Permission To Narrate

The school, located between four Palestinian villages on the outskirts of Bethlehem, was built with caravans on a concrete foundation by local authorities and international NGOs partnered with the European Union, hoping to mitigate the myriad of challenges facing students in the area.

The State of Israel’s fight against global anti-Semitism has been hollow from the beginning, in view of the racist elements underlying the ostensibly democratic regime within the Green Line and the military government in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as Israel’s treatment of Mizrahi Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Palestinian citizens, refugees, and foreign workers. One cannot fight anti-Semitism seriously without fighting racism inside and outside Israel, and without ending Israeli support for racist regimes across the world. One cannot speak of the lessons of the Holocaust while abetting the genocide of other nations, and even inviting murderers to lay wreaths at Yad Vashem.

At a time of political indecisiveness and the absence of a vision or agreed-upon strategy, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is seriously considering calling a full session of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), its decision-making body. At an Aug. 9 meeting, Fatah’s Central Committee recommended convening the PNC “with the participation of all parties,” a clear reference to Hamas. Such a session could bring new blood to the organization.

On July 25, a group of 15 settler families broke into apartments belonging to the Abu Rajabs’ ancestral family home and moved in. The same evening, the settlers physically attacked members of the Abu Rajab family while attempting to invade their primary residence. Yet when Israeli authorities arrived on the scene, they attempted to arrest the Abu Rajabs, they said.

Lawyer for the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Hiba Masalha, stated that the Israeli government, soldiers and detectives deal harshly with Palestinian children as soon as they are arrested. She also stated that they commit various forms of torture and humiliation against the children, which is a violation of all humanitarian and international legislation.

The fight to protect free speech, as essential and laudable as it is, is only one part of the picture. What is lost if we focus solely on free speech rights are the human rights violations that would be obscured and blanketed by the anti-boycott bills. And these rights properly belong to the Palestinians. In short, these Democrats are concerned with protecting the free speech rights of Americans; they have little or no concern about the very aim of the boycotts, which is to secure the human rights of Palestinians suffering under the repressive regime of the state of Israel.

Jerusalem’s African community is relatively small and consists of nearly 50 families living in the Bab al-Majlis neighborhood of the Old City. The majority of the community comes from countries such as Chad, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. Their ancestors came to Jerusalem in successive periods, beginning in the Ottoman era and continuing into the British Mandate.

After a three-year decline, settler violence has been on the rise during the first half of 2017. During this period, OCHA [UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] documented 89 incidents attributed to Israeli settlers resulting in Palestinian casualties (33 incidents) or in damage to Palestinian property (56 incidents). On a monthly average, this represents an increase of 88 per cent compared with 2016.