If you are Jewish and living outside of Israel, what are you waiting for? Israel awaits you. What’s taking you so long? Uncle Bibi wants YOU!

As a Palestinian living in Palestine, I anxiously await your arrival. I have spoken directly to thousands of you over decades about Israel and its actions. Most recently, I had a conversation with over 100 of you on Zoom. The conversation and audience questions were all too familiar, like the hundreds of past encounters — cordial, frank, and informative to us both. However, this last one ended on a note that stuck with me for days. The interviewer, a well-established and respected Jewish thought leader in the U.S. closed the session with a message of hope that Israeli scientists would clone me. Although flattered, I got off the call and thought: Why clone me? I’m just communicating what my community has been saying for decades. …

By Sam Bahour

If your Palestinian neighbors and friends seem slightly on edge today, please excuse them. October 29 brings back horrific memories to Palestinians everywhere, young and old. It was 64 years ago today that a scene of cold-blooded murder fell upon the hill-top Palestinian village of Kafr Qassem (also written Kfar Kassim), located in Israel about 20 km east of Tel Aviv, near the Green Line (1949 Armistice Agreement’s demarcation line) separating Israel and the West Bank. It was in Kafr Qassem on this day in 1956 where the Israeli military mowed down in cold blood 48 innocent civilians, one being a pregnant woman whose fetus is counted as the 49th victim. …

Western countries, especially European ones, have a track record of failing Palestine and Israel. Since the outset of this Middle East conflict, these powers have used the tremendous leverage they have on only one party — the Palestinians. At times, they punished Palestinians with military might. When that did not work, they added efforts to financially strangulate the Palestinian national liberation movement. When they realized the Palestinians were not going to vanish, they became innovative in their political and diplomatic discourse to divert Palestinians away from restoring what was forcefully taken from them upon the creation of the state of Israel. At no time in history have Western powers seriously held Israel accountable to get it to change its ways. …

Throughout history, the American Jewish community has had a lot to be rightfully proud of. Their dedication to Jewish communal life, their commitment to education, their organizing and lobbying skills, and their sustained investment in Jewish-focused media outlets, are just a few. Much of the individual and institutional successes across a myriad of domains can be attributed to what seems to outsiders as an abundance of funds, at times thought to be retrieved from a bottomless pit.

If you are like me, you are always seeking funding support for one project or another. In my case, very rarely are the projects my own. Fundraising is hard work, regardless of its purpose. Fundraise long enough and you start to learn that it is an industry, like most other domains, but very few people have the wherewithal and persistence to dig deep into the black box of how the mechanics of fundraising developed and exists in today’s world. Professor and Author Lila Corwin Berman clearly does not fit that description. She just released a book titled, The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multibillion-Dollar Institution, which is a fascinating read. …

Bookshelves are overflowing with books on Palestine and Israel. One might imagine that there are no new angles to write about. However, this man-made historic tragedy is not only historic but continues to this day, thus, books are not going to stop being written anytime soon. This is a godsend, as this book’s author will confirm, for it was his reading of a few books from the other side that was the start of his wake-up call of a lifetime.

I just dropped my request for an Ohio absentee ballot in the Palestine Post in Ramallah. Although thousands of miles away, I can see and feel the heavy, dark clouds descending above all 50 states. This presidential election is not about Trump’s top contender, it is about getting over this four-year bump in the hope that lessons were learned, and a historic correction can begin. A Biden win is not the correction, it is getting over the bump.

As I was contemplating this all-important upcoming election, my two daughters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sent me a message, “Dad, you must watch this.” They were referring to the Broadway smash-hit Hamilton: An American Musical, a sung-and-rapped-through theatrical musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Watching this amazing performance of a snapshot of U.S. …

Multinational firms, especially if they are global leaders, have responsibilities that impact issues like those of countries, especially since many of these firms’ services have a user base and budget sizes larger than many countries around the world. Be they multinationals or otherwise, firms can easily be manipulated to play politics if they lack clear leadership and transparent processes.

One case in point is the all too familiar country drop-down box that almost every online service utilizes when they request a user’s address or physical location. Listing physical location options, like country, can become extremely political, as is the case when trying to identify which country Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip reside, given the territory is officially and globally recognized as being under Israeli military occupation. …

Sam Bahour made the comments below in an interview with a journalist which did not air but that he later transcribed and shared with us. -Editor

The announcement of normalized relations between the UAE and Israel comes as no surprise for Palestinians. The normalization by several Gulf States, led by the Emirates, and Israel has been ongoing for a long period of time, under the table in a way, and this brings it to the surface. In analyzing, I would say it was brought to the surface at this specific time for a very concrete reason. …