Bennett’s initiative to entice Palestinians to work in Israel’s high-tech sector will make it harder for the struggling Palestinian economy to stand on its own two feet. — ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER Naftali Bennett may have brought about Benjamin Netanyahu’s defeat and created Israel’s most diverse government, but governing is more than electoral gymnastics. It comes down to policies, and Bennett is revealing himself as a polished Netanyahu: right-wing in direction, expansionist in desire and openly defending settler violence…

Unless one seeks the truth, it is easy to fall for the hasbara-messaging such as ‘shrinking the conflict’ or ‘economic peace’ that Bennett keeps repeating. — ISRAEL’S NEW GOVERNMENT is in full swing, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at its head. Now that Bennett has made his maiden trip to the White House as prime minister, one can confidently, albeit regretfully, acknowledge that nothing has really changed except the personalities.

“Democratic representation of ‘We The People’ requires an accurate ascertainment of who ‘We The People’ are.” ~Arab American Institute — The space of identity is tight. A single identity can hardly fit into its place, yet that is what society expects. The reality of identity is much more dynamic and colorful than dry categories of some census-defined race or ethnicity. But wait. Is any generic definition a fair categorization of…

Israel launches “Operation Face History”. — (Jerusalem — June 2021) — In a historic about-face, and while Palestinian bodies are still being pulled from the rubble in Gaza, the Middle East woke up this morning to its future. Late into the night, hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, better known as Bibi, surprised even the most…

Israel has reached apartheid, the antithesis of Judaism’s long tradition of social justice. — Events in Israel and Palestine are disturbing, to say the least, but far from surprising to anyone who has been awake. In an opinion piece last August that was published in Haaretz, Pushing Palestinians back to armed struggle, I wrote: “If the US and Israel do not make an about-face…

A new book dives into the myriad laws that protect Palestinian refugees and their right of return. Its proposed solution, though, may be hard to swallow. — “Palestinian Refugees in International Law” by Francesca P. Albanese and Lex Takkenberg, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 2020, 608 pages. I was recently on a video call with a longtime Jewish Israeli friend from Jerusalem. He is a highly educated, deeply cultured, politically liberal, and progressive academic who is outspoken…

A new report by Human Rights Watch slams Israel as an apartheid state. What now? — One of the world’s leading independent organisations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, Human Rights Watch (HRW), today issued a 213-page report entitled ‘ A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution ‘. The report examines Israel’s treatment of all Palestinians, regardless of where they…

Moving from a state of internal chaos to structural reform. — The Palestinian political system is in a self-inflicted free fall. The results may be catastrophic for the just Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence. Most of the Palestinian people are looking on with utter despair, not only those living under Israeli military occupation in Palestine (West Bank, East Jerusalem, and…

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” ― attributed to Abraham Lincoln — The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the political agency of the Palestinians’ national liberation movement; it represents Palestinians wherever they reside. The PLO last defined its goals as freedom and independence — freedom from Israeli military occupation and oppression and for the right of Palestinian refugees to return home, and…