Category: Israel and Palestine

Israel and Palestine

Bipartisan Attacks Against Anti-occupation Divestment Campaigns

September 14, 2015 By admin

In April, the student senate at Earlham College, a Quaker liberal arts institution in Indiana, approved a resolution by consensus recommending the college endowment divest from three U.S. companies (Motorola, Hewlett Packard and Caterpillar) which are directly supporting the Israeli occupation in violation of international law. The resolution (thus far ignored by the college’s board of trustees) follows decisions by a number of Quaker-affiliated organizations — as well as the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, and other nonprofit groups — to divest from these companies…

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Netanyahu Still Swaying U.S. Congress

March 4, 2015 By admin

The Progressive, March 4, 2015: Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress on March 3 was rare and unprecedented in many ways. • It constituted a major breach of protocol • It took place just…

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Netanyahu’s Ugly Game in Gaza

July 9, 2014 By admin

The Progressive and Transnational.org July 9, 2014The right-wing Israeli government took advantage of the murder of three Israeli teen members of an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Back to whip up ultra-nationalist sentiments, engage in a new wave of…

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How the state Assembly tries to limit what I can teach

January 25, 2014 By admin

In preparing my syllabus for my introductory course on the Middle East this semester, it gives me pause that the California Assembly is still on record declaring that discussing certain well-documented historic incidents in modern Middle Eastern history should “not be tolerated in the classroom.” This unprecedented attack on academic freedom came in the form of a resolution (HR 35), co-sponsored by 66 of the 88 Assembly members, which passed by a voice vote in 2012.

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Attacks against anti-occupation activism increase

July 22, 2013 By admin

A growing movement has emerged on college campus calling for divestment from companies that support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories that is part of broader international campaign initiated by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its occupation of territories seized in the 1967 war.

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Don’t Blame the Iraq Debacle on the Israel Lobby

March 29, 2013 By admin

Given the enormous tragedy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the war’s tenth anniversary has inevitably raised the question of ?why?? As many of us predicted in the lead-up to the war, the official rationales for the U.S. invasion of Iraq?namely, that Iraq possessed ?weapons of mass destruction? and had operational ties to al-Qaeda?were false. And the corrupt, inept, and repressive sectarian government the United States helped establish in Baghdad has undermined any pretense that the war was about democracy.

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Abetting the Carnage in Gaza

November 26, 2012 By admin

The November 22 ceasefire between Israeli and Hamas forces is a huge relief for the civilian population on both sides—the primary victims of the conflict. But the Obama administration’s unconscionable decision the previous week to block a ceasefire effort by the UN Security Council not only resulted in additional civilian deaths but also serves as an indication that, despite the president owing his re-election to the hard work of his progressive base, his foreign policy will continue to lean to the right.

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Can U.S. Citizens End Israel’s Legal Impunity?

November 20, 2012 By admin

The great wish of the early Zionist leader Theodor Herzl was that Israel would be treated like “any other state.” Were that the case, there might be more rational and productive discourse regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is particularly critical in light of Israel launching yet another devastating attack against civilian-populated areas of nearby Arab lands.

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