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CNN reports: “Trump to sign order to interpret Judaism as a nationality.”

ABBA SOLOMON, abbasolomon at gmail.com, @Abba_A_Solomon
Solomon is author of The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.” See his writings at Mondoweiss.

Rabbi ALISSA WISE, via Sonya E Meyerson-Knox, sonya at jvp.org
Wise is acting co-executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. The group released a statement Tuesday “Trump’s Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds,” which states: “Trump’s Executive Order allegedly targeting campus antisemitism is the culmination of decades of attempts by anti-Palestinian organizations to suppress Palestinian organizing, advocacy, research and teaching on college campuses. The EO, which would codify a dangerous and overly broad definition of antisemitism into federal civil rights law, fails to offer any protection to Jewish students. Instead, it will usher in a climate of fear on college campuses, where university administrations will be incentivized to silence student activism, faculty research, and teaching about Palestine — while white supremacist organizing, which has been steadily increasing under Trump, will go unchecked.”

Rabbi Wise said that a few days ago “Trump said Jews would vote for him because they like money. And yet now he suddenly pretends to care about Jewish safety? He has never cared about stopping antisemitism — this Executive Order is about silencing Palestinians and the people who speak up with them. The Executive Order is his way of forcing through a deeply unpopular and unconstitutional bill. Jewish Voice for Peace calls on members of Congress to immediately condemn this Executive Order and commit to overturning this authoritarian act.”

Last year, Jewish Voice for Peace’s board of trustees responded to attacks on the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn: “As Jews, we are all too aware that real antisemitism is on the rise. In our country it shows up in the neo-Nazis marching through Charlottesville, in white supremacist hate groups rising across the country, in former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke who offered full-throated support to the president following Trump’s inauguration.

“We believe political leaders have a responsibility to condemn and to fight against the linked dangers of white supremacy, xenophobia, anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism — and they should be able to do so without fearing intimidation or personal attack. Criticism of Israel does not equal antisemitism.”

ALI ABUNIMAH, ali at electronicintifada.net, @AliAbunimah
Co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, Abunimah said today: “Israel’s extrajudicial killing of Abu Ata in Gaza seems calculated to escalate the situation in Gaza, and create an even more catastrophic situation for civilians there. Israel is already attacking civilians in Gaza through its silent but deadly blockade of the territory. Added to that, two million civilians now live in fear of Israeli bombing and a large-scale attack. They have no shelters and little means of self-defense against one the most powerful militaries in the world.” Also see recent piece by EI: “Vital medicines run out in Gaza”

“Abunimah recently wrote the piece “Twitter censors news from Palestine,” which states: “Twitter shut down the accounts of Quds News Network, a major Palestinian news publication, without warning or explanation. …

“This alarming act of censorship is another indication of the complicity of major social media firms in Israel’s efforts to suppress news and information about its abuses of Palestinian rights.”

See piece by Glenn Greenwald from 2017: “Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments.”

The Chinese Xinhua news agency is reporting: “The First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday adopted three Russia-drafted resolutions to prevent an arms race in outer space.

“The resolutions, namely ‘Further Practical Measures for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space,’ ‘No First Placement of Weapons in Outer Space’ and ‘Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures in Outer Space,’ respectively received 124, 166 and 166 votes in favor.”The first resolution urges the global community to continue undertaking efforts to maintain peace and improve security in the world and avoid a conflict in space.

“The United States and Israel were the only two member states that voted against all three resolutions.

“The First Committee deals with disarmament, global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community and seeks out solutions to the challenges in the international security regime.

“Russia has proposed to move sessions of the First Committee of the UNGA to Vienna or Geneva from 2020, a Russian UN envoy has said.

“Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy said early last month that one-third of Russian delegates to the First Committee’s session did not get U.S. visas on time.”

Available for interviews:

ALICE SLATER, alicejslater at gmail.com, @aliceslater
Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and serves on the Coordinating Committee of World Beyond War. She wrote the piece “Space: The Next Battlefield?” last year for The Hill.

REBECCA VILKOMERSON, rebecca at jewishvoiceforpeace.org, @jvplive

Available for a limited number of interviews, Vilkomerson is the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

See Vilkomerson’s tweet thread from this morning: “A few initial thoughts on the Israeli election: 1) this was an apartheid vote with an apartheid outcome. Any conversation about the election needs to include the context of millions of Palestinians who have no vote over who rules them;

“2) though one thing you can say about Netanyahu is that the guy is good at hanging on to power, it seems his era may finally be over. He is either greatly weakened or done;

“3) The Zionist Left (or so-called Left) has extremely minimal appeal to the Israeli public and has no political power;

“4) The gains of the Joint List are good news and show that a stand for full civil and political rights have more vibrancy and appeal than an attempt to square the circle of moderate Zionism;

“5) it is hard to imagine a scenario where the Joint List enters a coalition government. If it happens, it would be groundbreaking. Assuming it doesn’t, it is a reminder of the status quo racist custom that Palestinian parties are not allowed in ruling governments;

“6) And it gives the Joint List some clout/opportunities as leader of the opposition;

“7) While Netanyahu not being around is a pleasant prospect, Cahol Lavan [Blue and White] must be understood as a rightwing party with less corruption issues. It will be easy for people less deeply steeped in it all to feel complacent/less urgent if there is a less belligerent face on the government;

“8) And for those of us outside of Israel, who have gotten [accustomed] over 10 years to the Netanyahu playbook, it will necessitate some strategic adjustments about how to organize and talk to continue building the global movement for full freedom for all.”

ABBA SOLOMON, [in NYC beginning Sept. 10] abbasolomon at gmail.com, @Abba_A_Solomon
Solomon is author of The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.”

Solomon just wrote the piece “Jews — ’Aliens and Foreigners’ Outside Palestine” for the LA Progressive: “President Trump’s current fixation on American Jews’ duty of ‘loyalty’ to Israel is not an oddity out of the blue. It is inherent in the Zionist achievement of recognition of Jews as a nationality. Until now American Jews have indulged in a rather charmed existence, able to both boost our ‘home country,’ the State of Israel, and proclaim our Americanness.

“In August 1917, Lord Edwin S. Montagu, Secretary of State for India, wrote a provocative memorandum to the British Cabinet, warning, as the only Jew in cabinet, of ‘the Anti-Semitism of the Present Government’ that had just committed the UK to a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine.

“Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour had written a statement, the ‘Balfour Declaration‘ [publicly released in Nov. 2, 1917] that

“‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’

“Montagu wrote the ‘declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet’ would damage the status of Jews in Britain and every other land outside of Palestine.

“He said the British assignment of Palestine as a Jewish homeland was a ‘conclusion which makes aliens and foreigners by implication, if not at once by law, of all their Jewish fellow-citizens.’

“Montagu warned that after the declaration of a ‘Jewish national home,’

“‘…the Jew will have the choice, whatever country he belongs to, whatever country he loves, whatever country he regards himself as an integral part of, between going to live with people who are foreigners to him, but to whom his Christian fellow-countrymen have told him he shall belong, and of remaining as an unwelcome guest in the country that he thought he belonged to.’

“Montagu also noted the unfairness to non-Jews in Palestine of the plan:

“‘It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history. …’

“For some American Jews, anti-Zionism has been motivated by recognition of damage to the rights of Palestinians. The place of Jews in America is finally being impacted by the question of whether the State of Israel, the ‘Jewish state,’ is in any sense our country.

“The bell that Donald Trump has rung cannot be unrung. And we should not wish it to be.”

Rep. Paul Findley died last week and will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The New York Times this week ran an obituary: “Paul Findley, Congressman Behind War Powers Act, Dies at 98.” The Times wrote: “The main author of the resolution that limited a president’s ability to wage war, he also made overtures to the Arab world and earned the opposition of the pro-Israel lobby. …

“He supported civil rights and … named the first black person in the 20th century — 15-year-old Frank Mitchell of Springfield [Illinois] — to the position of page in the House of Representatives.” The Washington Post reports: “Mr. Findley was the publisher of a small-town weekly newspaper when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1960 from a district once represented by Abraham Lincoln. He often invoked Lincoln in his campaign rallies and could quote his speeches from memory.” The federal building in Springfield, Illinois is named for Findley.

Meanwhile, Rep. Steny Hoyer just came back from Israel with 40 other pro-Israeli congressional Democrats. Israel is prohibiting Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel — or the Palestinian territories it occupies, where Tlaib has family — because of their alleged support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu
Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Boyle’s books include Destroying World Order. He was a longtime associate of Findley, including appearing on several accuracy.org news releases together on the War Powers Resolution. He was also an early advocate of using the boycott, divestment and sanctions tactics employed successfully against apartheid South Africa against Israel.

He said today: “Findley was a Republican, but the pro-Israeli lobby effectively destroyed his political career, as they would for Republican Illinois Sen. Charles Percy during the same period. You thus have both the Democrats and Republicans dominated by pro-Israeli individuals, like Hoyer or now Sen. Dick Durbin, who defeated Findley in 1982.

“Similarly, we’ve seen an escalation of exactly what Findley tried to stop with the War Powers Resolution: President after president attacking other countries illegally, in violation of the Constitution, the War Powers Resolution and international law. The issues he tried to tackle were central to trying to preserve the rule of law and ensuring that the U.S. not use force illegally. He wanted the U.S. to be the ‘Land of the Free and Home of the Brave,’ not relentlessly pursuing murderous wars that ultimately make our own citizens less safe.”

The New York Times reports: “An Israeli firm accused of supplying tools for spying on human-rights activists and journalists now faces claims that its technology can use a security hole in WhatsApp, the messaging app used by 1.5 billion people, to break into the digital communications of iPhone and Android phone users. Security researchers said they had found so-called spyware — designed to take advantage of the WhatsApp flaw — that bears the characteristics of technology from the company, the NSO Group.”

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN,  richards1052 at gmail.com, @richards1052

Silverstein wrote the piece “After Buying Major Stake in Israeli Cyber-Attack Firm, NSO Group, Global Witness Director Quits Board” for his Tikun Olam blog, which focuses on national security issues.

See his piece in The Nation: “How Israeli Tech Firms Act as Global Agents of Repression.” He writes: “Two Israeli companies are at the forefront of this commercialization of dirty ops: NSO Group and Black Cube. … Israel’s NSO Group sabotages the political affairs of foreign nations in a different way. It too hires talented cyber-intelligence specialists from Unit 8200; one of the company’s three founders was an 8200 cyber-hacker. They are hired because they bring with them methods and code used by Israeli SIGINT to hack the phones of Palestinians and other targets of Israeli surveillance.”

He said today: “NSO Group is the ‘dirty ops’ company behind the most recent WhatsApp hack. Many are focusing on the hack and its impact on WhatsApp customers. But less on NSO itself and its culpability for causing harm to human rights activists (including the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, for which it was an accessory). There’s also NSO’S recent unicorn status, after its billion-dollar sale to a British vulture capitalist, who himself claimed to be a philanthropist funding human rights NGOs.”

See from Wired: “How Hackers Broke WhatsApp With Just a Phone Call.”

The Washington Post reports in “Hoyer delivers strong defense of U.S.-Israel alliance in veiled rebuke of Rep. Omar,” “’I stand with Israel, proudly and unapologetically. So, when someone accuses American supporters of Israel of dual loyalty, I say: Accuse me. I am part of a large, bipartisan coalition in Congress supporting Israel. I tell Israel’s detractors: Accuse us,’ Hoyer said at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference at Washington’s Convention Center.”

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to meet today.

WALTER HIXSON, walter4 at uakron.edu
Hixson is distinguished professor of history at the University of Akron. He is author of the just-released Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (Cambridge University Press).

He recently wrote “We Need to Acknowledge the Power of the Israel Lobby” for History News Network. He wrote: “While reams of type and hype have spilled forth concerning the intrusions by the big, bad Russian bear (yes, he’s back after a post-Cold War hibernation) on American politics, we hear very little about Israel’s influence, which has profoundly shaped United States Middle East diplomacy since World War II. As I document … the Israel lobby goes much deeper historically than most people realize and has long exercised an outsized influence on Congress and presidential elections. …

“Even more absurd than over-hyping Russian influence on U.S. elections while ignoring those of Israel, is the widespread condemnation of Iran for supposedly pursuing a nuclear weapon, while ignoring the history of Israel’s utter contempt for nuclear non-proliferation in defiance of the United States dating back to the Eisenhower administration.”

In his talk on Friday at the “Israel Lobby & American Policy Conference,” Hixson said that the lobby has been political armor for Israel for decades. Israel found early on it “could massacre people and rely on the lobby to effectively manage the political fallout.” The conference was on C-SPAN.

Hixson’s past books include American Settler Colonialism and The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy.

See piece by Institute for Public Accuracy senior analyst Sam Husseini: “Rep. Omar’s Choice.”

The New York Times reports: “Israelis May Have Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza Protests, U.N. Says.”  “Israeli security forces committed serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law,” Santiago Canton, the head of the United Nations independent commission of inquiry, stated on Thursday.

“These violations clearly warrant criminal investigation and prosecution,” he added.

“[Israeli forces] have intentionally shot children, they’ve intentionally shot people with disabilities, they’ve intentionally shot journalists, knowing them to be children, people with disabilities and journalists,” Sara Hossain, one of the other three investigators appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said.

The report also calls on third states to arrest “persons alleged to have committed, or who ordered to have committed, the international crimes,” or seek their extradition. See report by Maureen Clare Murphy at the Electronic Intifada.

HATEM BAZIAN, hatemb at berkeley.edu, @HatemBazian
Bazian was profiled in the just-published New Yorker piece “How a Private Israeli Intelligence Firm Spied on Pro-Palestinian Activists in the U.S.”

He said today: “This U.N. report is just the latest piece of evidence about Israel’s systematic brutality. The U.S. government quit the Human Rights Council to stop any serious criticism of Israel. And there’s a whole structure of anti-B.D.S. legislation and targeting of activists to silence people in the U.S.”

The New Yorker piece leads: “Hatem Bazian, a veteran pro-Palestinian activist in his fifties, lives with his family on a quiet street in North Berkeley, near the campus of the University of California, where he lectures. Early on the morning of May 10, 2017, as Bazian was about to drive his teen-age daughter to school, he noticed fliers on the windshields of cars parked on his block. At first, Bazian assumed that they were advertisements for a new movie or restaurant. When he looked more closely at the flier that had been left on his BMW sedan, he realized that it featured a photograph of his face, below a tagline that read, ‘He supports terror.’ Bazian quickly folded up the flier so his daughter wouldn’t see it. …”Although it is unclear who left the fliers, internal documents from a private Israeli intelligence firm called Psy-Group show that, at the time of the incident, the company, and possibly other private investigators, were targeting Bazian because of his leadership role in promoting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, known as B.D.S. Supporters of B.D.S. urge corporations, universities, and local governments to impose economic, academic, and cultural boycotts on Israel to protest its treatment of the Palestinians. …

“Psy-Group’s operations against B.D.S. activists on U.S. college campuses began in February, 2016, according to internal documents describing the campaign. The company raised money in New York from Jewish-American donors and pro-Israel groups, and assured them that their identities would be kept secret. Psy-Group told them that its goal was to make it appear as though the donors were not involved in any way.”

Bazian is co-founder and professor of Islamic law and theology at Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim liberal arts college in the United States. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of the book Palestine…it is something colonial.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace tweeted: “Disconcerting to find out that the flyer targeting ⁦@HatemBazian⁩ and I at our homes in May 2017 discussed here was the work of ex-Mossad agents. Psy-Group seems like bumbling fools tbh, I worry more about the groups doing it who are good at it.” See a joint statement about the targeting from American Muslims for Palestine (which Bazian founded) and Jewish Voice for Peace from 2017.

See IPA news release: “Trump Team Hired Israeli Spy Firm Used by Harvey Weinstein to Attack Obama Officials on Iran Deal.”

See from the Electronic Intifada: “Watch the film the Israel lobby didn’t want you to see.” The Electronic Intifada has obtained a complete copy of “The Lobby — USA,” a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States.

Ryan Grim and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept report: “U.S. Senate’s First Bill, in Midst of Shutdown, is a Bipartisan Defense of the Israeli Government from Boycotts.”

They write: “The bill is a top legislative priority for AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. In the previous Congress, that measure was known as S.170, and it gives state and local governments explicit legal authority to boycott any U.S. companies which themselves are participating in a boycott against Israel. As the Intercept reported last month, 26 states now have enacted some version of a law to punish or otherwise sanction entities which participate in or support the boycott of Israel, while similar laws are pending in at least 13 additional states.”

A lead sponsor of the bill is Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and, The Intercept reports, it is “designed to strengthen the legal basis to defend those Israel-protecting laws from constitutional challenge.

“Punishment aimed at companies which choose to boycott Israel can also sweep up individual American citizens in its punitive net, because individual contractors often work for state or local governments under the auspices of a sole proprietorship or some other business entity. That was the case with Texas elementary school speech pathologist Bahia Amawi, who lost her job working with autistic and speech-impaired children in Austin because she refused to promise not to boycott goods produced in Israel and/or illegal Israeli settlements. …

“With the seven Democratic co-sponsors, the bill would have the 60 votes it needs to overcome a filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — who supported Sen. [Ben] Cardin’s far more draconian bill of last year and is one of the Senate’s most reliable AIPAC loyalists — also plans to support the Rubio bill, rather than whip votes against it, sources working on the bill said. Schumer’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders cited The Intercept piece and tweeted on Sunday: “It’s absurd that the first bill during the shutdown is legislation which punishes Americans who exercise their constitutional right to engage in political activity. Democrats must block consideration of any bills that don’t reopen the government. Let’s get our priorities right.”

The ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel Kathleen Ruane issued a statement: “In the midst of a partial government shutdown, Democratic and Republican senators have decided that one of their first orders of business next week should be to sneak through a bill that would weaken Americans’ First Amendment protections. The bill, Combatting BDS Act, encourages states to adopt the very same anti-boycott laws that two federal courts blocked on First Amendment grounds. The legislation, like the unconstitutional state anti-boycott laws it condones, sends a message to Americans that they will be penalized if they dare to disagree with their government.”

See Sunday MSNBC interview with Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt, who is being represented by the ACLU in a suit against such anti-BDS legislation. He asks: “Why should an American citizen have to take a position in favor of the foreign policy of a foreign government just so it can do business with its own government?” [See “Arkansas Times challenges law that requires state contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel in federal court.”]

JOSH RUEBNER, josh at uscpr.org, @joshruebner
Policy director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Ruebner has been following such legislation and wrote the piece “Americans have a constitutional right to boycott Israel.” Also see the group’s resource page: “Oppose the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.”