November 3rd, 20230WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican plan to provide $14.3 billion in aid to Israel and cut funding of the Internal Revenue Service, despite Democrats' insistence it has no future in the Senate and the White House's promise of a veto.
The measure passed 226 to 196, largely along party...
October 27th, 20231The positions of the Biden administration on the current Israeli war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip since October 7 were not only disappointing, but rather shocking and provocative to the extreme of oppression and resentment among Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan and nationwide. They felt that President Biden and most...
October 27th, 20230ANN ARBOR — On Wednesday, students at the University of Michigan walked out in support of innocent Palestinians under attack in Gaza in a walkout with other students across the nation – all condemning universities and politicians for supporting Israel.
Thousands of students gathered on the Diag at the University of Michigan on...
October 27th, 20230Jordan’s Queen Rania Al Abdullah was offered a chance to express horror at the October 7 Hamas killing and abduction of Israelis.
How did she feel, she was asked in a CNN interview, “as an Arab, as a Palestinian, a human being, a mother?”
The monarch launched into an impassioned denunciation of Israel’s subsequent bombing...
October 25th, 20230On October 25, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said the Israeli government would refuse visas to U.N. officials. The statement comes the day after Erdan called for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to resign from his position for being passionate toward Palestinians.
“The U.N. secretary-general,...
October 20th, 20230On Thursday, President Biden asked Americans to spend billions more dollars to help Israel fight Hamas while Israel's defense minister told his troops to be ready to go into the Gaza Strip to destroy the Palestinian militant group.
In a televised White House speech late on Thursday that also addressed Ukraine's effort to repel Russia's...
October 13th, 20230PARIS – French police used tear gas and water cannons to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people in Paris on Thursday, as President Emmanuel Macron urged the French to remain united and refrain from bringing the Israel-Hamas conflict home.
Macron's interior minister had earlier banned pro-Palestinian protests,...
October 13th, 20230
Under a barrage of more than 3,000 rockets, hundreds of Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Oct. 7, on motorbikes, paragliders and four-wheel drives, unleashing unprecedented attacks on nearby towns and villages of Jewish settlers.
Hundreds of trained Palestinian militants appeared...
October 13th, 20230 On Thursday Israel and the White House condemned remarks by Donald Trump in which he praised the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over an attack by Palestinian Hamas militants that killed more than 1,300 people in Israel.
Trump, a former Republican president who is the front...
October 11th, 20232Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had often boasted about the readiness of his army to deal with, and to eliminate all threats to Israel's “security.”
The Israeli military, too, has contributed to the Israeli hasbara that Tel Aviv would be able to face several threats at all fronts, from Gaza, to the West Bank, to Lebanon...
September 28th, 20230Jericho does not belong to the Palestinians alone. It belongs to the whole of humanity.
For Israel, however, the recognition by UNESCO of Jericho as a “World Heritage Site in Palestine” complicates its mission of erasing Palestine, physically and figuratively, from existence.
The decision was described by Israel’s foreign...
September 13th, 20230The humiliation of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers in the occupied city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) on July 10 was not the first such episode. Sadly, it will not be the last.
Indeed, the stripping of five women in front of their children, parading them naked around their family home and then stealing their jewelry by an Israeli...
The United Nations is urging the Israeli government to refrain from the mass deportation of Eritreans after clashes over the weekend involving refugees. The U.N. warned the response would “contravene international law.”
On Tuesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman, William Spindler, told reporters in Geneva,...
September 4th, 20230The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar has obtained a classified diplomatic cable confirming that Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh met David Barnea, the head of the Israeli Mossad, to discuss “practical steps to normalize relations” between the two countries last year in Amman, Jordan.
The meeting specifically focused on “the...
August 23rd, 20230Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, a global cold war has also kicked in.
As a strong ally of Washington and the home of a massive constituency of Russian, Ukrainian and East European Jews, it was only natural that Tel Aviv would be at the heart of the global conflict.
When the war began, Israel was then ruled by an odd...
August 18th, 20230An escalating war of words between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon echoes heightened tension at the border, with each vowing to return the other to the "stone age" and preparing for a possible conflict even as they deny seeking one.
Israel and Hezbollah have avoided war across the Lebanese-Israeli frontier since their last major clash...
July 22nd, 20230On Wednesday, the U.S. and Israel signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), setting the conditions for Israel’s entry into the U.S. Visa Waiver Program.
An Israeli statement late on Wednesday quoted its national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi as saying U.S. Ambassador Thomas Nides and Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog signed what...
July 21st, 20230WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican-led resolution reaffirming its support for Israel with strong bipartisan approval — an implicit rebuke of a leading Democrat who, over the weekend, called the country a “racist state”, but later apologized.
The resolution, introduced by Rep....
June 9th, 20230After signing a military decree on May 18, allowing illegal Israeli Jewish settlers to reclaim the abandoned Homesh settlement located in the northern Occupied West Bank, the Israeli government has informed the U.S. Biden administration that it will not turn the area into a new settlement.
The latter revelation was reported by Axios on...
January 20th, 20230Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hosting his first senior member of President Biden's administration on Thursday, said they had discussed prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Visiting White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also heard from the Palestinians that their hopes of...
January 16th, 20230Israel's sharp tilt to what is likely to be the most hard right government in its history puts its new Arab allies in the awkward position of having to deal with ultra-nationalists while trying to do more than just pay lip service to the Palestinian cause.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, sworn in two weeks ago, includes...
December 24th, 20220Just when Israel, and even some Palestinians, began talking about the Lions’ Den phenomenon in the past tense, a large number of fighters belonging to the newly-formed Palestinian group marched in the city of Nablus.
Unlike the group’s first appearance on September 2, the number of fighters who took part in the rally in the Old...
December 17th, 20220UNITED NATION – The U.N. General Assembly has approved a resolution to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, a term used to describe the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the lead-up to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Ninety countries voted in favor of the measure, with 30...
November 26th, 20220The recent decision by the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into the killing, last May, of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is not a game-changer, but important and worthy of reflection, nonetheless.
Based on the long trajectory of U.S. military and political support of Israel, and...
November 25th, 20220NABLUS, WEST BANK – Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager Tuesday night during an Israeli incursion near Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Ahmad Amjad Shehada was shot during a confrontation while Israeli occupation forces secured an Israeli settler incursion at the site of Yosuf’s Tomb. Amjad was only...
November 18th, 20220The U.S. Department of Justice has decided to investigate the killing of renowned Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, with Israel saying it does not plan to cooperate.
The investigation by the FBI comes after months of pressure from rights groups, Democrats and Abu Akleh’s family on the Biden administration to push...
October 31st, 20220U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called "Deal of the Century" was meant to represent a finality of sorts, an event reminiscent of Francis Fukuyama’s premature declaration of the ‘End of History’ and the uncontested supremacy of western capitalism. In effect, it was a declaration that ‘we’ – the U.S., Israel and a few allies...
October 28th, 20220BEIRUT — Lebanese and Israeli leaders finalized a U.S.-brokered maritime demarcation deal on Thursday, bringing a measure of accommodation between the enemy states as they eye offshore energy exploration.
Leaders from Lebanon, Israel and the U.S. have all hailed the deal as "historic" but the possibility of a wider diplomatic...
