Yousef Munayyer: Levy is right, this isn’t occupation. Well, not JUST occupation. When an Israeli panel appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu to investigate the question of outposts issued its findings (that there was no occupation and the settlements were legal), most sensible people responded with contempt.
Phyllis Bennis and Adam Gallagher discuss the ability of grassroots movements to achieve political aims without party politics and their response to political shortcomings. This was the first in our annual Palestine Center Interns Summer Lecture Series entitled, “Reevaluating Palestinian Stakeholder Legitimacy.”
Yousef Munayyer: Removing settlers from illegally constructed housing inevitably leads to attacks against nearby Palestinian villages but Israel does nothing to stop them.
Yousef Munayyer: Last week the Israeli prime minister, with the help of Washington, made one of the strongest cases for the need for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in the wake of an Israeli court decision regarding an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. By demonstrating that twenty years of ‘peace process’ policies have yielded an Israeli government drunk on settlements, Netanyahu’s statement and the United States’ reaction should convince any remaining doubters that BDS is an urgently necessary alternative.
Yousef Munayyer: I’m a Palestinian who was born in the Israeli town of Lod, and thus I am an Israeli citizen. My wife is not; she is a Palestinian from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Despite our towns being just 30 miles apart, we met almost 6,000 miles away in Massachusetts, where we attended neighboring colleges.
Yousef Munayyer: Last week I argued that Israel fits the Apartheid designation. Here, I’ll defend my piece against the responses. My argument was straightforward; the de facto Israeli state, which stretches from the river to the sea, uses a system of policies which abuses human rights and ensures the ethnic group ruling the regime, Israeli Jews. This constitutes Apartheid.
Omar Barghouti, an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator and human rights activist committed to upholding international law and universal human rights, presents the BDS movement and its legacy.
Through educational events, humanitarian support, and cultural preservation, the Jerusalem Fund is helping build the movement for Palestinian liberation.
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