This week’s postings@JfJfP.com

The summary for this week, July 31st – August 6th 2017, consists of just the descriptions as JfJfP’s postings editor has had a week off due to illness. We wish her a speedy recovery.

Religious Palestinian women are taking in active role in the protests at the Temple Mount, shattering stereotypes of Muslim women as docile and subservient. In the struggle of the Palestinian religious factions against Israel, the place of women has been missing from the battle. As opposed to Fatah and the left-wing factions, in which women often take an active role, religious Palestinian women are often left behind the scenes. The events of the last few weeks teach us, however, that the struggle over al-Aqsa is an exception.
Palestinian women rise up

Mondoweiss draws on veteran Australian reporter John Lyons’s new memoir, Balcony Over Jerusalem, to show how reporters covering Israel and Palestine are systematically targeted to pressure them and their papers into self-censorship. It often works. Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief for over 5 years now ventures views she never dared raise while there.
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians looks “a lot like apartheid”

Netanyahu has made public his adoption of far-right defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman’s transfer plan that “would see borders redrawn to allow Israel to annex coveted settlements in the West Bank in exchange for stripping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship and reassigning their communities to a highly circumscribed Palestinian state.”
Netanyahu backs a new major exercise in ethnic cleansing

Robert A. H. Cohen, author of the Writing from the Edge blog, spoke at the annual ‘Gathering’ of British Quakers this week. His topic: building a broad based movement for Israel/Palestine. His diagnosis of the problem: a movement requires a broad consensus. Where might that come from? From a clear, bold, easy to understand message: equal rights.
Building a broad based movement for Israel/Palestine

A new poll conducted for Palestinian-Israeli Pulse by teams in Tel Aviv and Ramallah show that, perhaps surprisingly, there is more support for a two-state solution among Palestinians than in December 2016.
We know not to rely on polls, but it is worth reading these results. Unilateral recognition of each side’s national claims is one of the most effective incentives for both sides in wanting a two-state solution. But is is also clear that perceived lack of feasibility remains closely linked to rejection of the two-state solution and its package of implementation
The two-state solution is more popular with Palestinians, less with Israeli Jews

The Jewish Socialists’ Group joins those who have spoken out against “the IHRA’s politically skewed definition/ statement on antisemitism”. It offers instead “a simpler, clearer and more accurate definition” which local authorities and others, pressurised to adopt the IHRA definition, can use in their fight against antisemitism and other forms of racism.
Jewish Socialists’ Group speaks out on the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

It’s too much for NYT pro-Israel staffwriter Bari Weiss to see Palestinian activist and BDS supporter Linda Sarsour becoming an accepted leader in the wider radical movement in the States, (she was one of the organisers of the Women’s March in Washington in January). So she has to be taken down and her legitimate anti-Zionism transmuted into “hate speech”.
NYT trying to make anti-Zionism into hate speech

Ari Harow, Benjamin Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, is about to turn state’s witness – to save his own skin. The vultures are circling and Netanyahu is now accused of bribery. As Yossi Verter writes: “Up until Thursday night, the word ‘bribe’ was uttered carefully by reporters, with caveats, with a question mark. That stage is behind us… Whoever is convicted on that count goes to jail, for years.”
Netanyahu: the beginning of the end

As the vultures circle, Gideon Levy argues there is little to celebrate as Netanyahu’s end draws nigh. He mocks the belief that it can’t be worse than Netanyahu. He may be going, but Israel is staying the way it is.
As the vultures circle…