How is that highly schooled people, those who have risen to positions of authority and influence within the west’s higher education systems, so often behave as if the bit of their brain governing rational thought has turned to mush whenever the issue of Israel is raised?
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has now made a public statement rejecting calls from Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) and the wider Palestinian solidarity movement to cancel the band’s Tel Aviv concert. Disappointingly, it’s a piece riddled with liberal evasions, barbed charges, and unfounded assumptions about those making the case for a boycott. Here’s Yorke’s full comments on the issue, as reported at Rolling Stone: I’ll […]
The Holocaust was the first historic event that touched my inner core as a human being. Perhaps this explains my early fascination with everything Jewish. In the 1990s, I lived for two years in Israel, where I volunteered in a center for adults with special needs. This was part of my German Zivildienst — a civilian substitute for conscientious objectors […]
“It’s now a matter of when the next Palestinian child fatality will occur and not if it will take place. The complete disregard for human life that Israeli soldiers exhibit suggests that the use of lethal force is their standard operating procedure whatever the circumstance.”
The protests that have swept Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank this month have seen tens of thousands of Palestinians take to the streets. Men and women of all ages have joined the movement. In some cases, these massive demonstrations have passed peacefully, as protesters massed to chant slogans in unity, demanding solidarity to fight the Israeli military occupation.
Whether the current phase of Israel’s intensified repression and Palestinian popular resistance will evolve into a full-fledged intifada or not, one thing is already evident – a new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up en masse against Israel’s brutal, decades-old regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.
