The Progressive January 2, 2025: The late President Jimmy Carter… was met with intense criticism for insisting that standards of peace, human rights, and international law should apply not just to countries hostile to U.S. interests, but to U.S. allies like Israel as well. Particularly controversial was Carter’s 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, a New York Times bestseller, in which he argued against Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, the Palestinian territory seized during the 1967 war the international community had hoped would form the basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Carter was a liberal Christian Zionist… [source]
Category: AIPAC
Video: A Year of Student Protest, Part 1: Goals & Achievements
Zunes is one two faculty members interviewed in this 8-minute summary of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests at the University of San Francisco campus
Dr. Zunes’ Speech from the Aug. 24 Panetta Protest
Serf City Times included this transcript of Dr. Zunes’ speech at a rally in Santa Cruz protesting U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta’s strident support for Israel’s far right government, placing him further right than even the Biden administration — and the failure of the Santa Cruz city government and other Democratic leaders to challenge him and others supporting the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza [source]
The Crackdown on Campus Protests is a Bipartisan Strategy to Repress Pro-Palestine Speech
The Progressive, May 1, 2024: Unlike apartheid-era South Africa, many universities aren’t even recognizing Israel’s human rights abuses. A wave of sit-ins and encampments have swept college and university campuses… led—as in past anti-war campus protests in 1968—by Columbia University. [source]
Don’t Buy the Right-wing Disinformation Campaign on “From the River to the Sea”
Truthout May 5, 2024: This phrase was never about killing Jews. It emerged in the 1960s as a call for equal rights within a democratic state. The wave of pro-Palestinian protests sweeping American campuses was triggered by Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s order to forcibly clear a peaceful encampment [after] her grilling the previous day before a House committee… A major focus of the interrogation was the slogan…” [source]
Antiwar/Solidarity Activism on Gaza: New Generation, New Challenges
US rejection of UN Membership for Palestine Betrays Claimed Two-State Position
Common Dreams April 27, 2024: Unlike most governments that support a two-state solution, the United States only recognizes Israel, not Palestine. [source]
Interviews: US Israel/Palestine policy, Santita Jackson Show
Four interviews on US Israel/Palestine policy on the US nationally-syndicated Santita Jackson Show (Minn.): June 12, 2024 (Zunes begins at 31 mins.), April 29, April 29, and April 15. Watch all four below.
Interview: Israel’s True Motivations in war on Gaza
Israel’s True Motivations – A talk with Professor Stephen Zunes April 18, 2024, on WMNF-FM in Tampa
Biden Claims to Support a Two-State Solution but his Policies Say Otherwise
Truthout April 17, 2024: Recent initiatives by the Palestinian government to revive their application for UN membership are testing the U.S. claim it supports a “two-state solution” [source]
Interview: Weaponization of Antisemitism
[Palestine Update, California Radio, April 8, 54 min.] Sources: UN, electronicintafada.net, Common Dreams, Palestine Chronicle, Reuters, popularresistance.org, the Arab Center, The Real News Network, The Guardian, NPR, The Intercept, bdsmovement.net, investigate.afsc.org, whoprofits.org…
Israel’s War on Gaza: 11 Zunes’ articles published Oct. 7-Dec. 31, 2023
- Political Costs of Biden’s Support for Israel’s War Mount [Source]
- U.S. Attacks on the ICJ are a Declaration of Empire [Source]
- Biden’s Gaza Failure Could Cost Democrats 2024 Election [Source]
- Applying International Law to Israel’s War and Hamas’ Attack [Video & Transcript]
- Scholars Weigh in on Gaza-Israel Conflict Counterpunch interview of Professors Zunes and international legal scholar Richard Falk [Princeton] on Israel, Gaza, and U.S. policy, 10/13/2023 [Source]
- How U.S. Policy Failures Have Helped Hamas [Source]
- Hamas, Israel and the U.S. Have Learned Nothing [Source]
- Biden’s Backing Israel War Crimes Carries on Sordid U.S. Tradition [Source]
- O Globo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, on Israel’s war on Gaza (English translation and original Portuguese transcript) [Source]
- Dr. Zunes is quoted in this Al-Jazeera article: Why are US Republicans pushing for aid to Israel but not Ukraine? [Source]
- More Articles and interviews on the Gaza Crisis
Biden’s Gaza Failure Could Cost Democrats 2024 Election
Don’t Blame the Iraq Debacle on the Israel Lobby
Santa Cruz Sentinel March 29, 2013 | UPDATED: Sept. 11, 2018
[Republished by Foreign Policy In Focus/Institute for Policy Studies and Truthout] This month’s 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq raised the question why the U.S. made such a tragic choice. As many of us argued in the lead-up to the war, claims that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” the Iraqi government had operational ties to al-Qaida were false. Similarly, the corrupt and repressive sectarian government the U.S. helped establish in Baghdad has undermined any pretense the war was about promoting democracy.
Obama and AIPAC
Huffington Post, Jun 20, 2008 |Updated May 25, 2011
In many respects, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has played right into the hands of cynics who have long doubted his promises to create a new and more progressive role for the United States in the world. The very morning after the last primaries, in which he finally received a sufficient number of pledged delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination and no longer needed to win over voters from the progressive base of his own party, Obama — in a Clinton-style effort at triangulation — gave a major policy speech before the national convention of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Embracing policies which largely backed those of the more hawkish voices…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/obama-and-aipac_b_106611.html
Obama’s Right Turn?
Foreign Policy In Focus, June 11, 2008; Reposted in
Huffington Post, Jun 20, 2008 |Updated May 25, 2011
In many respects, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has played right into the hands of cynics who have long doubted his promises to create a new and more progressive role for the United States in the world. The very morning after the last primaries… in a Clinton-style effort at triangulation – he gave a major policy speech before the national convention of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Embracing policies which largely backed those of the more hawkish voices concerned with Middle Eastern affairs, he received a standing ovation for his efforts… http://www.fpif.org/articles/obamas_right_turn
The Israel Lobby Revisited
The Israel lobby revisited, Dec. 20, 2007, By Stephen Zunes
Also at theFreeLibrary.org, Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF.org),
CommonDreams.org, Proquest.com, Ameinu.net, and Tikkun
It has been 21 months since John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt published their article “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” in The London Review of Books and four months since their publication of a book by the same name. Their main arguments are that unconditional U.S. support for the Israeli government has harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East and that American organizations allied with the Israeli government have been the primary influence regarding the orientation of U.S. Middle East policy…