NEW from me: After declining to meet for 9 months, Biden sits down with Bibi today. It's an example of POTUS's dance on Israel: mild rebuke mixed w/ professions of support. Critics say it's not enough--and that he is helping consolidate Israeli apartheid.
Truly insane that the president of the United States just claimed he personally “saw” photos of beheaded babies, when he didn’t. Actually. See. Them. It is very dangerous.
🚨 🚨 🚨 Following
@AOC
’s lead, Bernie Sanders will introduce a bill to block the sale of bombs to Israel. This is historic. And under Senate rules, this WILL get a vote, forcing Senators to go on the record about the sale of deadly weapons to Israel.
The bigoted shooter was incensed that a Jewish group helped Muslim refugees come here. It’s a perfect encapsulation of why the safety of we Jews in America is bound up in the safety of Muslims here. There are people who want to drive these communities apart. It won’t work.
The candidate who said this won her primary tonight. “Cori Bush has always been sympathetic to the BDS movement, and she stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people just as they have stood in solidarity with Black Americans fighting for their own lives.”
Jewish Google employees to Google CEO: terminate any business contracts which support “Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces.”
NEWS: Columbia University is suspending Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term.
Biden was part of an administration that armed the Saudis to the teeth as they slaughtered Yemenis. Sanders was the guy who....authored a bill to stop that support
Holocaust and genocide scholar Raz Segal: “The assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”
So
@AOC
is doing a memorial event for Yitzhak Rabin. In the US Rabin is viewed as a liberal peacemaker but Palestinians remember him for his brutal rule suppressing Palestinian protest during the First Intifada, as someone who reportedly ordered the breaking of Palestinian bones
New statement from Rep. Rashida Tlaib: "The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians is a war crime, the confirmed use of white phosphorus bombs in Gaza is a war crime, yet there are no statements demanding these violations stop from the American political establishment."
SCOOP from me and
@lhfang
: Congresswoman-elect
@RashidaTlaib
won't be going on AIPAC's annual trip to Israel. Instead, Tlaib will leading her own delegation to the occupied West Bank. ALSO, she publicly endorsed BDS for the first time in an interview
This is a staggering Associated Press report: Israel's assault on Gaza is among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. More destruction than Aleppo, Mariupol, or, stunningly, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II.
BREAKING NEWS:
@AOC
,
@RashidaTlaib
and
@MarkPocan
are leading a renewed effort to prohibit the delivery of US-made bombs to Israel--the latest example of how Israel’s May assault on Gaza spurred progressives to challenge US arms sales to Israel.
Multiple investigations published today confirmed that an Israeli tank shell killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in Lebanon and injured 6 other reporters. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, and AFP say this was likely a deliberate, targeted attack--an apparent war crime.
President Biden says he has "no confidence in the number [of deaths] that the Palestinians are using.” Here's what
@OmarSShakir
of Human Rights Watch has to say about the numbers used by the Gaza Health Ministry. In short: he's sure they're accurate.
The young Israeli whose remarks went viral—I don’t want to burn your villages, I just want you to leave and we’ll take them—was wearing a “Rabbi Kahane is right” sticker. Kahane the extremist who inspired terrorism and who was banned from Israeli politics
His source: “A friend.”
His evidence: No coronavirus in the Caribbean, coronavirus in US and China, which have 5G. (Fact check: there is coronavirus in parts of the Caribbean, but it’s not as bad as the US)
A reminder: Fadi Abu Saleh was killed by an army that receives 3.1 billion in US military aid paid for by US taxpayers. US laws prohibit the misuse of these weapons on unarmed protesters. But there's no accountability for Israel in the US
🚨 BREAKING NEWS: The State Dept. granted Boeing an export license to sell $735 million in bombs to Israel, a Congressional staffer told me, bypassing Dem. opposition. Sen. Sanders placed a hold on State nominees in response, but lifted the hold today. 🚨
More bonkers news: Israel is giving vaccine doses to Honduras to get political benefits, while the vast majority of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation still don’t have access.
The
@IlhanMN
resolution is being misreported left and right. While it’s clearly in response to crackdowns on BDS as it pertains to Israel, the resolution makes no mention of Israel-Palestine, and it merely affirms Americans’ right to use the tactic of boycott
On Election Day, Israel demolished an ENTIRE village, making over 70 people homeless. That is no coincidence. Israel took advantage of the US election to destroy more Palestinian lives.
Congresswoman
@AOC
just sent out an e-mail asking her supporters to call your members of Congress to support her bill blocking a proposed bomb sale to Israel.
SCOOP: Bowman, Sanders and 8 others are urging the Biden administration to investigate whether Israel is using US weapons to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians. It's progressives' most forceful response yet to Israel’s new far-right government
The vast majority of the progressive caucus voted to give Israel an extra $1billion in aid for Iron Dome. The Squad was also not united. Bowman voted yes. AOC voted present. The others—Tlaib, Omar and Pressley—voted no.
SCOOP:
@BernieSanders
office says he secured a commitment from
@SenSchumer
that the US will send additional humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. As a result, Sanders will vote "yes" on the extra $1 billion in Iron Dome funds for Israel's military.
In her most expansive comments on Palestine to date,
@AOC
:
-Calls Netanyahu "Trump-like"
-Says U.S. aid cuts to Israel should be discussed
-Comes out in support of McCollum's bill to prohibit U.S. aid from being used to detain Palestinian children
Israeli officials met with a dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pressure the school over...a graduate student's course on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Brazen foreign interference in US academia.
Find me a more perfect example of anti-Palestinian racism. Kevin McCarthy cancels Rashida Tlaib's planned event on the nakba. He says Tlaib traffics in "antisemitic tropes" about Israel. The nakba is not an antisemitic trope, it's a historical fact.
Ben and Jerry's discontinuing sales of products in Israeli settlements has more implications for the US debate than actual material implications in Israel-Palestine: It shows amongst liberals, there's increasingly no appetite for complicity in the occupation.
"We should not be sending ‘direct attack’ weaponry to Prime Minister Netanyahu to prolong this violence. It is long past time to end the US policy of unconditional military arms sales," read an e-mail from
@AOC
's office I obtained.
The German Bundestag, in calling BDS ‘Antisemitic’, also compared it to Nazi propaganda.
But sure, some privileged progressive kid from Brooklyn knows better.
Dr Refaat Alareer
@itranslate123
has been assassinated now by Israel. Refaat is one of the founders of
@WeAreNotNumbers
and a very good friend. He authored many books and wrote tens of stories about Gaza.
Refaat’s assassination is tragic, painful and outrageous. It is a huge…
This is a cowardly tweet. Pro-Israel narratives dominate on Capitol Hill. One Palestinian American tries to counter that by telling the stories of what Israel’s establishment did to Palestinians in 1948 and beyond, there’s a freak out and call for censorship. Cowardice
It is disgraceful that
@SenSanders
allowed this event by
@RepRashida
to be held in our nation’s Capitol. Real conversations are needed around a path to peace, but not with groups & individuals who espouse antisemitism. We call on the Senate to condemn this event.
To explain this: The "stimulus bill" is, in fact, a conglomeration of many massive spending bills, including a bill to fund foreign operations. Only one portion of the bill deals with COVID, the rest deals with funding other aspects of governance.
NEWS: A George Washington University office offered trauma support services to Palestinian students dealing with Israel's attack on Gaza. Then university administrators got involved, curtailed the office's work and threatened to shut the office down.
The resolution would halt the planned transfer of so-called JDAMs and of Small Diameter Bombs, both of which are bombs outfitted with special guidance systems to hit their intended targets. Both types of explosive are made by Boeing, and have been used by Israel in its attack
This is NOT going to pass. The weapons sale WILL go through. That’s just the reality of today’s Congress. But it is a first step into a future in which the US-Israel alliance is openly debated.
It takes an unbelievable sickness, and a willfulness blindness to Palestinian humanity, to be celebrating the US embassy opening in occupied Jerusalem while Israeli troops gun down unarmed people in Gaza. What a world.
The story here is not solely about Liz Magill. The main story is a McCarthyist atmosphere consuming college campuses over calls for Palestinian liberation. Magill tepidly defended free speech for Palestine advocates, then made a big PR misstep and fell into a right-wing trap.
#BREAKING
: Penn President Liz Magill has resigned amid growing bipartisan backlash against her Capitol Hill testimony on antisemitism earlier this week and a semester marked by protests and controversy.
Breaking: Members of Jewish Voice for Peace are blocking the entrance to Senator Chuck Schumer's office to protest his silence over Israel's killing of Palestinians in Gaza
For 2020 Palestine watchers: Here's the moment at the Sanders Brooklyn kick-off rally when
@shaunking
mentions "apartheid-like" conditions in Palestine and how Bernie Sanders speaks out against them
A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers today. Palestinian health officials say he was shot in the back. The army that killed him gets 3.8 billion in US money every year.
Israel is facing a massive barrage of rockets. Imagine how high the death toll would be were it not for Iron Dome, which has intercepted almost all the missiles fired and saved lives.
I will continue voting for missile defense systems that protect civilians from terrorism.
“This is a historic day. Although this JRD has a short shelf-life, it’s a game changer. Congress has never attempted to block an arms sale to Israel before, and it sends a clear message to the Israeli government that its days of impunity are coming to an end,"
@raedjarrar
told me
SCOOP 🚨🚨🚨:
@JamaalBowmanNY
is withdrawing his sponsorship of legislation promoting Israel’s normalization deals with authoritarian Arab states. In a letter to constituents I obtained, he writes that the deals are "at odds with human rights and safety."
NEWS:
@BettyMcCollum04
will introduce a bill barring U.S. aid from subsidizing an array of Israeli tactics. "I don’t want $1 of U.S. aid to Israel paying for the military detention and abuse of Palestinian children, the demolition of Palestinian homes..."
EXCLUSIVE: I got the first interview with
@BettyMcCollum04
since she blasted AIPAC. She’s still mad over their attack ads, wants an apology and says she won’t be meeting with them. “Why would I meet with someone who thinks that I’m worse than a terrorist?”
The logic of why some Palestinians use guns and rockets to resist Israeli apartheid is never more clear than on days like today. When Hamas fired rockets in May, the world woke up to ethnic cleansing in
#SheikhJarrah
. Today, with no rockets, the world turns away.
NEWS: Dem. leadership attempted to add $1 billion in funding into a crucial gov't funding bill to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome. But progressives stripped it out after threatening to tank the bill. More in my
@JewishCurrents
newsletter
It’s unclear to me—and even more so to the vast majority of Americans—why troops need to be in Jordan to protect the “safety” of Americans at home. The opposite seems true—their presence in the Middle East makes troops sitting ducks
Last night, three U.S. service members were killed, and many wounded, during an unmanned aerial drone attack on our forces stationed in northeast Jordan near the Syria border.
Jill and I join the families and friends of our fallen in grieving the loss of these warriors in this…
Since the start of the truce last Friday, 150 Palestinian detainees have been freed. But in the same time period, Israel has arrested 168 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Prisoner's Society
Five social justice leaders have resigned from the prestigious Civil Society Fellowship, hosted by the Anti-Defamation League and the Aspen Institute, over the ADL's ties to police and undermining of Palestinian rights, per a press release I just received.
Yang comes across as deeply ignorant about Palestine, Palestinians and BDS. He hasn’t devoted much thought to it so he’s parroting the worst sentiments out there to pander to NYC Jews.
Israel’s best strategy at this point is to just admit the truth: “Yeah we’re an apartheid state. So fucking what.” The rest of the world has proven it ain’t gonna do shit. Meanwhile Palestinians stay resisting apartheid.
One important thing to note: Ariel, a mega-Israeli settlement 26 KM into the West Bank, will be annexed by Israel. Ariel sits on a major water aquifer—a key natural resource Palestinians need
ADL head
@JGreenblattADL
weighs in on voting “uncommitted” in Michigan. “Pathetic,” he says, adding those voting uncommitted should get involved in the political process. To which the hosts respond, in so many words: Isn’t that what they’re doing?
Meanwhile Ron DeSantis is trying to do the same, but has run into difficulties due to a little thing called the First Amendment. Private schools can, however take such actions. Fordham banned its SJP chapter.
Elliot Abrams. War criminal. That people are defending him tells you all you need to know about the moral bankruptcy of the foreign policy establishment.
Progressive Senators like Warren and Sanders seem to envision an Israeli military “humanitarian war” that includes an Israeli military presence in Gaza that doesn’t harm civilians. Israel, nor for that matter the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, has never done that. It’s a fantasy.
🚨SCOOP 🚨: After ADL CEO
@JGreenblattADL
compared anti-Zionist orgs to right-wing extremists, ADL staffers dissented. Greenblatt called a special meeting to answer critics—and expressed frustration at leaks to journalists. We obtained audio of the meeting
The legislation amounts to a rebuke of the Biden administration’s policy of facilitating the flow of weapons to a country that has killed at least 220 Palestinians in ten days, including 63 children.
Benny Gantz, a current Israeli minister part of Israel's War Cabinet, is explicitly threatening to kill Palestinian journalists who did their journalistic duty: documenting the Hamas attack on Israel.
Journalists found to have known about the massacre, and still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered - are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.
Only a small number of Senators will join Bernie, but the exact number will depend on the pressure Senators are put under from the Palestinian rights movement and the Israel lobby.
THREAD on my latest The current crisis escalated as Israeli settlers pushed to displace families in
#SheikhJarrah
. Israeli settler orgs don't do this by themselves--they're helped by US nonprofits that get an effective US subsidy to bolster settlers
If the American Jewish establishment hates jokes about an inhumane apartheid system, then work to change the damn system! Barring that, deal with it. Those are the rules. Palestinians have to suffer through an apartheid regime, you just have to suffer through a silly joke.
Is it enough? No. It is only a small minority of Democrats. The majority are stuck recycling cliched talking points. But the bar was low and the Squad are flying over it. May the numbers of opponents to Israeli apartheid grow in the halls of power
NEWS: Rep.
@BettyMcCollum04
re-introduced her bill to prohibits Israel from using US dollars to detain Palestinian children, destroy Palestinian homes, and annex Palestinian land.
People should realize what Israel’s overarching goal is: Kick Palestinians out of Jerusalem, replace them with Israeli settlers. Do the same in large swathes of the West Bank while keeping most Palestinians confined to West Bank cities. And strangle Gaza.
Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said Israeli forces shot and injured 6 other journalists covering today's protests in Gaza, despite clothes IDing themselves as journalists
Notice
@AdamMilstein
’s tweets accusing
@RashidaTlaib
and
@IlhanMN
of terrorism and betrayal of the US? Wanna know more about who he is? Read my story: He’s on AIPAC national council, is a major donor to the group—and funds orgs that smear college students