protests at Gaza’s border fence.
+
+The ‘Revolutionary Youth’ fighting on Gaza’s border fence
+
+By Tareq S. Hajjaj
+
+September 19, 2023
+
+0
+
+Palestinians in Gaza are finding their way back to the border fence separating them from their homeland. They are responding to calls from a group of Return March veterans known as “the Revolutionary Youth.”
+
+Biden’s Israel policy is scripted by Saban
+
+By Philip Weiss
+
+September 19, 2023
+
+7
+
+Biden will meet Netanyahu at the
+U.N. and do nothing to pressure his racist rightwing government because he needs megadonor Haim Saban for 2024 and Saban says, “I’m a one issue  guy and my issue is Israel.”
+
+ADL says anti-Zionist activism has nearly doubled across U.S. campuses
+
+By Michael Arria
+
+September 19, 2023
+
+1
+
+A new ADL report seeks to smear anti-Zionist activism on college campuses in an attempt to stifle Palestine advocacy.
+
+Previous1
+2
+3
+4
+5
+…
+8Next

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/page/8.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+Sailing for solidarity with Gaza
+
+By Marianne Bergvall
+
+September 4, 2023
+
+0
+
+The Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Ship to Gaza-Norway are launching ships to Gaza to send its people a message: they are not alone, and people all over Europe are struggling for their freedom.
+
+West Bank Dispatch: The next phase of resistance
+
+By Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
+
+September 4, 2023
+
+0
+
+The West Bank has become a crucial front for the battle over political legitimacy among Palestinian factions as a new phase of armed resistance rises.
+
+My Palestinian mother-in-law and the generation of survivors
+
+By Marion Kawas
+
+September 3, 2023
+
+0
+
+My mother-in-law recently passed away at age 97. Her generation, the Nakba survivors, are quickly leaving us, along with their important historical legacy.
+
+A seditious project
+
+By Jonathan Coulter
+
+September 3, 2023
+
+5
+
+Asa Winstanley’s book shows how the Israel lobby facilitated the influence of a foreign government’s interests in dictating who gets to lead the Labour Party, causing the downfall of Jeremy Corbyn.
+
+Weekly Briefing: The mask slipped on apartheid
+
+By Philip Weiss
+
+September 3, 2023
+
+1
+
+There’s a battle inside American institutions over the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The left is now fully aware that it’s apartheid and that the issue demands attention. But the establishment is fighting to keep that truth at bay.
+
+What motivates non-Palestinians to join the Palestinian struggle for freedom?
+
+By Jeff Wright
+
+September 2, 2023
+
+5
+
+South African Marthie Momberg offers first-person accounts from non-Palestinian activists on the front line of the struggle for Palestinian human rights.
+
+Inside Gaza’s first Cat Cafe — a refuge for some, but unattainable for many
+
+By Tareq S. Hajjaj
+
+September 2, 2023
+
+0
+
+The new “Meow Cat Café” in Gaza charges families over two dollars per person to pet and play with the cafe’s wide selection of unique cats. But most people in Gaza can’t afford such an extravagance.
+
+Spectres of Palestinian history: an interview with Isabella Hammad
+
+By Bill V. Mullen
+
+September 1, 2023
+
+1
+
+Writer Isabella Hammad discusses her approach to history as a novelist, her sense of political commitment as an artist, and her thoughts on the prospects for Palestinian liberation.
+
+Biden won’t ‘lie on the barbed wire’ for Israeli protesters, Barak says
+
+By Philip Weiss
+
+September 1, 2023
+
+1
+
+Joe Biden can’t criticize Netanyahu and support the protest movement in Israel. No, only American Jewish groups have that power, former PM Ehud Barak says.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/revolutionary-youth-suspends-gaza-border-protests-amid-regional-mediation.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+Weeks after a series of popular protests reminiscent of the Great March of Return started up on Gaza’s borders, the group responsible for the actions — going by the name of the “Revolutionary Youth” — has suspended the protests.
+
+On Thursday, September 28, the group issued an abrupt declaration that the protests would be halted after Qatari and Egyptian “mediators” pledged that Israel would halt its violence against Palestinian prisoners and against worshipers at the al-Aqsa Mosque.
+
+Israeli media reported that the “mediators” were from Qatar, who allegedly sent a message to Hamas that they would pay the salaries of governmental employees in Gaza, while Qatari aid to Gaza would also be increased.
+
+Historically, Qatar, Egypt, and the UN envoy to Palestine have served as mediators between the Hamas government in Gaza and Israel. The Israeli media reported that Egypt also played a role in de-escalating the recent protests and that Hamas leaders in Gaza told the Egyptians that they would work on ending them, albeit without giving any guarantees.
+
+Israeli forces killed 7 Palestinians throughout the protests and injured almost a hundred people.
+
+How the protests started
+
+In the past few weeks, ambulance sirens could be heard moving up and down al-Mansura Street in eastern Gaza several times a day — the direct road between Gaza’s eastern border with Israel and the nearest hospital. Every time people heard the sound of the ambulance, they would know that a member of the Revolutionary Youth had been injured. Many people would come down from their homes and line the streets, their eyes following the ambulances as they whizzed past. A few people would utter a prayer for the youths’ speedy recovery, and like that, the topic of the Revolutionary Youth would become the main topic of conversation among locals who monitor the developments on the ground and through their phone screens.
+
+The group of people that turned up to protest at Gaza’s militarized border are a panoply of youth and political activists. Many of them are veterans of the Great March of Return — which took place between 2018 and 2019 — and several of them are still bearing the scars and injuries that they sustained during those days of protest. But what is most notable about this recent bout of direct action at the border is that the protesters are now operating under a name. The Revolutionary Youth is a seemingly amorphous combination of Great March of Return icons and younger Gazans incensed at the news of recent settler attacks against Palestinians in Jerusalem, as well as the crackdown of Israeli authorities on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
+
+“I came here knowing that I may lose my life, but I offer my soul to my homeland and my people without a second thought,” 24-year-old Muhammad Nasser, one of the early participants in the protests, told Mondoweiss. “The occupation has left me nothing. It has done away with our lives. So the best way to use my life is to give it to resisting the occupation.”
+
+This isn’t the first time that Nasser has participated in protests at Gaza’s borders — he used to go to the same place every Friday during the Great March of Return protests and was injured several times. He now walks on crutches, one of his leg bones shortened by 5 centimeters due to an injury he suffered during the march.
+
+The area where the actions are now taking place on Gaza’s border fence is also no stranger to protests. Only a few months ago, Gazans held a “Palestinian flag march” in solidarity with Palestinians in Jerusalem in the wake of the right-wing settler Flag March that took place in May; years before that, the area was home to the Great March of Return actions. As a result, the rolling field in eastern Gaza that stretches to the border fence by now resonates with an atmosphere of resistance.
+
+Who are the ‘Revolutionary Youth?’
+
+The origins of the “Revolutionary Youth” remain unclear. When the crowds gather near the border ahead of a protest, they are indistinguishable from everyone else who is present, but when the actions are underway, they immediately stand out through their daring actions. They protest in the front lines, lead sabotage missions on the border fence, light tires on fire to serve as a smokescreen to cloud the vision of Israeli snipers, release incendiary balloons, and, in some cases, attempt to get close enough to the border fence to shoot Israeli soldiers using handguns.
+
+On the first day of protest on September 14, six of them were martyred during an apparent attempted sabotage operation. Their funerals gave an indication of their factional and political backgrounds — a mix of all of Gaza’s factions, including Hamas. The circumstances of their deaths reveal that they were not part of an organized mission, but rather an informal group of experienced protesters.
+
+The government in Gaza states that the protests coalesced without governmental sponsorship or coordination, and when Mondoweiss pushed for further comment from government sources, they responded that they could not provide more details that relate to resistance activities (even if only “popular resistance”).
+
+Yet, while the government denies any formal involvement in the protests, Israel has seen fit to penalize Hamas for the actions of the Revolutionary Youth, launching several airstrikes on various Hamas military sites throughout the Gaza Strip. The airstrikes took place following the spread of several small fires in various areas inside Israel caused by Palestinian incendiary balloons.
+
+The response of the government in Gaza to the Israeli strikes has been to voice support for the protests; Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qasem issued a statement after Israel bombed several Hamas locations, vowing that the Israeli airstrikes would not halt Palestinian resistance to the religious war that Israel was waging against Palestinian holy sites.
+
+“Our people and our resistance will always support all forms of Palestinian struggle as a legitimate right,” he stated.
+
+But beyond the political origins of the Revolutionary Youth, their social origins are clear for all to see. For protesters like Muhammad Nasser, who belongs to a family of seven (four of whom are young and unemployed), no justification is needed for his choice to participate in the actions.
+
+“Israel left us no choice but to revolt,” he told Mondoweiss. “Coming here and resisting the true cause of our crises is better than remaining helpless and facing disability.”
+
+Nasser witnessed the death of over ten friends and family members during the various marches at Gaza’s borders. “All my friends were killed by Israel,” he said. “They sacrificed their lives for Palestine and for freedom.”
+
+There are countless other young people like Nasser and his martyred friends. They show up to the field not just because they choose to, but because they have to.
+
+“Everyone at this protest is a ‘revolutionary youth.’ Everyone is refusing Israeli terror,” Nasser explained. “And everyone who refuses the harsh conditions Israel imposes on us is a revolutionary youth.”

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/the-charge-that-palestine-writes-festival-is-antisemitic-is-baseless.txt

@@ -1,19 +0,0 @@
-I write this with a mix of fatigue, anger, and frustration. The Palestine Writes Literature Festival will officially open tomorrow, September 22, at the University of Pennsylvania, and already the attacks from the usual suspects have begun.
-
-Because organizations like the ADL, the Jewish Federation, JCRC, and Hillel claim they are speaking for Jews, I also feel compelled to speak out as a Jew who is honored to be part of this festival, to say quite clearly (once again) Not In My Name. ADL, et al, you do not speak for “The Jewish People”. Organizations that deem Palestinians as inherently dangerous and threatening to Jews, solely because of who they are as human beings, do not represent me and a growing number of generations of Jews who cannot tolerate the disinformation and contradictions surrounding the mythology of the State of Israel. Frankly, the ADL, et al, are speaking from a core of racism, Islamophobia, and deep Jewish fragility that is part of a multi-million dollar Israeli hasbara industry based on fear-mongering and demonization.
-
-I have recently returned from a trip to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, bearing witness and interviewing human rights and civil society groups, and I have deep ongoing first-hand knowledge of the realities on the ground. Organizations that attack non-Palestinians for supporting Palestinian culture and liberation in the face of a brutal history of settler colonialism and dispossession that is unending, are confusing criticisms of Israeli policy with real antisemitism, which is a form of bigotry grounded in white supremacy and fascism.
-
-It is clear to me that Palestinian aspirations do not come at the expense of Jewish safety, and that one people’s liberation can coexist with the other’s. This festival is an amazing opportunity to hear the voices of writers who are often denied a space in the public conversation.
-
-The original complaint against the festival spoke of “anti-Israel bias and antisemitism.”
-
-The initial intent of the state long before its founding in 1948 was to remove as many indigenous Palestinians as possible to create a state with a “strong Jewish majority” as an answer to European antisemitism and the Nazi Holocaust. That meant expelling Arabs or holding their communities under martial law. Decades of work fulfilling that mission brings us to today: a highly segregated society with a Nation State Bill that clearly privileges Jews over the 20% of the population who remain within the ’48 borders and some 5 ½ million Palestinians living under occupation and siege, and a Jewish Israeli population that lives in a shroud of hatred towards their understandably unsympathetic neighbors. (Unless of course there is a military deal that can be reached, throwing Palestinians under the bus and enriching Israel’s vaunted military and surveillance systems.) Is this going to be the legacy of the Jewish people in the 21st century?
-
-Israel has been credibly accused of apartheid policies by numerous well-respected human rights organizations. To criticize this state of affairs is our moral obligation as Jews and as people committed to a post-colonial, more just world. In fact, it is the only possible way to move forward, to challenge the billions in military support and political cover (see Biden and Netanyahu’s latest chat), our supine Congress, the powerful Israel lobby with its millions of Christian Zionists, the willingly blind mainstream Jewish communities. That work has nothing to do with denigrating Jewish people and institutions solely because they are Jewish, and it is manipulative and deceptive to suggest that they are one and the same.
-
-Anxious Jewish students at University of Pennsylvania could learn a lot coming to this festival. Judging from my past experiences, they will be enlightened, challenged, and inspired. They may feel uncomfortable, but they will not be endangered.
-
-Like I said, I write this with a mixture of fatigue, anger, and frustration. The more this churns in my brain, I realize I also write from a sense of deep shame for my Jewish siblings and organizations who have turned their backs on the long history of progressive Jews rooting for the underclass, workers, women, LGBTQI, and African Americans, fighting on the right side of history.
-
-Rothchild will be reading from her young adult novel, Finding Melody Sullivan, at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/the-liberated-space-of-palestine-writes.txt

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+During the second Palestine Writes Festival this past weekend in Philadelphia, two floors of Irvine Hall, a rotunda-shaped building on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus, were crowded with vendors selling keffiyehs, embroidered dresses, and bags, notebooks, shirts, jewelry, and olive oil among other things. Of course, a vast selection of books, in both Arabic and English, were piled high on tables and available for perusal and purchase. The selection was diverse in genre, from memoirs, poetry, and children’s stories to essays, novels, and translations. A singular hallway was lined with rooms that were packed with audiences rapt in silence as they witnessed, in both Arabic and English, discussions, interviews, panels, lectures, and readings.
+
+While the subject matter was vast and the speakers were from all around the world, a singular undercurrent existed that bound all of Irvine Hall together: a deep love for Palestine and an unshaken commitment to her freedom.
+
+Despite the event being met with the all-too-familiar racist, Zionist backlash in the form of false accusations of antisemitism, Palestine Writes was a beautifully moving success. Setting out to celebrate anticolonial, cultural resistance, and the long, rich, multi-faceted history of Palestine, the festival delivered a forum to confront, in the words of Edward Said, the “culture of power with the power of culture.”
+
+In her opening remarks Executive Director, Susan Abulhawa, described this weekend as a way “to help see, hear, enjoy, and appreciate the indigenous heritage of one of the most fabled and tortured places on earth.” Indeed, with over 1,400 attendees coming from Palestine and the diaspora and one hundred speakers and cultural producers working in every medium, the three-day festival elevated the immense cultural contributions coming from the small strip of land nestled between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
+
+One of the most striking aspects of the weekend was the almost immediate sense of kinship between all festival-goers. Whether illegal Israeli checkpoints, an apartheid wall that separates historic Palestine, or forced, violent displacement from our homeland, fragmentation and separation have seemingly become intrinsic to Palestinian identity. Yet, contrary to this shared trauma, those in attendance—most of whom were Palestinian—came together and forged deep connections making every introduction feel like a long-awaited reunion.
+
+A visitor to the Palestine Writes Literature Festival points to a location on a giant map of Palestine on September 23, 2023. (Photo: Joe Piette courtesy of Palestine Writes)
+
+In the middle of Irvine Hall, organizers displayed a map of Palestine. 29 feet in height and 10 feet in width, the map was populated with the original names of Palestinian villages. Children and adults crowded around it, pointing to which village they were from, finding others from the same place, and exchanging last names in the hopes that there was perhaps some shared ancestry or imagining what life in those small communities would have looked like before Israel. Unlike the oft-cited David Ben-Gurion quote that falsely assumed the “old will die and the young will forget,” Palestine Writes was a ritual of remembrance and a preservation of a beautiful history that is often victim to Zionist erasure.
+
+During the weekend, I was deeply moved by the sacredness of gathering this many of us in one space. Not only because, as someone who has never been to Palestine, it was the first time I was around this many Palestinians, but also because it was a place for all of us to engage each other and confront the politics, strategies, and means through which we would achieve our liberation.
+
+Beyond just preserving narrative histories of our stolen homeland, Palestine Writes represented a free and organic exchange of ideas that emerged out of our shared goal of Palestinian freedom. The generative nature of the event, building an intellectual community around Palestinians and accomplices, represented a profound act of resistance. Whether it was a panel on the history and significance of tatreez and Palestinian embroidery, a lecture on the production and distribution of prison literature, a colloquium on the necessity of anticolonial solidarity within the global south, or reflections on the revolutionary writings and contributions of Ghassan Kanafani, every event took seriously not just the possibility but also the necessity of a free Palestine.
+
+Palestine Writes, therefore, demonstrated the people’s ongoing refusal to be turned into static subjects of the military occupation and instead became a space in which we could reclaim our agency as creative, militant, knowledge-producing forces for Palestinian freedom.
+
+An overflowing session at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival featuring writers Isabella Hammad and Saleem Haddad on September 23, 2023. (Photo: Joe Piette courtesy of Palestine Writes)
+
+In his essay on the role of culture in Palestinian liberation, Mohammed El-Kurd questions how cultural workers, specifically those with “mobility and access…can transcend symbolic identitarian gestures.” And while there isn’t a singular answer to this question, quoting Basel al-Araj, el-Kurd reiterates that to be “an intellectual is to be engaged” (the Arabic word for “engaged” here has a much more militant connotation). Perhaps this is what made Palestine Writes such a crucial political event.
+
+El-Kurd writes, “collective struggle should be informed by the collective” and “without criticism or challenge, the dialectical relationship between the artist and the ‘street’ cannot be maintained or interrogated.” Palestine Writes revolved around engaged intellectuals, writers, and cultural producers—those whose artistic practices are only a means for liberating Palestine—often running parallel to other forms of organizing. With over one thousand Palestinians present, ideas around our identity, oppression, and strategies against occupation were exchanged, debated, critiqued, reshaped, and rearticulated. It is precisely this engagement and the space we took to foster and tend to the Palestinian-led liberation movement that made Palestine Writes so powerful and what made it such a threat to Israel and its Zionist supporters.
+
+In August 1967, Israel illegitimately institutionalized Military Order 101, denying Palestinians the right to free assembly by criminalizing unpermitted political gatherings of more than ten people. Unsurprisingly, Israeli-issued permits for protests against Israel are incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. 56 years later, and still Palestinians cannot gather, cannot raise their flag, and are criminalized for any way they choose to struggle. Although this order only applies in the occupied territory, the backlash to the festival represents how these strictures are often enforced against Palestinians worldwide—those of us who struggle to find the space and opportunity for political community. Palestine Writes was a threat to Zionists just by virtue of uncompromisingly gathering Palestinians from all around the world to talk about our shared condition and freedom dreams.
+
+The festival provided a liberated space for Palestinians to speak freely on their condition. No time was wasted on defending our humanity and right to live with dignity, and no one (during the conference at least) had to apologize or be held to account for fabricated accusations of antisemitism from Zionist discontents. Coming into the space together with a shared understanding of the crises that face us allowed us to reflect on where the movement stands, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and where it goes from here.
+
+A gathering of Palestinians as intimate as this one doesn’t come often. Elders and ‘48 survivors, academics and intellectuals, young activists and thinkers, children and siblings, filmmakers and journalists and artists and poets and writers and tailors and cultural producers of all kinds congregating, collaborating, and connecting was a powerful show of solidarity and a culmination of a long, arduous, continuing struggle against Israeli occupation.
+
+While Zionists may be convinced that the festival was designed to spew hate, anyone in attendance would know that it was unequivocally one of the most beautiful displays of love, not just for a land and her history, but for her people and their future.
+
+Nicki KattouraNicki Kattoura is a Palestinian writer and editor based in Philadelphia.

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/the-shift-biden-grants-israel-a-visa-waiver-and-netanyahu-a-major-win.txt

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+Israel has been lobbying for entry into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP) for two decades. Under the VWP participating countries are allowed to travel to the U.S. for 90 days or less without having to obtain a visa.
+
+Israel’s chances always felt slim. Their visa applications are generally rejected at higher rate than the VWP requirement and the entire system is ostensibly based on the principle of reciprocity. In other words, countries need to allow visa-free travel to American citizens or nationals for their residents to receive the same treatment.
+
+Israel infamously restricts travel for Palestinians and this includes Palestinian-Americans. Even the Trump administration thought Israel’s policies were too draconian to warrant a waiver. “The administration in Washington continues to be concerned about the unequal treatments given to US Muslims at entry points and checkpoints,” said a State Department spokesperson in 2017. “We regularly raise the issue of equal treatment of all US citizens at entry points to Israel with the authorities in Israel.”
+
+However, travel dipping at the height of the pandemic meant visa rejection rates also dropped. This afforded Israel a window of opportunity and they negotiated with the U.S. on the issue for over two years. In July they launched a pilot program that allegedly loosened restrictions on Palestinian-Americans, but critics warned that major issues remained and that the country still didn’t meet the qualifications for VWP entry. For example, Palestinian-Americans in Gaza still had to obtain a permit to leave the area and Palestinian-Americans living in the West Bank still needed one to take a flight out of Israel’s airport.
+
+“This pilot program appears to be an effort by the Biden Administration to bring Israel into the Visa Waiver Program without requiring it to end its systematic profiling and discrimination against Palestinian Americans,” Foundation for Middle East Peace President Lara Friedman told me at the time. “This effort strips the term ‘reciprocity’ of all meaning, gives a U.S. kosher stamp to foreign governments engaging in blatant racism against Americans, and demonstrates yet again that the rule of U.S.-Israel relations – regardless of which party is in the White House, and even when talking about the welfare and rights of American citizens – is zero accountability.”
+
+Many expressed these concerns to The White House. A group of more than 30 community leaders, representing thousands of Palestinian and Arab Americans, met with Homeland Security officials. 50 community organizations sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. A group of Democratic Senators sent Blinken a letter. “We appreciate the Administration’s stated position that, in order to be eligible for the Visa Waiver Program, Israel must meet the requirements of reciprocity and equal treatment for all U.S. citizen travelers to Israel and/or the West Bank,” it read. “To date, however, we have seen no statements from the Government of Israel regarding actions or intentions to change current practices and policies that negatively impact U.S. citizens on the basis of their religion, national origin, or ethnicity, especially in the case of Palestinian-Americans or Arab Americans.”
+
+In the end, Biden was unmoved. This week The White House announced that Israel’s inclusion was official. “Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Program represents a critical step forward in our strategic partnership with Israel that will further strengthen long-standing people-to-people engagement, economic cooperation, and security coordination between our two countries,” said Blinken. “This important achievement will enhance freedom of movement for U.S. citizens, including those living in the Palestinian Territories or traveling to and from them.”
+
+“In the last two years, AJP Action and many other organizations have met with the Department of Homeland Security, in which they would continuously reaffirm how the requirements of the visa waiver program are strict and cannot be bent, confirming that Israel had yet to meet full reciprocity,” AJP Action Advocacy Director Ayah Ziyadeh told me. “Reciprocity is the cornerstone of entry into the VWP. Admitting Israel into the program after only a month-and-a-half-long trial after decades of discrimination, occupation, and apartheid is irresponsible. The trial itself proved that Israel has yet to meet reciprocity with its continued discrimination against Palestinian Americans. This is another reminder that the United States would rather continue to compromise our national security and quote-un-quote principles to please a government (Israel) that has shown time and time again that it does not respect the U.S. nor is it afraid to break international law.”
+
+“We learned from the civil rights movement the fallacy of ‘separate but equal.’ Today we are obligated to reject Israel’s inclusion into the Visa Waiver Program because separate is never equal,” said US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid in a statement. “Palestinian Americans’ tax dollars are just as green, our passports are just as blue, and our rights are just as precious as any other American.”
+
+In addition to the obvious issue of discrimination, Biden’s move also delivers a massive PR win to a Netanyahu government that’s faced widespread protest at home and abroad. The mainstream media often frames Biden’s relationship with the Israeli Prime Minister as frayed, but what else could he ask for? A Democratic administration has granted him entry into the VWP and is working to finalize a normalization deal between his country and Saudi Arabia.
+
+Last week Netanyahu told the UN that we are on the “cusp” of a “new Middle East” before taking out a map with Palestine erased. If he’s feeling emboldened, who can blame him?
+
+Menendez and the Israel Lobby
+
+The scandal surrounding Bob Menendez has quickly grown so cartoonishly severe that multiple Democratic lawmakers are calling for his resignation.
+
+The indicted New Jersey Senator has also not exactly put forward the most reassuring defense. He claims he adopted the “old-fashioned” habit of stashing huge amounts of cash around his house because his family had their money confiscated in Cuba. One assumes he’s trying to blame this on Castro, as he’s spent his entire congressional career attempting to cripple the island via severe sanctions and a criminal blockade. However, he was born in New York years before the revolution.
+
+Menendez has earned his reputation as one of the Israel Lobby’s favorite Democrats. He opposed the Iran Deal, supports the Taylor Force Act, cosponsored anti-BDS legislation, and backed moving the embassy to Jerusalem. If he ends up finally facing repercussions for his actions, will there be implications on the Israel front?
+
+Last week Chuck Schumer announced that Menendez would step down as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC). He will be replaced by fellow Israel hawk Ben Cardin (D-MD), but Cardin plans to retire next year.
+
+Mitchell Plitnick has a good piece breaking down particulars and possibilities at the site. He notes that there could be some welcomed changes, even if Menendez somehow wriggles out of yet another controversy.
+
+“Even if Menedez manages to beat the rap again, the stench of this accusation is very likely to hang over his re-election campaign next year,” Plitnick writes. “In 2018, the last time he ran, there were years between his indictment and the election, and the story had fallen from the headlines by the time his trial ended. Now, there will be mere months. Doubtless, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy—who has already called on Menendez to resign—relishes the idea of putting his own stamp on the Senate race in 2024 by appointing an interim replacement for Menendez, but this is unlikely to change much as Murphy is known as being staunchly pro-Israel as well.
+
+“But if the SFRC loses both Cardin and Menendez, it would create an opening for Palestine advocates to press for more influence with the committee,” he continues. “People like Van Hollen, Merkley, and Murphy will all be receptive to a point, especially with Israel’s current far-right government, and they’ll all be more senior members of the committee with the two hawks at the top gone if they retain their seats on the committee.”
+
+At Jewish Insider Marc Rod notes that the situation could interrupt the timeline for Jack Lew’s nomination and “creates new questions about major issues that could come before the committee, such as votes around a trilateral deal involving the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israel or renewed efforts to finalize a nuclear deal with Iran.”
+
+Many individuals and groups are distancing themselves from Menendez, but at least a couple are notably holding out. Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) put out a statement noting that the Senator has been a “champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship” and that he deserves a fair trial. AIPAC also praised Menendez’s work on Israel and said they weren’t bailing yet.
+
+A true friend is someone who will stand by you when you’re in trouble after all.
+
+Odds & Ends
+
+????????   At UN Netanyahu says Israel is at ‘cusp’ of Saudi deal, brandishes map that erases Palestine’
+
+????????   ‘Palestinian Americans are now tourists in their own land’–Human Rights Watch program director Sari Bashi in The Hill:
+
+Imagine what positive changes could be possible if the U.S. government were to heed calls to suspend its $3.8 billion annual military support to Israel, so long as the Israeli authorities continue discriminatory policies and practices that human rights organizations, legal experts and even some mainstream Israeli scholars have concluded amount to apartheid.
+
+The U.S. has all this leverage. It should use that leverage to pressure Israeli authorities to respect the right of Palestinians like my children’s grandmother to travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank, and to enter Israel not as tourists, but as refugees returning home.
+
+⚖️    The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over Israel’s entry into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP).
+
+“The requirements of the Visa Waiver Program are clear and unambiguous. The U.S. government is obligated to ensure that all Americans are treated equally,” said ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub in a statement. “It is our intent to hold the US government accountable for any actions that create separate classes of US citizens. Admitting Israel into the Visa Waiver Program would be an endorsement of discrimination against Palestinian and Arab Americans.”
+
+????️   CNN runs an op-ed from ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt asking when colleges will finally stand up to antisemitism. The piece cites a recent ADL study which claims anti-Zionist activism has doubled at universities over the past year. What does this have to with antisemitism exactly?
+
+“To be sure, criticism and debate over the policies of the State of Israel, just like criticism of the policies and actions of any country, is part of a healthy campus ecosystem,” writes Greenblatt. “The First Amendment protects the right to boycott, as well as the right to engage in harsh and divisive rhetoric. Undoubtedly, one can criticize Israel’s leaders and actions without being antisemitic. But too often, campus anti-Israel activity goes far beyond these bounds.”
+
+Greenblatt often trots out this refrain, but he very rarely indicates what kind of Israel criticism is actually acceptable. Makes you think.
+
+????????  Reactions to the visa waiver news:
+
+USCPR Manager of Policy and Advocacy Campaigns Mohammed Khader: ““The Biden Administration’s designation of Israel to be admitted into the Visa Waiver Program is a heinous lapse of oversight that relegates U.S. law below Israeli law and exchanges the rights of U.S. citizens for closer ties with an apartheid state that arms authoritarian governments abroad. Lawmakers must ensure all snapback measures are triggered toward Israel, as it continues to show a clear and consistent pattern of unequal treatment of U.S. citizens in violation of U.S. law.”
+
+Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) National Director Nihad Awad: “It is clear that Israel is not currently in compliance with the Visa Waiver Program admission requirements, and the Biden administration must not rush to admit Israel into the program at the expense of the requirement of reciprocity for all U.S. citizens. CAIR and human rights organizations strongly urge Secretary Blinken and the Biden administration to heed the concerns raised by Palestinian and Muslim Americans and to deny Israel’s admission into the Visa Waiver Program until it can fully comply with all of the requirements and not harass and discriminate against American travelers.”
+
+Representative Rashida Tlaib (MI-12): “The Biden Administration’s decision to admit Israel into the Visa Waiver Program explicitly condones and enables the Israeli government’s discriminatory practices towards Americans requesting entry, including hours of detainment and interrogation.
+
+The far-right Israeli government routinely discriminates against Americans seeking to enter the country, even denying myself and Congresswoman Omar entry in 2019. This decision enables further racist practices and violence towards Americans including the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh. The United States has yet to hold the Israeli government accountable.
+
+The Visa Waiver Program requires that all U.S. citizens are treated equally. I have received consistent reports of discrimination of Americans attempting to enter Israel. No one should be discriminated against due to their national origin, ethnicity, or faith.
+
+By moving forward with this decision, the U.S. government is allowing a foreign government to discriminate against its own citizens based on protected class. The Israeli government has not and will not uphold reciprocity.”
+
+JVP Action Political Director Beth Miller: “The Biden administration just endorsed the systematic discrimination of US citizens of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim descent. And handed a massive victory to the most extremist and racist government in Israeli history.”
+
+FMEP President Lara Friedman: “The US violating its own rules to admit Israel into the Visa Waiver program is just the latest in a US policy that has for decades centered on guaranteeing Israeli impunity while lavishly rewarding it for thumbing its nose at US policy and international law.”
+
+Adalah Justice Project Executive Director Sandra Tamari: “”It is shameful that the U.S. continues to grant Israel not only unfettered impunity for violations of international law and human rights abuses, but also rewards it for its discriminatory policies. The U.S. has admitted Israel into the visa waiver program despite Israel’s continued discrimination against U.S. citizens who are Palestinian. Israel’s discrimination is especially egregious against Palestinian Americans with ties to Gaza, making reunification of families torn apart by Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza near impossible. Apartheid is not only Israeli policy, it is U.S. policy too.”
+
+✉️    From Palestine Legal:
+
+On Wednesday, Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote to the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) warning them to cease attempts to unlawfully censor the upcoming Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) convening, “Battling the ‘IHRA definition’: Theory & Activism”, which is set to be jointly held at UCSC and New York University (NYU) on October 13th and 14th. The convening is a working meeting of the Institute’s community of scholars and activists, aimed at combating dangerous efforts to use a distorted definition of antisemitism to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights. On September 5th (in a statement updated September 8), UCSC criticized the convening following smears from right-wing media outlets and Israel lobby groups.”
+
+????️   ‘Netanyahu erases Palestine in maps new and old’
+
+????  ‘Saudi-Israel normalisation: The grand illusion’
+
+????  ‘Oslo after thirty: A paradigm beyond partition’
+
+????️ On the podcast I interviewed journalist Antony Loewenstein about his book “The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.”
+
+Stay safe out there,
+
+Michael

mondoweiss/website/2023/09/un-committee-releases-exhaustive-study-on-the-legality-of-israels-occupation.txt

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-Last week, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) issued a study two years in the making: The Legality of the Israeli Occupation of the Occupied Territories, Including East Jerusalem.
-
-Committee Chair Ambassador Cheikh Niang introduced the study commissioned by the CEIRPP and prepared by the Irish Human Rights Centre of the National University of Ireland in Galway. Niang said, “The relevance and urgency of this study cannot be overstated… It is incumbent upon us, the international community, to deepen our understanding of the legal issues raised by this prolonged occupation and its profound impact on human rights, peace, and stability in the region.”
-
-At the invitation of the UN committee, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Michael Lynk reflected on the study. He highlighted many of its findings and described it as “the most comprehensive, the most detailed, the most thorough documentation addressing the questions that the UN General Assembly has put before the International Court of Justice regarding its advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s now over 56-year occupation of Palestine.”
-
-The 106-page report is an exhaustive study (with over 700 footnotes) concluding that the conduct of Israel meets “two clear grounds in international law establishing when a belligerent occupation may be categorized as illegal.” [A belligerent occupation, the term most often used in international law, is more commonly called a military occupation and is defined as the military control by a ruling power over a territory outside of that power’s sovereign territory.]
-
-The study takes the reader into the weeds of international law: definitions; the points at which an occupation allowed under international law can be considered an illegal occupation; related cases settled before the International Court of Justice (ICJ); an examination—and refutation—of Israel’s policies and positions regarding its administration of the Palestinian territory; a presentation of the evidence that the belligerent occupation has become illegal; and an examination of the responsibility—under international law—for the international community to act to bring an end to the occupation.
-
-Still, the legal study is accessible to lay readers. Those well-informed about the ongoing situation in Palestine/Israel will add to their understanding through the many resources and findings uncovered by the study.
-
-While it acknowledges that “the most appropriate forum for examining the legality of the occupation is the International Court of Justice,” the study, as it says, “provides the factual basis to support the finding that Israel’s occupation is illegal.”
-
-Following a finding of illegality, the study concludes that, according to international law,
-
-the consequences should be the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal of Israel’s military forces; the withdrawal of colonial settlers; and the dismantling of the military administrative regime, with clear instructions that withdrawal of breach of an internationally wrongful act is not subject to negotiation. Full and commensurate reparations should be accorded to the affected Palestinian individuals, corporations and entities for the generational harm caused by Israel’s land and property appropriations, house demolitions, pillage of natural resources, denial of return, and other war crimes against humanity orchestrated for the colonialist, annexationists aims of an illegal occupant.
-
-Arguments are expected to be heard in The Hague by the ICJ next spring on the legality of the Israel occupation and the legal consequences incumbent on the international community.
-
-Mondoweiss interviewed now-retired Professor Lynk by phone following the committee meeting.
-
-Mondoweiss: How did the study come about, why the Irish Centre for Human Rights?
-
-Michel Lynk: The Idea for the study came through the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights. They saw the need for a wide-ranging study, both for public education and to advance the diplomatic steps for Palestinian self-determination.
-
-Michael Lynk briefs reporters at UN headquarters in New York on October 26, 2017. (Photo: UN)
-
-For many reasons, it made sense to approach the Irish Centre. One, because Ireland, among all the European states, has taken a very good position with respect to the wrongs associated with the occupation. Two, the Centre has produced a number of legal scholars who have gone on to write a lot about Palestine. Many wound up working with organizations in Palestine and Israel on questions related to the occupation and international law. So, the Centre had the inclination, the understanding of the occupation, and the legal expertise to be able to do the study.
-
-Let me say, I’m someone who is deeply invested in reading about international law and Palestine. Still, I learned a huge amount from the study. There are many sources, and many resolutions, and many, many arguments that I was not familiar with. It’s groundbreaking. It will be the intellectual and political touchstone on Palestine and international law for some time to come.”
-
-What are some of the important features of the study?
-
-The view in much of the Global North—in the U.S. and Canada and many European countries—is, “Yes, there may be illegalities or illegitimate actions by Israeli in the conduct of the occupation: the settlements, the annexation of East Jerusalem, the Wall.” But overall, these countries have always assumed that the occupation is legal. They say, “We’re just waiting for the right diplomatic… the right magic sauce to get the parties together to negotiate an end to this.”
-
-The study says that there are not only significant illegalities attached to the occupation, but the occupation itself is now illegal….
-
-All you have to do is listen to the commentary of recent Israeli leaders to understand that the occupation is not going to end by the grace of Israel. Naftali Bennett, when he was Prime Minister two years ago, said, “I oppose a Palestinian state and I am making it impossible to conduct diplomatic negotiations that might lead to a Palestinian state.” Benjamin Netanyahu has said—and I’m paraphrasing, “The most we’re going to offer Palestinians is a State-minus. That is, they have the power to collect their garbage, clean their streets and run their water service. Otherwise, we control the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.”
-
-What do you hope will be the study’s impact?
-
-It should be a landmark in diplomatic thinking about how to confront, how to end the Israeli occupation, the stated goal of every state in the world, aside from Israel. If the occupation itself is illegal, this raises the bar of responsibility on the international community, particularly the Global North, for finally accepting that the occupation will not end by itself. It’s not going to end by repeating the mantra of “negotiations for a two-state solution,” when nothing is being done by the Global North to impose a diplomatic… an economic cost on Israel for doing everything it can to write the obituary for Palestinian self-determination.
-
-The hearing that will come before the ICJ, what practical, concrete end can we anticipate?
-
-In December last year, the UN adopted a resolution asking the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on a number of issues—whether the prolonged occupation is still legal, what are the legal consequences arising from Israel’s adoption of related discriminatory measures, what are the legal consequences for the international community and the United Nations. You’ll remember that the ICJ is the highest judicial body in the UN system. In 2004, it delivered an advisory opinion which determined that Israel’s separation wall was illegal.
-
-Now, a number of countries—primarily from the Global South—have delivered written statements to the ICJ, arguing that the occupation has become illegal, that it must end immediately. Some have argued that Israel has violated fundamental norms of international law by instituting apartheid. Just a handful of states—including the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom and Canada—have submitted statements asking the ICJ not to grant the request by the General Assembly for an advisory opinion, arguing that everything should be settled at a negotiating table instead.
-
-…The only way that the Palestinians can ever hope to bargain effectively at a negotiating table is if the international community insists that any negotiations between Israel and Palestine be conducted entirely within a rights-based framework, with the central demand that Israel end the occupation completely, immediately and unconditionally. And that Israel is responsible for reparations to Palestinians for what’s happened over the last many decades.
-
-Any personal reflections on your work?
-
-I consider it the honor of my life to have served as the UN Special Rapporteur for the six years [2016-2022]. Before my appointment, I had done a fair amount of work on Palestine and Israel, I had lived in the occupied territory and worked at the UN, I had read widely on Palestine. But the opportunity as Special Rapporteur to speak on the international stage about the deteriorating state of human rights, to meet the very brave Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations that did stellar work on this issue, it’s been the most meaningful experience of my legal career.
-
-I’ll add this: Those six years marked an important turning point. All of a sudden, you could begin to see the titanic change in direction. It was blasphemous in 2016 to state the word apartheid. By the time I left in 2022, the word apartheid had been adopted by every major international and regional human rights organization to describe what was going on in the occupied territory… plus that which happened after my time: the arrival of this new extreme Israeli government, the hardening of the international attitude towards the occupation. I think international attitudes are changing, changing rapidly. They wouldn’t have changed without all these human rights organizations on the ground in Palestine and Israel who did such heroic work to change the vocabulary, to change the understanding about what is going on.

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+Key Developments (September 26-29)
+
+Israeli forces conducted raids across the West Bank this week, arresting and injuring dozens of Palestinians. On Tuesday September 26th, Israeli forces arrested three Palestinians from the Ramallah-area town of Silwad. According to local reports, the three men had recently been arrested by the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) and were arrested by Israel shortly after being released from PA jails.
+
+On Wednesday September 27th, armed confrontations broke out as the Israeli army invaded Tubas in the northern Jordan Valley. The Tubas Brigade said its fires engaged in “heavy confrontations” with the army. Two Palestinians were reportedly arrested, and were identified by local media as  Palestinians, Majd Abu Siyaj and Amjad Daraghmeh. In the city of Tulkarem, in the northwestern West Bank, the Tulkarem brigade said its fighters targeted Israeli special forces with gunfire after the forces “infiltrated” the Nur Shams refugee camp.
+
+On Thursday September 28th armed clashes broke out during an Israeli raid on the Nablus-area Balata refugee camp, with local reports indicating the deployment of an Israeli suicide drone, which reportedly exploded in the sky over the camp. Earlier this month two Palestinian fighters were assassinated in the Jenin refugee camp with an Israeli military “suicide drone”. During the raid on Nablus at least three Palestinians were arrested, including one from the Balata refugee camp. Confrontations were also reported in the town of Yabas, Jenin, with local media reporting dozens of cases of suffocation after Israeli forces used tear gas, among other weapons, to target the community during the raid. At least two Palestinians were shot and injured with live ammunition during confrontations that broke out in the town of Beit Ummar.
+
+On Friday, September 29th, a Palestinian was shot and critically injured in the eye with a rubber-coated steel bullet fired by Israeli forces during a military raid on the Qalandia refugee camp in the central West Bank. Another Palestinian was injured when Israeli forces opened fire on a car near the Ramallah-area town of al-Bireh. Israeli forces also arrested three Palestinians, including a 17-year-old during a raid on the Jericho-area town of al-Auja.
+
+Over a dozen operations carried out by resistance groups and individual actors were reported this week in the West Bank. On Tuesday, September 26th, Palestinian fighters claimed responsibility for opening fire on the Salem checkpoint in the Jenin area, the Ramallah-area illegal Shiloh settlement, the Shweika, Avnei Heretz, and Nitzanei Oz checkpoints in Tulkarem, and the Hamra checkpoint in the Jordan Valley. Fighters also planted an explosive device near a military tower in the Hebron-area town of Beit Ummar, which has been witnessing increased confrontations and armed resistance activity in recent weeks. Over the course of the rest of the week, the following operations were also reported: resistance fighters opened fire on the Taybeh military checkpoint near Tulkarem; Molotov cocktails were thrown toward an Israeli military tower in Qalqiliya; fighters opened fire towards the Huwwara military checkpoint; fighters opened fire towards the Merav settlement.
+
+The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said in a statement that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) was “obstructing lawyer visits” to hunger-striking prisoner Kayed al-Fasfous. On September 28th, Fasfous marked his 56th day on hunger strike to protest his administrative detention. That day, Israeli forces transferred him from the Asqalan prison to the infamous Ramle prison clinic, which is notorious for its practices of medical neglect against sick and hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners. Hunger-striking prisoner Khader Adnan died in the Ramleh prison clinic earlier this year in May, while Nasser Abu Hmeid, a Palestinian prisoner with cancer, died in the same clinic in December 2022. PPS said in a statement that it was concerned over “significant escalating risks to his [Fasfous’] life,” and warned that tactics being used against Fasfous are similar to that of Khader Adnan’s case.
+
+Fasfous was arrested and placed under administrative detention in May. This is his third hunger strike, including a 131-day long strike in 2021. He has four brothers who are also currently in administrative detention. Fasfous, like many prisoners who are subjected to Israel’s arbitrary arrest and detention system, has been in prison on and off for seven years since 2007. This week,prisoners in the Naqab prison collectively began refusing meals in solidarity with Fasfous.
+
+Important Figures:

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-21 VOICES FROM ISRAEL AND SOUTH AFRICAWhy the Palestinian Struggle Mattersby Marthie Momberg526 pp. Naledi Publishers
-
-Following her time serving in Palestine as a volunteer ecumenical accompanier through the World Council of Churches, scholar/activist Marthie Momberg returned to her home in South Africa curious about what motivates non-Palestinians—“almost always at their own expense and in the face of great social resistance,” she writes—to support the movement for Palestinian freedom.
-
-Momberg found a dearth of information about the ethical orientation of non-Palestinian activists and what moved these activists to become involved along with their personal experiences. Her personal and academic curiosity led to her qualitative study at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape province of South Africa, the fruit of which is recorded in her book, 21 Voices from Israel and South Africa: Why the Palestinian Struggle Matters.
-
-Those who share her curiosity, especially activists involved in any local or global struggle for human rights, will benefit from consuming the first-person accounts recorded in 21 Voices. Momberg chose to use pseudonyms for all the interviewees to protect the few whose work exposes them to greater risk. Still, those who have committed themselves to the struggle in Palestine will recognize many of the prominent leaders of well-known non-Palestinian organizations that have taken up the cause—filmmakers, academics, parents, ex-IDF, religious leaders and others.
-
-While readers may wish that Momberg had reached out to activists beyond South Africa and Israel, the 21 interviews (ten South Africans, ten Israelis, and one with dual citizenship) reflect the range of motivations, self-doubts, and profound sense of meaning and purpose as well as the attacks and other costs that activists for justice around the globe experience when they stand up and act publicly.
-
-Some readers will be moved to tears. All will experience a renewed sense of community. Many will read the interviews more than once.
-
-21 Voices begins with a foreword by Nora Carmi, a leading Palestinian Christian activist, and a preface in which white South African Christian Momberg recounts her experiences in Palestine and her resulting “shift from passive oppressor to scholar-activist.” The book, available in softcover and electronically, includes the rationale for her research, a list of common myths regarding the situation, extensive endnotes, a detailed index, and explanations of often-used terms.
-
-The interviews—printed in their entirety—take center stage in the book.
-
-Momberg begins each interview—conducted in person or online—by asking what led each (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist, spiritual, humanist, and other) to become involved and eventually take a public role in advocacy for Palestinians. The answers are as diverse as the interviewees.
-
-“Noam” (his pseudonym) is a Jewish Israeli living in Israel. He tells Momberg, “I am in the Palestinian struggle not for the sake of the Palestinians, but to save the Israeli Jews from themselves. It comes from the fact that my father was a Holocaust survivor.”  He says, “For me, the crux is that we as Jewish people, with our Jewish ethical values, who were made an example of suffering on the earth, cannot allow that this now happens to others.”
-
-“Nasir” is a South African raised in an Islamic culture, who grew up in the 70s and was jailed at age 16 for anti-apartheid activities. He speaks of his former involvement in the Black Consciousness Movement when black South Africans recognized similar dynamics at work in the Palestinian and South African struggles against state violence and oppression. “We were very clear that while we were fighting for our freedom and liberation, it was part of the global struggle of other people who were also fighting for theirs.”
-
-He says, “We saw the armed struggle as the only way… To see Leila Khaled as a black woman, as an Arab woman and as a Muslim woman with all the stereotypes that existed, take up a gun and fight her oppressors, is something that appealed to us.” Rejecting violence now, Nasir is thoroughly committed to creative nonviolence, as are all the interviewees. But speaking frankly and from his own experience, Nasir says, “It would be hypocritical to rail against the Palestinians because of their armed struggle, particularly when they often don’t see any way out….”
-
-“Hanna”, a Jewish Israeli, was jailed for her refusal to serve in the IDF, as were other Israeli interviewees. She signed her refusal letter at age 15, three years before she would have been enlisted. Hanna describes how her focus now is on “the economic side of things… [People] generally don’t know about the military-industrial complex that is linked to the occupation. It’s also part of a much bigger conversation that takes you out of Israel-Palestine. If you follow the money and the ammunition, you find yourself in South Sudan and then in Eritrea, with Israeli weapons….”
-
-Like Hanna, most of the interviewees point to the interconnectedness of the many global struggles for human rights.
-
-“Mpho”, a South African Christian, was introduced to the occupation on his second visit to the area. He points to his passing through Israeli checkpoints: “The terror that goes through me remembering what it used to be like when I went through roadblocks in South Africa is indescribable… to be at the mercy of a young [Israeli] soldier re-traumatized me.” Mpho cites his faith as a second reason for his activism. “There is a travesty of the Gospel that needs to be corrected,” he says, “and it is for me almost a missiological task. Unless we uncover the true face of Christianity in and for that region, it seems as if we can’t make sense of it anywhere else.”
-
-One of the most moving interviews was conducted with “Gideon”, who, with friends, organized the 2003 Pilots Letter signed by 27 reserve Israeli air force pilots, declaring, ”We refuse to participate in air force attacks on civilian populations.” He says, “One of the things that happened to me personally is the realization that the organization I’m part of, the Israeli air force, was involved in the killing of innocents.”
-
-“To realize this,” he says, “even if it’s something that you don’t do personally because I was flying helicopters that mostly did rescue missions [of injured Israelis]… this is something that penetrates through all the layers of justifications, rationalisations, compartmentalisations. It just… it brought me to a crisis, to an emotional crisis.”
-
-In describing how, as he says, “the ‘they’ became a part of ‘me’,” Gideon tells of participating in a workshop with Palestinians his age:
-
-What happened is that the guy next to me, the Palestinian guy I told you about, mentioned that his younger sister was paralysed by a helicopter missile that hit their neighbor’s house. Then came my turn to say, I’m a pilot and I want peace and stuff like that—and I couldn’t utter the word ‘pilot’. It was suddenly clear to me that something very, very strong, a big part of my identity, is connected to horrible, evil things that happened to his siter. You make this connection suddenly, that for some people it doesn’t matter that you want peace and are against the occupation. You are an air force pilot and you are flying a helicopter.  And another helicopter just like yours hit the house of my neighbor and almost killed my sister.”
-
-The interviews were conducted in 2015. In a Zoom conversation, I asked Momberg—who serves now as research fellow at Stellenbosch University and as postdoctoral researcher at Nelson Mandela University—what changes/developments over the eight years might have led to different responses on the part of those she interviewed. “I actually wrote to all,” she said, “asking if things have shifted for them, if they would see things from a different angle, anything they would want to change. They replied, ‘no.’” The activists agreed: things have worsened, but the dynamics remain the same, the issues are timeless.
-
-In describing his 2004 participation at a forum in London—where he shared the stage with two Palestinians and another Israeli activist—“Gideon” speaks of a deep satisfaction that, in one way or another, many the interviewees experienced along the way,
-
-While I stood there on the platform and talked about my beliefs… the way I saw myself in respect to the world totally shifted… that experience made me feel that my belonging shifted to something that is so much bigger than the circle of activists in Israel. There are many, many other struggles that are happening parallel to this struggle [in Israel/Palestine]… It was just a sudden realisation that so many people from all over the world care about these things… they care about the refugees in their own countries and the gap between rich and poor in their communities. These are the people I love. I’m going to be connected to them; I want to be their friend, and now I can be their friend because I made a few decisions that put me on the side that I now perceive to be the solution and not the problem.
-
-As author Momberg said in our conversation, “The ‘cause is life, really,’ as I think Rachel [a Jewish Israeli interviewee] phrases it. The book, Momberg said, “is about life and love and how to become more fully human.”
-
-21 Voices can be ordered as an e-book ($15.85) or in softcover ($27 plus delivery) from tertia@naledi.co.za.

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+I am often asked, in interviews and on university campuses, what role I think literature plays in the Palestinian liberation movement. And though the question itself isn’t subversive, it certainly feels that way: What is the role of literature? Who does it serve, here, in the English-speaking world, in fancy hotel lobbies and Ivy League auditoriums, planets away from the makeshift rifles of the refugee camps? It’s hard to say. It’s hard to imagine what a poem can do in the barrel of a gun.
+
+Usually, I would offer my standard anecdote: Rashid Hussein wrote his sardonic poem, God Is A Refugee, in protest of the 1960 Israeli “Land Law,” which prohibits the selling or transfer of “state-owned” lands (as in 93% of all lands seized in 1948), and the 1950 “Absentee Property Law” which allowed the Israeli government to arrogate the properties of Palestinian refugees dispossessed during the Nakba. His poem not only documented Zionist land theft but it helped catalyze the farmers and landowners toward launching a general strike….” I provide the easy answers: artists raise awareness globally and fuel the masses locally. But sometimes, I’m tempted to say otherwise. I’m tempted to say that it’s all smoke and mirrors, that after all of the poems and essays and speeches, there is not a dent in the status quo.
+
+It’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist that temptation. The more I’m accoladed with adjectives and platitudes for my writing, the more I’m reminded that such accolades are oversized and meaningless, especially as others receive no such recognition having suffered—and continue to suffer—behind bars and in hospital beds, having sacrificed their limbs or their lives even. And especially as the perfunctory “existence is resistance” sentiment remains en vogue (this is not to be confused with Existence is Resistance the organization). Make no mistake, Mahfoutha Shtayyeh’s existence, as she clings onto her olive trees in the face of bulldozers, is resistance. The existence of Palestinians confronting expulsion in Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, and Masafer Yatta, confronting erasure in Lebanon’s refugee camps, etcetera, is resistance. But what about those of us who have more mobility and access? How can our contributions transcend symbolic identitarian gestures? Again, it’s hard to imagine what a poem can do in the barrel of a gun.
+
+Guilt is the obvious response here, but guilt is dormant; it’s far more productive to talk about obligation. In particular, the obligation attached to being artists and knowledge producers in the public sphere. I am often reminded of the late Basel Al-Araj’s words, “If you want to be an intellectual, you have to be engaged,”—though I am inclined to argue the Arabic word for ‘engaged’, mushtabik, carries much more militant connotations—“If you don’t want to be engaged, if you don’t want to confront oppression, your role as an intellectual is pointless.”
+
+For the past few months, I’ve been dragging my friends into enervating debates about my dilemma. What is the role of cultural production in a liberation struggle, in our liberation struggle to be exact? A friend of mine, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement, told me that “art cannot exist for art’s sake,” that it must serve a greater purpose in the struggle. Another friend—a singer—argued that artists are more effective when they tackle individualized narratives rather than what he called “the abstracted slogans of the cause.” Others pointed to some of the great poets and writers who crafted the discourse that I regurgitate today, and asked how I can be a cynic and a parrot at the same time.
+
+One of those names is, of course, Ghassan Kanafani, who not only exemplified what it means to be an “engaged intellectual,” but also intimately understood  how our enemies have never ceased weaponizing the arts as “a crucial and indivisible part of [their] movement.” In On Zionist Literature, his 1967 book which was recently translated to English, he writes, “Political Zionism employed [literature] extensively not only for its propaganda efforts but for its political and military campaigns as well.”
+
+Though all of my friends seemed to believe that art and culture do play an intrinsic role—all except one friend who believes in the rifle and nothing but the rifle—none agreed on the nature of that role or how it should manifest systemically. Our debates have led to no consensus. And they were enervating, not invigorating, because, beyond the easy answers (awareness, fuel, etcetera), stubborn follow-up questions prevailed: Should artists be beholden to national or cultural institutions (what institutions?) that govern their artistic practice? Who, against the backdrop of a civil society wounded by criminalization, corruption, and scant resources, can provide the tools necessary for a revolutionary renaissance? Am I undermining artistic freedom should I suggest that artists are assets of our struggle? Who, in the absence of political leadership, has the authority to answer these questions?
+
+I’m aware that I don’t have the expertise to solve the questions above—which have been posed by many before me, many times—nor will I attempt to do so in this short essay. I am merely interested in the idea of the artist’s obligation, and how that obligation can be harnessed.
+
+When I met with Jeremy Corbyn last April in London, I wanted him to talk to me about sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions. Instead, I was surprised to hear him speak about the promises of my generation, the young Palestinians who sing and write poems and make films, who, to him, seemed to be the inevitable future of Palestinian advocacy. He insinuated that there is an inherently messianic quality to cultural production, echoing, perhaps unwittingly, the notion that “the Third Intifada will be a cultural one,” a quote often attributed to Juliano Mer Khamis, who founded the Jenin Freedom Theatre with jailbreaker and former al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades leader Zakaria Zubeidi and other activists. I find this view to be romantic and reductive for reasons I’ve stated earlier. However, if there were indeed an angel in the marble, it would not carve itself out without assistance. A so-called cultural intifada isn’t going to come about haphazardly, not without a mammoth infrastructure and enormous organizational backing.
+
+Obligation, for me, is a placeholder for the institution. As a writer with a public platform, I should at least acquire a political education and preferably seek political counsel if I am going to deal with Palestine in my work. I’m not suggesting that our contributions must necessarily be didactic or militant. Nor am I calling for state-regulated patronage to be instituted in our beloved, dysfunctional State of Palestine (I didn’t realize a Ministry of Media existed in Ramallah until the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh). I’m simply suggesting that our situation—which has been mystified by decades of obfuscation and fabricated nuance—should be handled cautiously. In the absence of political and media resources, public statements about our collective struggle should be informed by the collective. In short, they must be loyal to the Palestinian street.
+
+A friend called this position “unfair.” I had shared it in the form of critiques directed toward Mo upon its release on Netflix (I’ll refrain from expanding for the sake of length). “It’s unfair to expect one TV show to carry Palestine on its back,” she said. And I agree: burdening our artists with responsibilities not carried by other artists is unfair. But it is what it is. It is so rare to encounter the Palestinian People in the mainstream, especially in the English-speaking world, so much so that a show like Mo is possibly an average American viewer’s first interaction with our plight—at least outside of our villainized cameos on CNN or the New York Times. Mo, of course, is only an example and, to my point, there aren’t many.
+
+It’s not lost on me that I’m running the risk of appealing to populism by using language such as “loyal to the Palestinian street,” and even the risk of subscribing to the same identity politics I normally denounce. The very identity politics that allow Zionist publications to enjoy increased credibility having hired Palestinian stenographers to purport their propaganda. Mo Amer’s Palestinian identity isn’t what incentivized me to think critically about his TV show (I’m not lobbying the famously Palestinian DJ Khaled to record an album celebrating the Lions’ Den). Rather, it is because Palestine, by design, is a large part of the television series. The obligation, then, isn’t so much that of an artist or Palestinian artists exclusively, but towards the art itself, if Palestine is its chosen focal point.
+
+The scarcity of representation that makes a show like Mo or a film like Farha notable means Zionist organizations are more likely to pounce any time there’s a new song, film, or college course that merely sheds light on the Palestinian plight, let alone sympathize with it. And nothing escapes the Zionist backlash; not the most docile of children’s books nor painted ceramic plates created by children in Gaza; not even the news stories that are sympathetic to Palestine but still cite Israeli officials’ statements as if they are doctrine to avoid controversy. With that in mind, how can one in good conscience produce a critical review of something that is already under so much attack?
+
+But our rightful protectiveness of Palestinian art—in addition to the fashionable “existence is resistance” sentiment—means that all of our cultural production in the English-speaking world is at risk of being treated the same. The radical is lumped in with the liberal; the unabashed is lumped in with the desperately persuasive. The standard for Palestinian art to be good becomes simply its identity. But without criticism—meaningful criticism, not criticism that looks for landmines in every field—there can’t be growth. Or put another way, without criticism or challenge, the dialectical relationship between the artist and the “street” cannot be maintained or interrogated, and the role of the artist becomes solely ceremonial.
+
+One may argue that I’m splitting hairs by stating that said obligation does not fall on Palestinian artists but rather any artists choosing to represent Palestine in their work. Still, despite those semantics, the fact remains that many Palestinians find themselves having to represent their communities regardless of whether it is their responsibility. Our politicians are incompetent and complacent, even complicit. Decades of destabilization, of colonial violence and erasure, have placed us in this sour predicament. Any given Palestinian, especially an artist, and especially in the mainstream, may be tasked with the job of a community spokesperson and, so often, it happens overnight. In fact, this applies in almost every field, not just the arts.
+
+While all of us are inherently racialized because of location (and dislocation), not all of us engage in activist work—as is the case with every society. Some, if not most of us, are called into the ring at a random point in our life—almost always as a reaction to a profoundly personal emergency. I was 11 years old when I first found myself campaigning with my broken English to save my home in Sheikh Jarrah from violent dispossession, while Ru’a Rimawi had just finished medical school when she was plunged into the world of advocacy, demanding justice for her two martyred brothers, Jawad and Thafer. We were both transformed into one-person media ministries, scrambling to create a crisis around what the media cycle usually treats as a quotidian occurrence. And we are not unique nor rare cases; the examples are countless.
+
+When I speak about ethnic cleansing in my home and the larger Jerusalem on television, I don’t consider myself to be an ambassador of the Palestinian People nor was I elected to be one (in all fairness, neither was the PA). But in that moment, I represent the Palestinian People—against my wishes and possibly even against theirs. Resolving this tension, I’ve often told myself, is possible by transforming oneself into a vessel for the collective. As unfortunate and as unfair as it may be, I must prepare myself for it. That is the obligation, I’ve always thought.
+
+But not everyone makes this decision.  In a recent interview, Shabjdeed, a popular rapper from Jerusalem, explained why he released an apolitical record following the massive success of his 2021 song, Inn Ann, which easily fits in the genre of revolutionary music. He said, “I can guarantee you that I will not liberate the homeland by rapping.” He not only refused to oblige, he satirized that obligation. I respect this position, particularly as it acknowledges the limitations of any given art form operating independently, outside of the confines of an organized movement.
+
+One morning in a friend’s living room in Haifa, my friend’s neighbor, who happens to be an artist, tapped me on the shoulder while I was answering  emails (“playing on my phone” as he put it). “Do you want to know how we can become more like the Jews?” “No,” I responded. “Every single Israeli,” he continued anyway, “They all serve in the army for three years, then another cohort does the same. We don’t have that.” He was right. In the absence of a military, there is no defined national duty for Palestinians. If, indeed, the revolution was going to be televised, shouldn’t it be a bit more systemic?
+
+The proposition brought forth by my friend’s artist neighbor reminded me of a similar rant: Ruth Wisse, Professor Emeritus of Yiddish Literature at Harvard, spoke to “American Jews” and said,  “Every one of us has to serve two years in the army, two years in the army, some of us five years… You have to serve two or three years in the army of words. You’ve got to learn to fight the political battle, which is even more important at this point than the military battle… You’ve got to learn how to fight back on the campuses, how to make the arguments.”
+
+Something about Wisse’s shrieking sentiment, I’m afraid, resonates. An “army of words” is where obligation reimagines our participation in the struggle as calculated, instead of random and reactionary. I’m not saying art and culture will replace the rifle—rather, I’m saying there should be no rock left unturned.
+
+Even though there has been 75 years of Palestinian scholarship and knowledge production, and every journalist, diplomat, and lawmaker has access to visual and material evidence of the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people, I believe, at least for the time being, that we are not past the time for persuasion. Artists can and have influenced international public opinion in many instances across history. This is certainly true for Zionism. Zionist literature’s “disciplined march to the rhythm of the political movement,” as Kanafani put it, “as it crescendo[ed] from novel to novel, and from story to story,” certainly served its colonial project in Palestine.
+
+I recently sat down for an interview with actor and playwright Raeda Taha. When I shared with her my devastated revelation that if I stood and read a poem before the Qalandiya military barrier, it wouldn’t crumble and catch fire, she invoked the same crescendo: “[Liberation] is a matter of accumulation. Anything that has been done and is being done now for the cause will not go in vain. It is an accumulation of so many small victories that will lead us somewhere one day. I don’t agree with you that a poem will not liberate, or a song will not liberate, or a play will not liberate. All of these, plus so many other things, will move something along the years. We are building on what we have done since 1948, and even before that.” In this context the role of the artist in a liberation movement is the same as any member of that movement. Accept the obligation to participate in the climb.

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-Editor’s Note: The author of this article requested that their name not be published, fearing for their personal safety due to the intensification of fascist persecutions against critical voices in Israel.
-
-Since October 7, the day’s events have been shrouded in mystery. There are not only questions about the Israeli intelligence apparatus’s colossal failure to anticipate what was happening in the tightly besieged Strip or the quick collapse of their billion-dollar “Maginot Line” but also the details of what actually transpired in the military bases and settlements around the Gaza Strip. We know that, by common estimates, 1,400 Israelis were killed in the following few days, but we do not yet know the details of how.
-
-Some reports are beginning to appear, including documentation of the killing of Israelis by Palestinian fighters, but there are a growing number of reports that indicate the Israeli military was also responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths on October 7 and the days after.
-
-Hannibal Directive in action?
-
-On Friday, October 20, Haaretz published a lengthy article by its senior military analyst, Amos Harel, describing Israel’s failure to prepare for Hamas’s October 7 attacks. He introduces his readers to “the commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld,” whom he met a few weeks before the war, and heard from him that “things won’t get better, at some point they’ll get worse.”
-
-He goes on to describe what happened on October 7:
-
-“The Coordination and Liaison Office was attacked on October 7 together with all the outposts along the division’s line. A large Hamas force seized the adjacent Erez Crossing, which was closed for the Simhat Torah holiday. From there, within minutes and with no resistance, they advanced into the military base, killing and kidnapping the soldiers of the Civil Administration, though a few of them managed to return fire before being hit… Brig. Gen. Rosenfeld entrenched himself in the division’s subterranean war room together with a handful of male and female soldiers, trying desperately to rescue and organize the sector under attack. Many of the soldiers, most of them not combat personnel, were killed or wounded outside. The division was compelled to request an aerial strike against the base itself in order to repulse the terrorists.”
-
-This dry, complimentary description of the high commander, hiding with a few soldiers in an underground bunker and ordering an aerial bombardment of “the base” where his soldiers were fighting against Hamas militants, maybe wounded and maybe taken as prisoners, has a lot to say about the Israeli psyche in these bloody times.
-
-It brings back to my mind the events of August 1, 2014, during the most violent Israeli campaign against Gaza up to the current one. On August 1, there was a ceasefire, but an Israeli unit initiated a provocation that ended with the capture of one of its soldiers by Palestinian militants. The Israeli response was devastating, clearly designed to make sure that the soldier, Hadar Goldin, would be dead with as many Palestinians as possible. According to investigations by Amnesty International and the United Nations, cited in Wikipedia, “the massive Israeli bombardment killed between 135 and 200 Palestinian civilians, including 75 children, in the three hours following the suspected capture of the one Israeli soldier.”
-
-These events are not accidental local eruptions of the “Samsonian” desire to die (or let your soldiers die) with one’s enemies. It is a well-documented official policy of the Israeli army, at least since 1986, known as the “Hannibal Directive,” the “Hannibal code,” or the “Hannibal doctrine.”
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-It may not have ended with General Rosenfeld ordering the bombing of his soldiers. It will take years until we may (or may not) have a full picture of what happened on October 7 and the following days. But in addition to military deaths, there are also some details regarding the Israeli role in Israeli civilian deaths that can already be found amid the heavy flow of propaganda around the events of the day.
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-Deaths in Kibbutz Be’eri
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-Electronic Intifada published a long interview with Yasmin Porat, describing how she was held hostage by Palestinian militants in Kibbutz Be’eri. According to her account, the kidnappers treated her and other hostages “humanely,” believing they would be allowed to retreat safely to Gaza due to the protection of the Israeli captives. However, when the Israeli soldiers arrived, “they eliminated everyone, including the hostages. There was very, very heavy crossfire.”
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-Her testimony is complemented by evidence from Israeli soldiers who described how the Israeli military shot tank shells into buildings where militants and their hostages were hiding.
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-On October 11, Quique Kierszenbaum reported in The Guardian about his tour of Kibbutz Be’eri, a tour organized by the Israeli Army’s propaganda unit. He writes:
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-“Building after building has been destroyed, whether in the Hamas assault or in the fighting that followed, nearby trees splintered and walls reduced to concrete rubble from where Israeli tanks blasted the Hamas militants where they were hiding. Floors collapsed on floors. Roof beams were tangled and exposed like rib cages.”
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-In another report in Haaretz in Hebrew (it does not appear to be available in English) on October 11, probably following the same army-guided PR tour, Nir Hasson and Eden Solomon interviewed “Erez, deputy commander of an armored reserve battalion.” He described how he and his tanks unit “fought inside the kibbutz, from house to house, with the tanks.” “We had no choice,” he concludes.
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-Most recently, Nir Hasson returned to Be’eri and interviewed a local resident named Tuval, who was lucky to be away from the kibbutz at the time of the attack but whose partner was killed. In Hasson’s October 20 Haaretz article, he reports:
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-“His voice trembles when his partner, who was besieged in her home shelter at the time, comes to mind. According to him, only on Monday night and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF complete the takeover of  the kibbutz. The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”
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-This quote is important for several reasons; one is because it adds to the understood timeline of events. This testimony would seem to indicate that many Israeli captives were still alive on Monday, October 9, a full two days after the events of Saturday, October 7. While it might be understandable if captives had been killed in the hectic crossfire of an initial Israeli response to the attack on the 7th, this account would seem to indicate that the decision to assault the kibbutz and everyone inside was made as a clear military calculation.
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-It is clear Palestinian militants were hiding in these buildings with their Israeli captives as Israeli soldiers were blasting their way in with massive tank shells in close quarters. It deserves to be investigated who caused most of the death and destruction that took place. This is especially important as these deaths are now being used to justify the destruction of Gaza and the killing of thousands of civilians there.
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-Implications for Israeli captives in Gaza
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-All this is not history or simply in the past. There are implications for the next stage of the war, which might be even much bloodier. One central element of the conflict is now the fate of more than two hundred Israeli captives, soldiers, and civilians.
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-For the Palestinians, this is a historic opportunity to release their long-held militants from what they call “the occupation bastilles.” Even as Palestinians know that the liberation of their land is still a distant dream, the liberation of their prisoners through a prisoner swap is the most precious victory for which they can strive. However, Israel, as it has proved many times in the past and as recent events may indicate, may be ready to put the lives of its soldiers and citizens at risk rather than witness the joy of freedom celebrated on both sides of the border.