Israel’s Measures intended to Prevent Births within Gaza Strip

PCHR, March 9, 2024


On Saturday, 9 March 2024, The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) issued a new report titled, “Israel’s measures Intended to Prevent Births within Gaza Strip.” The report sheds light on Israel’s commission of one of the genocidal acts that is preventing births within a group.

The report lays out the catastrophic conditions facing pregnant women in the Gaza Strip, one of the most vulnerable categories and in need of lifesaving preventive and curative nutrition interventions. Estimates show that there are 50,000 pregnant women in shelters with no access to adequate food and proper healthcare, and 15% of them are likely to experience pregnancy or birth-related complications and need additional medical care that is not available.

Respectively, the report highlights Israel’s measures intended to prevent birth within the Gaza Strip amid lack of protection from military attacks. They are under direct attacks, resulting in killings, injuries, toxic gas inhalations and causing serious psychological and physical harm amid heightened feelings of fear and anxiety and lack of special protection. All of this combined will lead to preventing births and have serious consequences on reproductive health, including a rise in pregnancy pains, miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births.

The report then reviews Israeli violations resulting in provision of poor health services to pregnant women with no safe access. This has forced a lot of pregnant women to give birth in houses or shelters, worsening the birth-related complications, increasing their suffering and leaving them with unprecedented levels of stress.  Pregnant women unable to have safe access to health services are facing a double nightmare as if they need healthcare, they have to walk for a long distance or sometimes feel reluctant to ask for adequate healthcare.

The report also monitors Israel’s imposition of dire living conditions that increase pregnancy complications.  Due to the ongoing aggression, a lot of women became the caretaker of their families because their husbands were killed, injured, arrested or etc. Therefore, women bear greater responsibilities towards their children and families. Meanwhile, the aggression has led to forced mass displacement of civilians in light of the outbreak of epidemics and dire living conditions in shelters along with lack of electricity and water supplies.  All of this combined has increased pregnant and postpartum women’s suffering and health risks during pregnancy and after childbirth.

The report emphasizes that the Israeli serious human rights violations against pregnant women in the Gaza Strip amount to genocidal acts, in particular imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.  It calls upon the international community to exert pressure on Israel to cease all genocidal acts, including imposing measures intended to prevent births within the Gaza Strip; comply with the legally-binding provisional measures order lately issued by the International Court of Justice to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance; and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power in terms of its duty to transfer pregnant women to safe areas.

Read the report

 

March 25, 2024
Film Israelism: Screening and Discussion

Madison Central Library, Room 301
6-9 pm

When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns.

They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.

March 15-20, 2024
Madison Premier of Film Bad River

From 350 Wisconsin:

Since long before 1953, when Line 5 was constructed without the consent of Tribal Nations in its path, the Bad River Band has been fighting for their rights, culture, land, water, sovereignty, and so much more. This is a battle that we at 350 Wisconsin continue to witness every day, led by the Tribe in the most courageous and selfless way possible – for future generations.

The 70-year-old Line 5 pipeline, on the verge of a catastrophic rupture, plows its way through the Bad River reservation in northern Wisconsin putting the Great Lakes, and so much more, at risk. Now, the Tribe is up against Enbridge, a multi-billion dollar multinational oil corporation, to protect Lake Superior, the largest freshwater resource in North America, and all that depends on it.

A new documentary, Bad River, shines a light on the Band’s story of struggle from the beginning and through to current generations. Mary Mazzio, director of the film, says that the Tribe’s resistance against Line 5 is “the newest chapter of a very old story”, a story that is largely unknown to the public.

Watch the trailer

Starting this Friday, March 15th, through March 20th, the film will be in select theaters around the country, including here in Wisconsin. Showings are selling out fast – be sure to reserve your seats soon so you don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity. Fifty percent of all profits will be donated to the Bad River Band. 

More Information
AMC Fitchburg Click the calendar icon above for different dates

Israel must end its occupation of Palestine to stop apartheid and human rights violations

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Palestinians riding on a cart are refected on a mirror in the shape of the map of Palestine in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on February 7, 2024 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the militant Hamas group.
Palestinians riding on a cart are refected on a mirror in the shape of the map of Palestine in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on February 7, 2024 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the militant Hamas group. ©MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images

Israel must end its brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which it has maintained since 1967, said Amnesty International, as public hearings begin at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to examine the legal consequences of Israel’s prolonged occupation.

The public hearings are taking place in the Hague from 19 to 26 February after the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 2022 to request an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the legality of Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and the consequences of Israel’s conduct for other states and the UN. More than 50 states, the African Union, the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation are scheduled to participate in the proceedings.

The world must recognize that ending Israel’s illegal occupation is a prerequisite to stopping the recurrent human rights violations in Israel and the OPT.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

“Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the longest and one of the most deadly military occupations in the world. For decades it has been characterised by widespread and systematic human rights violations against Palestinians. The occupation has also enabled and entrenched Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Over the years, Israel’s military occupation has evolved into a perpetual occupation in flagrant violation of international law.

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“The current conflict raging in the occupied Gaza Strip, where the ICJ has ruled there is a real and imminent risk of genocide, has brought into sharp focus the catastrophic consequences of allowing Israel’s international crimes in the OPT to continue with impunity for so long. The world must recognize that ending Israel’s illegal occupation is a prerequisite to stopping the recurrent human rights violations in Israel and the OPT.”

‘Perpetual’ occupation

Under international humanitarian law, occupation of a territory during a conflict is meant to be temporary. The occupying power is required to administer the territory in the interest of the occupied population and to preserve as much as possible the situation that existed at the beginning of the occupation, including by respecting existing laws and refraining from introducing demographic changes and tampering with the territorial integrity of the occupied territory.

A Palestinian woman stands with others (not pictured) as they gather near an Israeli army checkpoint as they wait to reach their olives fields on the other side of Israel’s separation barrier (background) after they received an special Israeli permission to harvest their olive trees, on October 13, 2021 near Bait A’wa village on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron. ©HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images

Israel’s occupation has failed to align with these basic principles of international humanitarian law. The duration of Israel’s occupation – spanning more than half a century – coupled with the authorities’ illegal official annexation of occupied East Jerusalem and de facto annexation of large swathes of the West Bank through land confiscation and settlement expansion, provide clear evidence that Israel’s intention is for the occupation to be permanent and for the benefit of the occupying power and its own citizens.

The Gaza Strip remains occupied even after the withdrawal of Israeli forces and removal of settlers in 2005 as Israel has retained effective control over the territory and its population, including through its control of its borders, territorial waters, air space, and population registry. For 16 years, the occupation has been experienced in Gaza through Israel’s illegal blockade that has severely restricted movement of people and goods and has devastated Gaza’s economy, and through repeated episodes of hostilities that have killed and injured thousands of civilians and destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure and housing.

“All states must review their relations with Israel to ensure that they are not contributing to sustaining the occupation or the system of apartheid. As European foreign ministers gather in Brussels today, the need to make a clear and united call for an end to Israel’s occupation has never been more urgent,” said Agnès Callamard.

Life under occupation

Palestinians living under Israeli occupation are subjected to a myriad of human rights violations, maintained by an institutionalized regime of systematic domination and oppression. The discriminatory and repressive laws, ostensibly adopted as part of the occupation but effectively serving the objectives of the Israel’s system of apartheid, have fragmented and segregated Palestinians across the OPT, while unlawfully exploiting their resources, arbitrarily restricting their rights and freedoms and controlling almost every aspect of their lives.

Even before the latest hostilities, Palestinians in Gaza had been subjected to numerous Israeli military offensives – at least six between 2008 and 2023 – in addition to an enduring land, air, and sea blockade, which has helped maintain Israel’s effective control and occupation of Gaza. During those offensives, Amnesty International documented a recurrent pattern of unlawful attacks, amounting to war crimes and even crimes against humanity, while the enduring blockade constitutes collective punishment, also a war crime.

For 56 years Palestinians in the OPT have been living trapped and oppressed under Israel’s brutal occupation, subjected to systemic discrimination.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

In the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinians routinely face excessive use of force, unlawful killings, arbitrary arrest, administrative detention, forced displacement, home demolitions, confiscation of land and natural resources, and denial of fundamental rights and freedoms. Israel’s multi-layered closure system, fortified by mass surveillance, physical barriers and legal restrictions, including an illegal wall/fence, hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks, and an arbitrary permit regime, has curtailed Palestinians’ freedom of movement and perpetuated their disenfranchisement.

Among the most emblematic examples of Israel’s outright disregard for international law has been the establishment and incessant spread of Israeli settlements throughout the OPT and the illegal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem immediately after the 1967 war which was constitutionally enshrined in 1980. There are currently at least 300 illegal Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank, including in occupied East Jerusalem, with a population of over 700,000 Israeli settlers.

Palestinian residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem were holding peaceful demonstrations against the imminent forcible eviction on four Palestinian families. Demonstrators were met with excessive and unnecessary force. 5-9 May, 2021. ©Private

“For 56 years Palestinians in the OPT have been living trapped and oppressed under Israel’s brutal occupation, subjected to systemic discrimination. Every aspect of their daily lives is disrupted and controlled by Israeli authorities, who place restrictions on their rights to move around, earn a living, pursue educational and professional aspirations, and enjoy a decent quality of life, as well as depriving them of access to their land and natural resources,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Israel has also continued its vicious land grab policies relentlessly expanding illegal settlements in violation of international law with devastating consequences for Palestinians’ human rights and security. Violent Israeli settlers have been attacking Palestinians for decades with virtually total impunity.”

A draconian system of control

Israel’s draconian system of control over the OPT includes a large network of military checkpoints, fences/ walls and military bases and patrols as well as a string of repressive military orders.

Israel’s control of the OPT’s borders, the population registry, the supply of water, electricity, telecommunication services, humanitarian and development assistance, and the imposition of its currency have had devastating effects on the economic and social developments of the Palestinian people in the OPT.

This control has reached unprecedented levels of cruelty in the Gaza Strip where Israel has maintained a 16-year illegal blockade which has been further tightened since 9 October 2023. The blockade, coupled with Israel’s recurrent military operations have plunged the Gaza Strip into one of the gravest humanitarian and human rights crisis of modern times.

“As the occupying power Israel has an obligation to ensure the protection and welfare of all those residing in the territory it controls. Instead, it has perpetrated gross and systematic human rights violations with impunity. Israel cites the need to maintain security as the reason for its cruel policies. But security can never justify apartheid, illegal annexation and settlements, or war crimes against the protected population. The only way to ensure security for Israelis and Palestinians is to uphold human rights for all,” said Agnès Callamard.

Palestinian emergency services and local citizens search for victims in buildings destroyed during Israeli air raids in the southern Gaza Strip on October 19, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza. Gazans are evacuating to the south as advised by the Israeli government, ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive. ©Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Ending the occupation would mean restoring Palestinians’ rights by lifting the brutal blockade on Gaza, dismantling Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and reversing its illegal annexation. It would allow Palestinians to move freely in the areas where they live and allow families separated by different identification legal statuses – such as the Jerusalem residency and West Bank or Gaza Strip – to be reunited. It would alleviate mass suffering and end widescale human rights violations.

It would also contribute to tackling one of the root causes of the recurrent violence and war crimes against Israelis, thus helping to improve human rights protection and secure justice and reparation for victims on all sides.

Background

On 30 December 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/77/247, in which, it requested the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on key questions regarding the legal consequences arising from its prolonged occupation, and settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, how the policies and practices of Israel affect the legal status of the occupation and what legal consequences arise for all states and the UN from this status.

The Court is expected to issue its advisory opinion later this year.

For six decades, Amnesty International has been documenting how Israeli forces have committed grave human rights violations in the OPT with impunity.  In 2022, the organization issued Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity, a report which highlights the entrenched role that Israel’s military and its occupation have had in perpetuating the system of apartheid. Many of the report’s findings and recommendations underline the urgent need for an end to Israel’s occupation to remove the environment that enables the commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

February 15, 2024
Dane County Board Resolutions

Update February 15, 2024
The substitute Resolution 314 (Miles) on Antisemitism and Resolution 321 on Islamophobia passed unanimously. Resolution 333 Calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza passed with Jeff Weigand voting no and Dave Ripp abstaining.

From Kierstin Huelsemann, Dane County Board of Supervisors District 27:

    February 9, 2024

    Hello. I am reaching out in hopes that you will support the following Resolutions which will be discussed this week by the Dane County Board’s Executive Committee and the board as a whole.

    • 2023 RES-314, CONDEMNING ANTISEMITISM IN THE DANE COUNTY COMMUNITY AND BEYOND
      (Support either the Huelsemann or Miles Sub)
    • 2023 RES-321, CONDEMNING ISLAMOPHOBIA IN THE DANE COUNTY COMMUNITY AND BEYOND
    • 2023 RES-333, CALLING FOR A CEASEFIRE IN GAZA

    Executive Committee Meeting
    Thursday, February 15, 2024 5:00 PM
    Attend in person at the City County Building, Room 354
    or Register by 4:30 pm to attend via zoom.

    County Board Meeting
    Thursday, February 15, 2024 7:00 PM
    Attend in person at the City County Building, Room 201
    or Register by 6:30 pm to attend via zoom.

    OR you can email the board with your comments and support.

Islamophobia Will Poison This Country

The U.S. media is once again presenting the vicious dehumanizing caricatures that make it easier to oppress and wage war on people.

Alex Skopic and Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, 07 February 2024

This article was adapted from an item in the Current Affairs Biweekly News Briefing. Subscribe today!

One of the most disturbing things about our society—we’re not alone in this—is how easily our culture slips quickly into promoting violent bigotry. Usually what happens is this: a tiny number of people who are members of a particular demographic group carry out some outrageous act, and then the group as a whole is stigmatized and made to be feared even though nearly everyone in the group had nothing to do with the outrageous act whatsoever.

After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, for instance, anti-Japanese bigotry exploded. The Democratic president, known for his compassionate social democratic politics, rounded up around 125,000 Japanese Americans, the vast majority of the population living on the U.S. mainland at the time, and put them into internment camps. The Japanese were treated as subhumans—even Dr. Seuss started drawing grotesque racist caricatures of them—and the U.S. military had no hesitation in vaporizing Japanese civilian populations. (“There are no civilians in Japan,” declared an Air Force intelligence officer, who deemed the entire population a “legitimate military target,” a view that is defended by some to this day.) As John Dower writes in War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

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They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart—and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the “good German” in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies…. The racist code words and imagery that accompanied the war in Asia were often exceedingly graphic and contemptuous. The Western Allies, for example, consistently emphasized the “subhuman” nature of the Japanese, routinely turning to images of apes and vermin to convey this. With more tempered disdain, they portrayed the Japanese as inherently inferior men and women who had to be understood in terms of primitivism, childishness, and collective mental and emotional deficiency. Cartoonists, songwriters, filmmakers, war correspondents, and the mass media in general all seized on these images…. An endless stream of evidence ranging from atrocities to suicidal tactics could be cited…. to substantiate the belief that the Japanese were a uniquely contemptible and formidable foe who deserved no mercy and virtually demanded extermination.  

Japanese nationalists dehumanized their own enemies in the same way, of course, perpetuating myths of Japanese racial superiority. These kinds of stories about the big scary Other are ubiquitous in times of war. George Orwell observed in 1937 that “Every war is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” Given this fact, Orwell said that our “essential job is to get people to recognize war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda.” Looking back we can recognize it in the way Germans were portrayed during World War I—one infamous U.S. Army poster depicted Germany as an ape wielding a bloodstained club, with the caption “DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE”—and in the treatment of Muslims after 9/11.

Khaled Beydoun, a scholar who studies Islamophobia around the world, spoke to Current Affairs last year about how the hatred and suspicion of Muslims spread along with the U.S. “war on terror.” He spoke, for instance, to a U.S. soldier who signed up to fight in Iraq because he believed he was going to fight a terrible enemy that had attacked the country. Instead, he found himself destroying a country whose people had never attacked the U.S. at all. Afterwards, he felt betrayed by his country, and Beydoun reflected on how effective propaganda can be:

“It’s really frightening how very good men, like the man I spoke to in the book, can be made into monsters with a scintilla of propaganda. When I sat across from this guy, he and I could be friends. We liked the same things. We live 10 miles away from one another. He was sort of an alpha male, and I say that in a benign way, where his objective was to just take care of his family and his community, and he had a love for his country. Those are beautiful things to be commended. But the way in which the media was disseminating this violent, vile information about Muslims—people like me, somebody who sat across him at the table—mobilized him to want to enlist in a war in a place that he had no knowledge of. He just knew that he wanted to defend his country and wanted vengeance, and that these Muslims, these Arabs, who were a world away, were the culprits of the 9/11 terror attacks…. [Afterward] he realized how the war had broken people like him, and how it told lies about people like me.”

By now, we have seen the same processes enough times to understand how they work, and we should be on our guard. We know that war drives people crazy. They see the body counts on their own side, and they want revenge, and empathy for the “other side” is in short supply. They see the enemy as monstrous and their own actions as purely defensive. They aren’t in the mood to make too many distinctions between civilians and soldiers on the other side.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 of last year, these familiar processes have consumed Israel completely. Even as Israel starves Gaza to death and blows thousands of children to pieces, the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis believe their government is either using the right amount of force or (!) not enough force. (The opinions of Arab Israelis are very different.) For these Israelis, the suffering of their own people is much more significant than the suffering of Palestinians.

That’s true in U.S. media, too. We know that Palestinian deaths are given a lot less weight than Israeli deaths in the American media, and even the liberal Washington Post ran (before deleting, under pressure) a nasty propaganda cartoon showing a swarthy Hamas terrorist strapping babies to his body. This past week, the major newspapers and TV networks hit a new low, with three especially egregious cases.

First was the Wall Street Journal, which ran an op-ed on February 2 calling Dearborn, Michigan, “America’s Jihad Capital.” Given the inflammatory title, you might think the author—one Steven Stalinsky—had uncovered evidence that some kind of political violence or “holy war,” as the word “jihad” is often interpreted in the West, was going on in Dearborn. But that’s not the case. Instead, Stalinsky spent 800 words clutching his pearls about the fact that—shockingly enough—some Muslims in Michigan don’t like Israel very much. The editorial is a masterpiece of dishonesty and Islamophobic fearmongering. It cherrypicks isolated expressions of anger, like when one imam said that Israel’s actions have filled his congregation with “fire in our hearts that will burn that state” and pretends they’re representative of the Michigan Muslim community as a whole, spinning them as evidence of “local enthusiasm for jihad.” It conflates simple political statements such as “America is a terrorist state”—which is straightforwardly true, if we apply the dictionary definition of “terrorism” consistently—with “open support for Hamas.” The Wall Street Journal has been on a roll lately, using the headline “Chicago Votes for Hamas” when that city called for a ceasefire in Gaza at the end of January. But Stalinsky’s rhetoric is irresponsible even by the Journal’s standards. The Detroit Free Press reports that, since the article was published, “swarms of online hate” have been directed toward Dearborn’s Muslim community, leading Mayor Abdullah Hammoud to ramp up security around mosques and other places of worship. (Not that more police will necessarily help, since U.S. law enforcement has a well-documented Islamophobia problem of its own.) All of this is a predictable consequence of publishing what amounts to a racist incitement, and any editor with even the slightest professional competence or ethics would have known better.

Meanwhile, a handful of whistleblowers at CNN have confirmed what was already fairly obvious: that the network has a systematic anti-Palestinian bias in its coverage. Summing up the testimonies of six anonymous staffers, The Guardian reports that CNN has “tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives” at an institutional level, while “Israeli official statements are often quickly cleared and make it on air on the principle that they are to be trusted at face value, seemingly rubber-stamped for broadcast….” The principle of journalistic neutrality in reporting on a conflict, it seems, has been disregarded. In particular, CNN journalists say they’ve been instructed to include the words “Hamas-controlled” any time they cite statistics from the Gaza Ministry of Health, implicitly casting doubt on the legitimacy of civilian death tolls from the region, even though the Ministry’s figures have held up to scrutiny from numerous outside observers, including Israel itself. (Israel has sometimes even suggested that Israeli bombs have been flattening bakeries and apartment blocks without killing any innocent children at all.) They also report that memos have been circulated around the newsroom instructing them to always emphasize Hamas as the “cause of this current conflict,” ignoring the decades of Israeli occupation and violence in Palestine before October 7. At the same time, prominent anchors like Anderson Cooper have allowed current and former Israeli officials, like ex-Mossad leader Rami Igra, to say blatantly inflammatory things like “the non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip is really a nonexistent term” without pushback during interviews. At this point, unless dramatic changes are made, there’s little choice but to regard CNN’s Gaza coverage as ethically compromised and unreliable and to treat it accordingly.

Finally, in a column called “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom,” notorious New York Times writer and Iraq War booster Thomas Friedman has decided it’s a good idea to compare a variety of Muslim and Arab people to parasitic insects. The column is so breathtakingly racist, it seems like something out of a Victorian newspaper—but don’t take our word for it, read Friedman in his own words:

Iran is to geopolitics what a recently discovered species of parasitoid wasp is to nature. What does this parasitoid wasp do? According to Science Daily, the wasp “injects its eggs into live caterpillars, and the baby wasp larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside out, bursting out once they have eaten their fill.” Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today? They are the caterpillars. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the wasp. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah are the eggs that hatch inside the host—Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq—and eat it from the inside out. We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle.

What can you even say to something like this? It’s well-known that comparing your political enemies to rats and insects is a dehumanizing tactic, just as it was in the lead-up to Japanese internment. Certainly Friedman, who was educated at Brandeis and the University of Oxford, knows it—and yet here he is, spewing this rhetoric anyway. The late Edward Said had him dead to rights in 1989, when he described Friedman’s writing as a “threadbare repertoire of often racist clichés.” Nothing has changed. If anything, the New York Times has gotten worse, seemingly not bothering to edit the excretions of its tenured staff whatsoever. Just like in Dearborn, there are real-world consequences to promoting this kind of imagery in the paper of record. Friedman’s argument that “setting fire to the whole jungle” is the only way to kill the Iranian “wasp” is an argument for unrestrained war in the Middle East, and unfortunately many political leaders still read the New York Times. 

History shows that dehumanization takes hold easily, and its effects are deadly. At its worst, it is the road to concentration camps, gas chambers, and mass executions. We have to always be on guard against it, especially during times when war is causing a suspension of people’s usual critical faculties. It’s disgusting, but not surprising, to see even liberal papers printing, without a second thought, analysis that treats Iranians as insects. But one of the crucial lessons that history offers is that societies don’t notice themselves heading into this kind of moral abyss. Only the victims do. But their cries can’t be heard because they’re treated as menacing oppressors. Islamophobia, like all forms of bigotry, is poison to the soul of this country and portends terrible consequences for Muslims around the world. We have to fight against it—and remember that it won’t be the last time.

Simone Zimmerman and Israelism with Mehdi Hasan

Rent Israelism through Jan 1, 2024: https://bit.ly/rentisraelism

About the film
When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.

December 8 – 11, 2023
Film Israelism Worldwide Rental

Israelism

Hosted by Tikkun Olam Productions
On-demand
Dec 8, 1:00 AM EST – Dec 11, 1:00 AM EST
$5 for a 24 hour rental
Get Tickets

Now available to rent WORLDWIDE for the first time, for a limited time, only through Sunday, December 10th. After the film, watch Q&As with our film’s directors and main subjects:

    Watch Q&A with Co-Directors Erin Axelman & Sam Eilertsen, along with Rabbi Miriam Grossman and Unsettled podcast producer Ilana Levinson: https://youtu.be/6RMEQYNBytM

    Watch Q&A with main film subject Simone Zimmerman, along with Judaism Unbound podcast host Rabbi Lex Rofeberg: https://youtu.be/owg8iRvjse8

Featured recently in the NYT, The Guardian, and The Forward.

About the film
When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns. They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity.

Press coverage of Israelism

Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 1h 24m
Released: 2023
Director: Erin Axelman, Sam Eilertsen
Producer: Daniel Chalfen, Nadia Saah
 

TAA Statement on Palestine: “A Call for Palestinian Liberation”

 
TAA Statement on Palestine: “A Call for Palestinian Liberation”

The following statement was written and approved by the general membership of the TAA on November 15th, 2023.

A Call for Palestinian liberation

WHEREAS The Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA; AFT [American Federation of Teachers] Local 3220) recognizes that the Zionist Israeli state is a reactionary tool of Western imperialism, funded for their own cynical aims. Israel can accurately be described as an apartheid state, as documented by many human rights experts and organizations, including UN officials, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International agree with this description.

WHEREAS Israel’s response to Hamas’ attack has been indiscriminate and disproportionate violence toward Palestinians. As of November 13, 2023, Israel has murdered over 11,000 Palestinians, nearly half being children. Upon his recent resignation, the Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, stated that Israel’s actions are “a textbook case of genocide.”

WHEREAS Israel’s bombing campaign has been carried out without regard for the lives of hostages, further exposing the cynicism of justifications based on the October 7 attack. Similarly, American liberal and progressive politicians continue to cry crocodile tears for the victims of Hamas and remain silent on the victims of Netanyahu.

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WHEREAS Israel’s genocidal attacks are exacerbating the inhumane living conditions and mass unemployment in Gaza. The civilians of Palestine deserve fundamental human rights, including, but not limited to, security, freedom from foreign occupation, access to housing, clean water, healthcare, and employment. 

WHEREAS The October 9 press release from AFT National, titled, “US Education Leaders Condemn Hamas Attack, Stand with Israeli People,” and the resolution recently adopted by [American Federation of Teachers]–Wisconsin (AFT–W) inadequately condemn Israel’s colonialist regime and fail to acknowledge colonialism as the root cause of the current conflict. These statements fail to use the terms, “colonialism,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “genocide” to characterize Israel and its actions, which is out of step with several human rights experts/organizations and undermines the severity of Israel’s oppression. Furthermore, these statements fail to call on the US government to halt the sale and funding of arms for Israeli forces. Unless we address the core of this conflict and end our support for the Israeli offensive, the US will remain complicit in the occupation and genocide in Palestine. Given the status quo of US support for Israel’s oppression of Palestine, the shortcomings of AFT’s statements make them pro-Israel and anti-Palestine by default. Therefore, be it;

RESOLVED The TAA considers Israeli and Western imperialism ultimately responsible for the recent violence.

RESOLVED The TAA condemns Israel’s settler colonialism, apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Palestine. We condemn Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which has been a death sentence for thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and has displaced over a million more. This collective lethal punishment breaks international law and constitutes war crimes.

RESOLVED We call for the collective liberation of the Palestinian people from Israeli oppression. 

RESOLVED We stand in solidarity with the following people:

  1. The people of Palestine, who have suffered at the hands of US, British, and Israeli imperialism for over 100 years;
  2. Palestinian trade unions who have called on the international working class to take action in the face of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the mass killing of the Palestinian people;
  3. Israeli workers and unions who break with their ruling class to stand unconditionally on the side of the oppressed;
  4. The many Jewish workers around the world who condemn Zionism and stand steadfast with Palestinians;
  5. Victims of oppression on the basis of religion or ethnicity around the world including victims of rising islamophobia and antisemitism.

RESOLVED We demand the US government and the Biden administration use all available diplomatic means to end the genocide of Palestinians, including but not limited to ending all funding and arms sales to the Israeli government. We must immediately end our moral and material support for Israel’s human rights abuses and war crimes.

RESOLVED We condemn the US veto of a ceasefire resolution brought forward by Brazil to the UN Security Council to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. We are appalled that the US was the only country to veto the resolution. Although a ceasefire doesn’t go nearly far enough, this is the bare minimum that we expect from the UN.

RESOLVED We call on workers in the US to organize to halt any production and shipment of weapons to Israel. Organized action and the building of mass movements by the international working class will be necessary to end the occupation. We should take inspiration from the two Intifadas, as well as the American workers who have already physically obstructed the shipment of arms to Israel from ports in the Northwest.

RESOLVED We demand that the University of Wisconsin system direct the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) to divest the ~$512 million (as of 2021) that the UW system has invested in BlackRock, the massive US-based asset manager that owns large portions of weapon manufacturers and military contractors such as Boeing ($5.42 billion), Lockheed Martin ($5.13 billion), Northrop Grumman ($3.06 billion), and General Dynamics ($2.47 billion). These US companies manufacture the weapons, jets, and surveillance systems that the Israeli government uses to kill Palestinians.

RESOLVED We demand that AFT retract its endorsement of genocide enabler Joe Biden for US president in 2024 given his administration’s complicity in war crimes. He is a particularly ruthless cheerleader of Israeli war crimes, even among the American ruling class. The same should be done for all endorsements of anti-Palestine politicians.

RESOLVED The TAA action commits to the following actions:

  1. Mobilize our membership to participate in rallies, protests, and marches in support of Palestine, including but not limited to: hosting events, amplifying Palestinian voices (including by supporting SJP events and by supporting the demands of the BDS movement in a reiteration of the TAA’s existing position), and to contact representatives in support of a ceasefire in Gaza and for collective liberation for the Palestinian people.
  2. Continue to recognize that an injury to one is an injury to all, and that the American working class will never be free while Palestine is in chains;
  3. Refuse to support politicians and parties that oppose Palestinian liberation;
  4. Call on the labor movement as a whole to mobilize its resources to fight American imperialism on all fronts.
  5. Protect and support all workers and organizations (such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Madison for Palestine) who face retaliation due to their support for Palestinian liberation.

Sources:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/israel-revises-death-toll-from-october-7-hamas-attack-to-1200-people

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/10/un-expert-warns-new-instance-mass-ethnic-cleansing-palestinians-calls

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/11/13/israel-hamas-war-live-gazas-two-largest-hospitals-shut-amid-nonstop-raids#:~:text=More%20than%2011%2C200%20Palestinians%20have,stands%20at%20more%20than%201%2C200.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/un-official-resigns-israel-hamas-war-palestine-new-york

https://www.aft.org/press-release/us-education-leaders-condemn-hamas-attack-stand-israeli-people

https://progressive.international/wire/2023-10-16-an-urgent-call-from-palestinian-trade-unions-end-all-complicity-stop-arming-israel/en

https://www.wisconsin.edu/trust-funds/download/UW-System-Trust-Funds-Fact-Sheet-As-Of-December-31,-2021.pdf

https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=BA&subView=institutional

https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=GD&subView=institutional

https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=LMT&subView=institutional

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-sped-delivery-of-1000-bombs-to-israel/

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-il/who-we-are.html

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/local/pittsfield-general-dynamics-israel-hamas-palestinians-war-berkshire-communists-activists/article_ec204d1c-6ee4-11ee-8e1e-cb6121da994b.html

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israel-officially-asks-us-to-send-over-25-more-f-35-fighter-jets/#:~:text=The%20additional%2025%20aircraft%2C%20to,US%20military%20aid%20to%20Israel

https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=NOC&subView=institutional

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/11/10/activists-boycott-pro-israel-brands-what-should-marketers-do-next

December 4, 2023
Dreams and Displacement in Afghanistan

Information and Registration
4 -5 pm

Join investigative reporter and Pulitzer Center grantee May Jeong for a discussion of her experiences reporting from Afghanistan.

In preparation for this talk, attendees are encouraged to watch Afghan Dreamers, a documentary about an all-girls robotics team from Afghanistan and their fate as the Taliban came to power. The film is teen friendly and can be used in the classroom. You can view the trailer here . The film is currently streaming on Paramount+

Sponsored by IRIS NRC, Cosponsored by the Middle East Studies Program