By Mohamed Mohamed
Perhaps Friedman is unaware that his duty is to serve the interests of the American people, not pander to Israelis. If he was the trained diplomat that such a sensitive ambassadorship post requires, he would know this. Instead, Friedman’s main qualification is that he is Trump’s former bankruptcy lawyer.
By Mohamed Mohamed
Trump’s comment coincided with the delivery of the first two out of 50 F-35 jets ordered by Israel, which is the first foreign country to receive them. Israel held a special event to celebrate, with U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program head there to welcome the highly-anticipated arrival.
By Zeina Azzam
Underneath the sheer size of the $38 billion military aid package to Israel are subtle policy decisions by Washington that the world, and especially the Palestinians, should hear loud and clear.
By Zeina Azzam
Many of us wonder, will Clinton strive at all to make Washington “an honest broker” during negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians? How beholden will she feel to the influences of her billionaire supporters? Will her narrow view of justice and fairness expand to consider the human and national rights of Palestinians? So far, her words have given us no reason to be optimistic.
By Mohamed Mohamed
The plight of Palestinians dispossessed in 1948 has in many ways been forgotten. It is imperative that supporters of Palestinian rights never forget the right of return, which is a cornerstone of the Palestinian struggle.
By Zeina Azzam
Perhaps the most hard-hitting sentence in this section of the M4BL platform is, ‘The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.’ This linking of the Washington-Tel Aviv alliance with Palestinian genocide is indeed a forceful statement that points to the use of US tax dollars to serve pernicious and unjust policy decisions. One has only to look at the 2014 Israeli assault of Gaza, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said ‘shocked and shamed the world,’ to find proof of such policies.
By Zeina Azzam
“During Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza and its 1.8 million inhabitants, Palestinian poet Khaled Juma penned a moving poem titled ‘Oh Rascal Children of Gaza’. The first few lines were about the chaos and mischief that the children had perpetrated in their neighborhoods before the war, but the wistful ending laments, ‘Come back/and scream as you want/and break all the vases./Steal all the flowers./Come back./Just come back…'”
By Zeina Azzam
The principal concept of the normalization of deviant practices (which can also be termed unjust, undemocratic, and colonial practices) applies very well in the Palestinian case, as Israel’s goal is to be treated as a “normal” state despite its objectively aberrant treatment of the Palestinians. Clearly, therefore, its oppressive practices in the occupied territories, entrenched military occupation, and apartheid-like policies toward Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and inside Israel should make the international community constantly vigilant and critical of Israel’s modus operandi.
By Zeina Azzam
One is hard pressed to ask, what is the problem in calling the Occupied Palestinian Territories just that, territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war? This is the exact terminology of Amnesty International. Oxfam uses Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem employs Occupied Territories. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has adopted occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Even the US Department of State refers to The Occupied Territories.
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