Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August/September 2021, p. 5
Publishers’ Page
“Damn Them All”
Says Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy in response to Israel’s “sadistic decision not to release Khalida Jarrar from prison to attend her daughter’s funeral.” Suha Jarrar, 31, who worked for the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, was recently found dead, apparently from cardiac arrest. Her mother heard the news of her child’s death on the radio. “Damn this new government, which presumed to herald a change, and none of whose ministers acted to oppose the evil institutions that decided to leave Jarrar in prison....Jarrar is a political prisoner. After a sequence of arrests without trial, she was sentenced to two years in prison for ‘belonging to an illegal organization,’ in a land where there is no organization that is permitted to Palestinians.” Levy notes that the authorities who did this are also parents. “All that was needed was...
A Tiny Degree of Humanity.”
Such dignity has also not been extended to the residents of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan in East Jerusalem, where the joint effort by settlers and the Israeli state to forcibly displace thousands of people continues. In July, Israel demolished homes in Silwan, to facilitate the construction of a biblical theme park. Such a move violates the core teachings of the Bible, and of course, modern international law. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Israel. We encourage all readers to use the postcard in this issue to demand that the U.S. government stop funding Israel as long as its apartheid policies, such as the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, continue.
A Taboo Issue
U.S. Professor Cornel West announced his resignation from Harvard University’s Divinity School on June 30 by posting his blistering resignation letter on Twitter. West is certain his criticism of Israel is the principal reason he was denied tenure and faced discrimination. On the Tight Rope podcast, he said speaking about Israel’s occupation of Palestine “is a taboo issue among certain circles in high places.” The professor has repeatedly called for Harvard to divest $200 million it has invested in companies he describes as “complicit in the Israeli occupation.” In his letter, West tells the “unvarnished truth about the decadence in our market-driven universities! Let us bear witness against this spiritual rot!” We call on our readers to support Professor West and others who take a moral stand and confront donors and institutions with a Zionist agenda.
AIPAC Cancels its 2022 Gathering
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recently announced they are cancelling their 2022 conference, citing the pandemic. While the group will undoubtedly continue to work behind the scenes, the strength of AIPAC’s annual event has always been the organization’s ability to mobilize nearly 20,000 people to physically lobby on Capitol Hill. As Israel lobby expert Grant F. Smith has noted, “The core purpose of the gathering is keeping members of Congress in line....The amount AIPAC discloses that it spends on its own dozen or so professional lobbyists is quite small compared to the expenditures on the policy conference, and there is a reason for that.” In the void of the AIPAC conference, we hope members of Congress come to hear a more representative sample of opinions about Israel and Palestine.
Conference on Israeli Apartheid
AIPAC is cancelling its public events, but we continue to push forward virtually—and soon physically! The Washington Report and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) cosponsored a two-day web-based conference titled “End U.S. Support for Israeli Apartheid?” on April 17 and April 24, 2021. In this issue, pp. 40-51, as well as the previous June/July and upcoming issue, we edited and condensed for clarity some of these talks. Also consider attending the March 3 and 4, 2022 conference “Transcending the Israel Lobby at Home and Abroad.” Let’s get together and talk about how to end U.S. aid for apartheid Israel once and for all.
Calling All Angels!
We’re more than half way through the year and usually by now our Choir of Angels fills almost two pages. Please don’t wait for our “Donation Appeal” to arrive in your mailbox! (It hasn’t been written!!) To be honest, we’ve had a really hard time keeping up with breaking news in nearly every part of the Middle East this summer and deciding which articles to print in each issue. Which webinars do our small staff select to cover? We consider the Washington Report the record keeper that readers can turn to in the future when they’re trying to figure out what really happened. Will Middle East history be written by the current victors, colonists and corporate media, or the journalists who report on the people who patiently or impatiently demand their rights and a world that upholds international law? Help us continue to publish the Washington Report and support the best little Middle East bookstore in North America.
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