The Israeli government makes life unsafe for Jews

  A man named Mohamed Soliman is charged with multiple crimes relating to a brutal Molotov cocktail attack on people in Boulder, Colorado, who were demonstrating in favor of Israeli hostages in Gaza. Some of the victims suffered second- and third-degree burns, but all of them are expected to survive. Soliman yelled “Free Palestine” as he lobbed his firebombs into the crowd.

  It goes without saying that Soliman is being accused of antisemitism. But the discomforting fact is that the Israeli government bears responsibility for much of the antisemitism here in the United States and the rest of the world.

Bias hiding in plain sight: Decades of analyses suggest US media skews anti-Palestinian

  News organizations are often accused of lacking impartiality when covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In November 2023, over 750 journalists signed an open letter alleging bias in U.S. newsrooms against Palestinians in the reporting of the ongoing fighting in the Gaza strip.

  More recently, two articles in respected U.S. newspapers highlight the debate over bias.

Israeli invasion of Gaza likely to resemble past difficult battles in Iraq and Syria

  Israel appears to be preparing for the next phase of its military operation: a ground campaign to “crush and destroy” Hamas, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put it.

  Israel has signaled that it might be willing to delay an invasion – but not call it off entirely – if Hamas releases more hostages. But that means an invasion is still very likely, which raises questions about how Hamas has prepared for a ground invasion and whether Israel is prepared for what could be a long, drawn-out fight.

The Gaza Strip − why the history of the densely populated enclave is key to understanding the current conflict

  The focus on conflict in the Middle East has again returned to the Gaza Strip, with Israel’s defense minister ordering a “complete siege” of the Palestinian enclave.

  The military operation, which involves extensive bombing of residences, follows a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023 by Hamas militants who infiltrated Israel from Gaza and killed more than 900 Israelis. In reprisal airstrikes, the Israeli military has killed over 800 Gazans. And that figure could escalate in the coming days. Meanwhile, an order to cut off all food, electricity, and water to Gaza will only worsen the plight of residents in what has been called the “world’s largest open-air prison.”

DeSantis’ ‘war on woke’ looks a lot like attempts by other countries to deny and rewrite history

  A Florida law that took effect on July 1, 2023 restricts how educators in the state’s public colleges and universities can teach about the racial oppression that African Americans have faced in the United States.

  Specifically, SB 266 forbids professors to teach that systemic racism is “inherent in the institutions of the United States.” Similarly, they cannot teach that it was designed “to maintain social, political and economic inequities.”

On its 75th birthday, Israel still can’t agree on what it means to be a Jewish state and a democracy

  As Israel celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding, and nearly a century and a half after the first Zionists came to Palestine from Europe, the core tension behind the country’s establishment – whether a Jewish state could be a democratic state, whether Zionism could accommodate pluralism – is more obvious than ever.

  Israel today is a military powerhouse and one of 38 members of the influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, formed in 1961 to promote cooperation among democratic, free-market-oriented governments.

How media reports of ‘clashes’ mislead Americans about Israeli-Palestinian violence

  Israeli police attacked mourners carrying the coffin of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 13, 2022, beating pallbearers with batons and kicking them when they fell to the ground.

  Yet those who skimmed the headlines of initial reports from several U.S. media outlets may have been left with a different impression of what happened.

Making peace between Israelis and Palestinians – is now the time for a different approach?

  The violence in May 2021 between Israelis and Palestinians was the latest deadly eruption of a decadeslong conflict that has proved immune to attempts at forging a comprehensive peace. We asked two Middle East experts to assess what can be done now to promote peace. Scholars Raslan Ibrahim, assistant professor of political science and international relations at the State University of New York at Geneseo, and David Mednicoff, chair of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, both imagine there’s a way forward, though their scenarios are very different.

Property disputes in Israel come with a complicated back story – and tend to end with Palestinian dispossession

  The threat of violence in Israel is never far from the surface. It is sustained and fueled by what is at the core of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: land and property ownership.

  A key component in the most recent violence – 11 days in which 282 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs or bullets and 13 Israelis killed by Hamas rockets from Gaza – was tension following efforts by Jewish settlers to evict Palestinians from their homes in the urban neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem.

Opposing Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic

  Defenders of the Israeli government’s policies in the Middle East, especially with respect to the Palestinians, are increasingly going on the attack by pointing out that some critics of the Israeli state are also anti-Semitic. A good example is the May 24 article “Anti-Zionism Isn’t Anti-Semitism? Someone Didn’t Get the Memo” by New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. Stephens cites example after example of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Both Israel and Hamas are aiming to look strong instead of finding a way out of their endless war

  Israel and Hamas are locked in ever-escalating rounds of violence.

  This is not new. Every few years, large-scale violence erupts for a few days or weeks and ends with a temporary ceasefire that essentially returns the situation to the same depressing status quo: The Gaza Strip besieged and devastated and the adjacent Israeli population in constant fear of the next attack as well.

  Though this is far from a symmetric conflict – Israel has vastly more military resources than Hamas – it is traumatic on both sides.

Israeli and U.S. destruction of freedom of travel

  Proponents of trade and immigration controls oftentimes forget that there is another factor that comes with their socialist immigration system, that is, in addition to the death, suffering, police state, and destruction of the rights of economic liberty, liberty of contract, freedom of association, and private ownership of property. That factor is the destruction of freedom of travel, another fundamental, natural God-given right that adheres in all people everywhere and that preexists all governments.

  We are reminded of this fact in a current dust-up involving two members of Congress and the Israeli government, which, like the U.S. government, has a policy of governmentally-controlled borders. The two members of Congress are Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom are Democrats who have come out publicly in favor of the boycott Israel movement owing to the Israeli government’s longtime mistreatment of Palestinians.

Punishing Congress members for free speech violates First Amendment

  President Trump’s encouragement of a decision Thursday by Israel to bar two U.S. Congress members because of their alleged anti-Israel views ought to outrage all Americans — irrespective of domestic or international politics.

  The essence of our First Amendment freedoms is the government may not inhibit or punish us for our speech, regardless of the content of that speech, with few exceptions, generally tied to wartime considerations, child pornography, or causing immediate harm to others.

  On Thursday, Trump hailed the action by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu — whom Trump publicly endorsed for re-election some weeks ago — to bar Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from a planned visit. Israel later said it would allow Tlaib to visit her 90-year-old Palestinian grandmother, who lives in the occupied West Bank. Tlaib, in turn, chose not to make the trip, citing “oppressive conditions.”

Abolish foreign aid, all of it

  As most everyone knows, the federal government is now in debt to the tune of more than $22 trillion. Since federal officials are now spending, on an annual basis, around a trillion dollars more than what they are bringing in with taxes, that is going to raise the federal debt by a trillion dollars every year. We are reminded of this phenomenon by the periodic debate on whether Congress should raise the debt ceiling, an implicit acknowledgment that too much federal debt is not a good thing, especially since the feds will ultimately tax the American people to pay back what they have borrowed to fund their welfare-warfare state.

  On the welfare-state side, the big-ticket items are Social Security and Medicare, the two crown jewels of the American welfare state. Abolishing them would go a long way toward resolving the fiscal problem.

Strengthening the foundations of U.S.-Israel ties at a time of change in the Middle East

  Tensions between the United States and Israel soared earlier this month in the aftermath of the announcement of the framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. President Barack Obama declared that “a historic understanding with Iran” had been reached, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in stark contrast, stated that the understandings reached in Lausanne “threaten the survival of Israel.” Media outlets rushed to report on a tense telephone conversation between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu and the wide gaps that exist between the leaders’ positions on the Iran issue. This divide on Iran is just the latest in a series of tumultuous episodes between the two countries.

Sheldon Richman: The ominous Republican hold on Congress

  As we face the new year, the biggest concern for peace lovers is Republican control of the U.S. Senate. While Republican votes don’t reach the key number 60, members of the GOP will still be in a strong position to push their belligerent global agenda.

  I don’t mean to overstate the danger. After all, the Democrats were hardly better. But those who abhor war will awaken each day knowing that hawkish Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and their ilk are in control.

Sheldon Richman: Congress must not cede its war power to Israel

  The American people should know that pending right now in Congress is a bipartisan bill that would virtually commit the United States to go to war against Iran if Israel attacks the Islamic Republic. "The bill outsources any decision about resort to military action to the government of Israel," Columbia University Iran expert Gary Sick wrote to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in protest, one of the bill’s principal sponsors.

  The mind boggles at the thought that Congress would let a foreign government decide when America goes to war, so here is the language (PDF):

Sheldon Richman: Obama’s willful foreign-policy blindness

  Republicans are upset about President Obama’s May 23 foreign-policy address, yet politics aside, it’s hard to say why. “We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News Sunday.

  But four days later in his Memorial Day remarks, Obama said, “Our nation is still at war.”

Matthew Duss: U.N. status upgrade for Palestine presents new dynamic

  This week the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly—138 countries in favor, 9 opposed, and 41 abstaining—to upgrade the status of Palestine from “non-member observer entity” to “non-member observer state.” That the measure passed was not a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was the number of close U.S. partners—particularly members of the European Union—who either voted for the resolution or abstained.

  While the conventional wisdom holds that the status upgrade is largely symbolic, it is important to understand that the symbolism serves a political purpose. As Palestinian leaders explain it, the U.N. bid was undertaken in large part out of frustration with the failure of the U.S.-led peace process of the past several years to produce tangible progress toward the end of occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state.