September 7th, 20180The Trump administration has cut all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Created after the 1948 war which displaced 700,000 Palestinians, UNRWA works in collaboration with local governments to provide direct relief and resources aiding economic reintegration. The agency provides food...
September 5th, 20180Pop singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey has canceled her September 7 appearance at Israel’s Meteor Festival.
Del Rey (real name Elizabeth Woolridge Grant) had pulled out of an earlier engagement in 2014. According to Variety Magazine, the entertainment trade paper, “the organizers are said to be livid”, especially since Grant...
August 22nd, 20180Iran warned on Wednesday that it would hit U.S. and Israeli targets if it were attacked by the United States after President Trump’s security adviser said Washington would exert maximum pressure on Tehran going beyond economic sanctions.
A U.S.-Iranian war of words has escalated since Trump withdrew Washington from the world...
August 18th, 20180When Mike Treen, the national director of the "Unite Union" in New Zealand arrived at the airport in the capital, Auckland, on August 1, a group of people were anxiously waiting for him at the terminal with Palestinian flags and flowers. They hugged him, chanted for Palestinian freedom and performed the customary native Haka...
August 13th, 20180The father of 11-year-old Abdul Rahman Nofal contacted me, asking for help. His son was shot in the leg during Gaza's "Great March of Return" protests. The Strip's dilapidated health care system could not save the little boy's leg, as it was later amputated.
His father, Yamen, himself a young man from the Buraij Refugee Camp in...
August 5th, 20181Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Israel on July 19, where he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials. Orban’s visit would have not required much pause except that the Hungarian leader has been repeatedly branded for his often racist, anti-Semitic remarks.
So why is Orban wining and dining with...
August 4th, 20180MOSCOW — Russia will deploy its military police on the Golan Heights frontier between Syria and Israel, its defense ministry said on Thursday, after weeks of mounting volatility in the area.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sweeping away of rebels in southwestern Syria has worried Israel, which believes it could allow his...
August 3rd, 20181By Mohamed Mohamed
Since its inception, Israel has been a discriminatory state, posing as a (false) democracy. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a fact and there is plenty of evidence to back it up.
On Thursday, July 19, the Israeli Knesset passed the “Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People” bill into...
August 2nd, 20180BEIRUT - Syrian state media said late on Thursday that air defenses had destroyed a “hostile target” west of the capital Damascus.
“Our air defenses confronted a hostile target and destroyed it west of Damascus,” the state news agency SANA said, quoting a military source.
Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have...
July 30th, 20180WEST BANK - Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager released by Israel on Sunday after completing a prison term for kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier said she wanted to become a lawyer so she could continue her struggle against the occupation of her country.
Tamimi, 17, became a hero to Palestinians after the incident last December...
July 29th, 20181Major-General Qassem Soleimani, a powerful commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, said on Thursday, July 26, that Donald Trump should address any threats against Tehran directly to him, and mocked the U.S. president as using the language of “night clubs and gambling halls.”
The comments by Soleimani, who heads the Quds...
July 22nd, 20180In Ireland on Wednesday morning, I watched an amazing debate unfolding in the Irish Seanad (Senate), as members spoke for and against a bill to prohibit the importation of Israeli goods produced in settlements in occupied Palestinian lands. The legislation in question is the Control of Economic Activity (occupied territory) Bill 2018,...
July 22nd, 20180BEIRUT/AMMAN — President Bashar al-Assad is set to recover control of the Syrian frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a major victory over rebels who have agreed to surrender terms, sources on both sides said on Thursday.
Backed by Russian air power and unopposed by Assad’s foreign adversaries, government forces...
July 22nd, 20180“In my four years as high commissioner, I have heard many preposterous claims. That claim is almost in its own category of absurdity. Have you no shame, sir, have you no shame? We are not fools.”
These were some of the remarks made by the outgoing United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, in his...
July 21st, 20180
Israel passed a law on Thursday declaring that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country, something members of the Arab minority called racist and verging on apartheid.
The “nation-state” law, backed by the right-wing government, passed by a vote of 62-55 and two abstentions in the 120-member...
July 19th, 20180JERUSALEM — Two Palestinian families on Thursday demolished the homes they had lived in for nearly two decades, saying they would rather destroy them than face the prospect of Israeli settlers moving in.
Within two hours, two mechanical diggers smashed through the ceilings, walls and floors of the two buildings in Beit Hanina, a...
July 10th, 20180TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces three investigations over alleged corruption, was questioned again by police over a case involving Israel’s largest telecoms firm on Tuesday.
The authorities claim Netanyahu awarded regulatory favors to Bezeq Telecom Israel in return for favorable coverage of him and...
July 8th, 20181BEIRUT - Syrian military air defenses struck an Israeli warplane and shot down Israeli missiles targeting the T4 air base in Homs province in response to an act of “aggression” on Sunday night, Syrian state media said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel does not comment on foreign reports.
Israel has grown deeply...
July 6th, 20180WEST BANK — A Prominent Jewish American activist, Ariel Gold, was denied entry into Israel on Sunday, July 1, over her activism in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Gold was prevented from entering Israel when she landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport Sunday afternoon. She was held until 11 p.m....
July 1st, 20180AMMAN/WASHINGTON — Four Arab states have backed the U.S. plan for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, regardless of the position of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, an Israeli newspaper reports.
The Israel Hayom daily interviewed officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan who...
June 30th, 20182This past May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the government's “zero tolerance” policy at U.S. border crossings. It was a matter of weeks before the new policy began yielding tragic outcomes. Those attempting to unlawfully cross into the U.S. were subject to federal criminal prosecution, while their children were taken...
June 25th, 20181Collaboration between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and United Arab Emirates officials started secretly in a Cyprus meeting to discuss the Iran nuclear agreement right before Donald Trump took office as U.S. president, according to a report in The New Yorker.
The Obama administration was not aware of the meeting. U.S....
June 24th, 20180WASHINGTON — The Trump administration withdrew from the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, accusing the body of hypocrisy and bias against Israel.
“For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Tuesday...
June 23rd, 20181DEARBORN – As grisly images from “Right of Return” protests along the Gaza-Israeli border become increasingly harder for the American public to ignore, lawmakers across the U.S. are reacting with anti-BDS bills that seek to hamper efforts to boycott the nation’s most significant ally in the Mediterranean – shifting the...
June 23rd, 20180UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly condemned Israel last Wednesday for excessive use of force against Palestinian civilians and asked U.N. chief Antonio Guterres to recommend an “international protection mechanism” for occupied Palestinian territory.
The General Assembly adopted a resolution with 120 votes in favor,...
June 4th, 20180SAN FRANCISCO — Three years ago, the San Francisco Unified School District placed a hold on a proposal to grant the Arab Resource and Organizing Committee (AROC) a contract to teach “cultural competency training” and Arabic language classes in city public schools.
At the May 22 district school board meeting and to the dismay of...
June 1st, 20180By Lindsay Ellis
HOUSTON, TX — In February, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal gave a workshop and reading at the University of Houston's Spanish program in creative writing. The University of Southern California Ph.D. candidate met students and promoted her first book at the event.
But she was surprised in April to hear...
June 1st, 20180
The ban has nothing to do with safety, makes us less safe around the world and negatively impacts our families in Michigan
DEARBORN — It's no surprise that people the world over are attracted to the message of change. As one crisis and protest follows after another, it seems like people are forcibly grasping for...
