West Bank

For Jews engaged in Palestine solidarity work, what might be gained by refusing excommunication from our own communities? Arielle Angel People marching in the annual Celebrate Israel parade in New York, June 3rd, 2018. Photo: Andres Kudacki/AP Photo This article appears in our Fall 2021 issue. Subscribe to receive the latest issue in your mailbox. Responsa is an editorial column written by members of the Jewish Currents staff and reflects a collective discussion. This responsa appears in our Fall 2021 issue. Subscribe now to receive a copy in your mailbox.AMID THE LATEST CONFLAGRATION in Israel/Palestine, we heard frequently from liberal Zionist readers who were deeply troubled by our coverage. In a representa...

IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG  Najia Bisharat (left) holds her baby during her arrest near Khirbet Makhoul, on Monday. Credit: Oded Paporish The mother of the three-month-old infant waited eight hours for an interpreter to arrive for her interrogation… a few days earlier she had been attacked by Israeli settlers… By Hagar Shezaf, reposted from Ha’aretz Israeli police officers prevented a detained Palestinian woman from breastfeeding her three-month-old daughter for approximately four hours on Monday. The woman, Najia Bisharat, was suspected of throwing rocks at an Israeli vehicle but was released without restrictive conditions at the end of her questioning. The police did not explain why Bisharat was denied permission to breastfeed her daughter for hours. A resident of the v...

For religious Zionist settlers in the South Hebron Hills, attacks on Palestinians have become a Shabbat afternoon pastime. Maya Rosen The ruins of a house in the Palestinian village of Mufagara in the West Bank, burned by religious Zionist settlers on Shabbat, June 27th, 2021. Photo: Emily Glick WHEN I TURN MY PHONE BACK ON after Shabbat ends, I can measure the violence of the day by the number of unread messages that appear on my screen. Sitting in my home in Jerusalem, I scroll through dispatches from friends in the South Hebron Hills, a rural area in the southern West Bank, describing the day’s mob attack by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. If I have just a few dozen texts, then the encounter probably consisted of masked settlers throwing rocks at Pale...

IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG  Israeli police brutality and impunity tend to go hand in hand. Pictured: Israeli police clear protesters from the plaza in front of the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem’s Old City, last month.) A video from the scene shows an Israeli police officer forcefully hitting a Palestinian man with a bat. The Palestinian’s crime: ID’ing another officer who had assaulted him. Israeli officials promise an “investigation.” by Nir Hasson, reposted from Ha’aretz, October 13, 2021 [NOTE: police brutality against Palestinians, at the hands of Israeli officers, is an everyday occurrence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Occasionally an incident reaches Israeli newspapers.] A Jerusalem police officer beat up on Tuesday a Palestinian man who complaine...

Israeli lawmaker regrets that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was not completed IFAMERICANSKNEW.ORG  Member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich continues to stir Israel’s anti-Palestinian racism, this time promoting the horrors of the Nakba. Plenty of Israel partisans deny or explain away the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians c.1948 – but Israeli political leader Bezalel Smotrich openly admits it, and wishes it had gone further. by Michael F. Brown, reposted from Electronic Intifada, October 15, 2021 Bezalel Smotrich, an Israeli lawmaker, has admitted what any serious historian, and every Palestinian, already knows: The ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias before and after Israel was establish...

Israeli forces have killed 39 Palestinian men, women, & children since May ALISON WEIR   Mohammad Mo’ayyad Bahjat Abu Sara, 11, a Palestinian sixth grade student. He was was shot dead by Israeli forces on June 28, 2021 as he sat in his father’s car near the entrance to the town of Beit Ummar located north of Hebron in the West Bank. (IMEMC) While there was some media coverage of the May violence, U.S. media have largely ignored the continued killing and invasions in the months since… By Alison Weir Since the end of May, Israeli forces have killed 39 Palestinians, including a 9-year-old, an 11-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 15-year-old, two 16-year-olds, and two 17-year-olds. Palestinian resistance groups have killed one Israeli: a police sniper shoot...

Two Palestinians were shot by the army, overnight Tuesday, and detained four others from across the Nazi occupied West Bank, local sources reported. Sources stated that Nazi soldiers stormed and ransacked several homes in Qalandia refugee camp, north of Nazi occupied Jerusalem, and arrested a former prisoner. Local young men protested the invasion, in response, Nazi troops opened fire at them, injuring two with .22 caliber live rounds. The wounds of both young men were categorized as moderate, both men were transported to a Ramallah hospital for medical intervention. Two Palestinians were hit and wounded by .22 caliber bullets shot by Israeli soldiers in Qalandiya [Photo: WAFA] The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan (Silwanic) reported the detention of Mustafa Abu...

Illegal Nazi JEWISH colonists chopped, early Tuesday morning, dozens of Palestinian-owned olive trees in the northern Nazi occupied West Bank, northwest of Nablus, the Palestinian News and Information Agency (WAFA) reported. Local monitor of Nazi’s illegal settlement projects, Ghassan Daghlas, stated that Palestinian farmers from the villages of Deir Sharaf, Sebastia and An-Naqura found that dozens of their olive trees had been destroyed. The orchards, fenced in by the Nazi army, had been chopped down by illegal Nazi JEWISH colonists from the nearby Shavi Shomron settlement, built on expropriated Palestinian lands. Furthermore, on Tuesday, Nazi JEWISH colonizers attacked many Palestinians as they were harvesting their olives, west of Nahhalin town, west of Bethlehem in centra...