Analysts widely expect this election to be the dirtiest in Israel’s history. But, although they worry about Netanyahu’s demagoguery, they still overlook its grubbiest aspect. Palestinians under occupation have been effectively disappeared from the campaign.
In a political climate where European nativists are on the rise, the stark choice facing Europe’s Jews is to double-down on their traditional left-liberal worldview or abandon it entirely and throw their hat in with Israel’s own nativists. Corbyn represents the first choice, Netanyahu’s hardline Zionism the second.
British street artist Banksy made headlines in October when his $1.4 million artwork Girl with Balloon self-destructed at a London auction moments after it had been bought. But in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, a much larger Banksy art project – a hotel boasting “the worst view in the world” – appears to be unexpectedly saving itself from similar, planned destruction.
The American public is now evenly split between those who want a two-state solution and those who prefer a single state, shared by Israelis and Palestinians, according to a new survey. All of this is occurring even though US politicians and the media express no support for a one-state solution. In fact, quite the reverse.
The reactions to Marc Lamont Hill, the Quakers and Airbnb reveal that in practice there is no criticism of Israel that will be treated as legitimate – and that when it comes to the suffering of Palestinians, the only acceptable stance is silence.
Israel is waging a quiet campaign of attrition designed to wear down Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. The hope is that they will eventually despair and relocate to the city’s distant suburbs outside the wall or into the West Bank.
What distinguishes Netanyahu from his cabinet is not his moderation, but that he has a cooler head than his far-right rivals. He believes there are better ways than lashing out at Gaza to achieve his core political aim: the undermining of the Palestinian national project.
In cosying up to Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not simply placating the latest in a new wave of white-nationalist and neo-fascist leaders. He is demonstrating Israel’s deep-rooted ideological sympathy with them.
An American student of Palestinian descent detained in Israel’s airport for nearly a fortnight has become an unexpected cause celebre. Usually those held at the border are swiftly deported, but Lara Alqasem appealed against the decision, becoming in the process an improbable “prisoner of conscience” for the boycott cause.
Ido Even-Paz switched on his body camera as his tour group decamped from the bus in Hebron. The former Israeli soldier wanted to document any trouble we might encounter in this, the largest Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank, but it was not Hebron’s Palestinian residents who concerned him.
Mass protests along Gaza’s perimeter fence have been revived and expanded after a summer lull. On Friday, seven Palestinian demonstrators, including two children, were killed by Israeli sniper fire. Nonetheless, the political will to remedy the situation looks as atrophied as ever. No one is prepared to take meaningful responsibility for the time-bomb that is Gaza.
The Palestinians are the most troublesome legacy of a post-war, rules-based international order the US is now committed to sweeping away. Amputate the Palestinian cause, an injustice festering for more than seven decades, and America’s hand will be freer elsewhere. Might will again be right.
‘The Palestinians became a charity case, seeking handouts from the Arab world so that the PA could help maintain the occupation rather than lead the resistance. Thanks to Oslo, Israel became normalised in the region, while paradoxically the Palestinians found themselves transformed into the foreign object.’
The entrance to Abu Dis could not be more disconcerting, given reports that the Trump administration intends it to be the capital of a future Palestinian state, in place of Jerusalem. The eight metre-high grey slabs of Israel’s separation wall silently attest to a divided land and a quarter-century of a failed Middle East peace process.
In their relentless attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the Israel lobby are being required for the first time to air the racist premises that always underpinned their arguments. That exposure is going to harm, not benefit, Britain’s apologists for Israel.
The Trump administration’s decision to scrap all future aid payments to UNRWA, the main agency helping Palestinian refugees, marks a new – and most likely disastrous – chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Has Israel been covertly fuelling claims of an “anti-Semitism crisis” purportedly plaguing Britain’s Labour Party since it elected a new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, three years ago? That question is raised by a new freedom of information request submitted this week by a group of Israeli lawyers, academics and human rights activists.
Israeli citizens are not supposed to be loyal to a democratic principle, or universal human rights, or even the welfare of their compatriots. In Israel, “loyal” citizens are required to bow down before the Jewishness of the state and uphold the values of Jewish supremacism, even if it means their own permanent abasement.
Uri Avnery, a self-confessed former “Jewish terrorist” who went on to become Israel’s best-known peace activist, died in Tel Aviv on Monday, following a stroke. He was 94. As one of Israel’s founding generation, Avnery was able to gain the ear of prime ministers, even while he spent decades editing an anti-establishment magazine that was a thorn in their side.
Beinart’s views echo those of many liberal American Jews no longer willing to turn a blind eye to Israel’s sytematic abuses of Palestinians. In detaining him at the airport, Israel effectively declared that it no longer represents millions of Jews overseas.
