This week’s postings@JfJfP.com

This week, May 22nd to 28th, 2017 is the beginning of Ramadan. Israeli Jews know little about it so Samah Salaime provides a guide:
A guide to Ramadan for Jews.

This week there has also been a sudden drop in tension in Palestine/Israel following the suspension, or cessation, of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike. The prison service insists there have been no concessions to the hunger strikers but that doesn’t seem to be true. Apart from easing the harsh conditions the hunger strike also produced a rare unity in the rancorously divided Palestinian body politic:
Factions unite to back hunger strike

Outside Palestine there was an almost universal blanking of the hunger strike. The activists continued to spread the word:
Striking prisoners disappear from view

The strike was named the Freedom and Dignity strike by the prisoners and, to Israeli alarm, they began getting support from other countries, specially Germany. Prisoners wanted normal human rights, such as family visits. They had to starve to get them.
Starving for dignity

Hamas and Fatah show no sign of taking any steps to end the destructive split between the PNA – which supposedly governs all Palestinian territories – and Hamas, entrenched in Gaza. In an attempt to assert its authority over Gaza the PNA has cut the already inadequate supply of electricity to Gaza. To show that it can:
PA asserts its power by cutting power to Gaza

Those who hoped that the period of debate in Hamas on revising their charter signified a willingness to engage with international norms were disappointed by the resumption of executions – which in theory have to be approved by the PNA but were subject to no recognised due process. All the human rights groups which hitherto have focussed on the rights denied to Palestinians by the Israeli siege have condemned Hamas for the enforcement of capital punishment, and for presenting it as a spectacle to please, or intimidate, the crowd:
Rights groups condemn Gaza executions

Yet the people of the Strip are functioning in conditions which all experts describe as de-development and unsustainable. Haidar Eid, professor of literature and culture in Gaza describes it as ‘incremental genocide’. A section of Palestinians had hopes that Pres. Trump, a businessman who functions outside the norm and failed diplomatic channels, would make a difference. At least he might notice them. They were disappointed, again:
Pass the Gaza parcel

His brief Middle East tour  – in which he managed to secure a lucrative arms deal with Saudi Arabia without once having to mention human rights or financing terrorism – was widely covered. Pres. Abbas, so often by-passed and ignored, welcomed Trump. Palestinian people were more canny:
Leaders welcome Trump, people don’t

The President was welcomed not least because he wasn’t like the pesky Obama who pressed for change by the Israeli and Arab states. It never does to assume the MidEast situation is regarded as a problem by all actors:
Trump welcomed as not-Obama

The American president had presented himself as the first POTUS to approach the Palestine/Israel conflict without prejudice and the first to recognise that the conflict simply needed a deal. Israelis in particular found him vacuous, vain and lacking anything of significance to say:
Trump seeks buyer for his deal

It is unlikely that anyone in Manchester welcomed the US president’s appropriation of their bombing horror for his new sloganising against civilisation’s common enemy – the terrorist. His new point is that we should all focus on this (it’s a war) and forget about economic and social concerns:
Spreading terror

Still, the man who has such scant experience of other countries – except for deals to construct his towers, hotels, golf courses – found he was quite at home in the country that produced the 9/11 bombers and finances many of the Islamists in Europe. They were his type of man, plutocratic though hostile to civil rights rather than, like Trump, simply being nonchalant about them. In one fell swoop their money obliterated his distress about Islam:
Trump lavishes royal Arab billionaires with praise

And, with apologies for feeding the man’s narcissism, the new-ish publication Vox was struck by the absurdity of Trump’s tour and chose to cover it with a snappy set of images and comments:
Fake statesman struts his stuff

He didn’t visit but would no doubt admire the near-miraculous creation of a whole new city, Rawabi. The new city is the bellwether of aspirations for Palestine. It establishes middle-class professionals as the leaders of economic change; it establishes the professionals as a class apart from the majority of Palestinians:
Entrenching new Palestinian middle class

The awakening to the plight of Palestinians and the responsibility of Israeli governments for this plight is a leitmotif of progressive Jewish publications. Joel Kovel, destined by school and parents for a great career as a conforming Jewish intellectual, blew this destiny by first becoming an anti-imperialist and then applying his critique to Zionism as an imperialist force. He was shocked to discover that his alma mater, Yale university, excluded him from their rituals of respect because of pressure from Zionist donors:
Yale standards corrupted by Zionism

And more.