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.”

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.

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.”

Jacob G. Hornberger: Time to end foreign aid to Israel (and everyone else)

  Given the recent shooting of unarmed Palestinian protestors at the hands of Israeli soldiers, leaving 58 people killed and 2,700 injured, isn’t it time for the American people to be asking the following question about the role of the federal government in the lives of the American people: Why should any American be forced to subsidize the salaries of the Israeli soldiers who did the shooting and the rifles and bullets they used in the massacre?

  I am referring, of course, to “foreign aid,” the federal program by which American citizens are forced to fund foreign regimes that many would choose not to fund if they had a choice.

  Even those who support the deadly mayhem in Gaza nonetheless would be hard-pressed to explain why anyone should be forced to fund something that violates his own conscience.

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.