1) “The arms firm behind the suppression of OccupyOakland and Palestine’s popular struggle” Max Blumenthal. “With the rise of the Occupy Wall Street, a new generation of mostly middle class Americans is learning for the first time about the militarization of their local police forces. And they are learning the hard way, through confrontations with phalanxes of riot cops armed with the latest in “non-lethal” crowd control weaponry.” While this is new to middle-class Americans, this has been routine IDF practice when dealing with protesters, be they Israeli, Palestinian, or international. As explained in depth in the article, it’s even the same company! Now that the practice of military crowd control is hitting home, maybe Americans will be able to greater empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.
2) “Testimony of an Israeli activist who was robbed and beaten by settlers while attempting to assist the olive harvest“, by Ofer Neiman. This is a brave story of an Israeli peace activist who wanted to do nothing other then help Palestinians pick their olives in peace. I can empathize because I actually did this last week (maybe a post will come out of it soon…). Lucky for me though, there was no confrontation with settlers, and I wasn’t violently beaten to a pulp. Stories like these help paint a picture of the new reality: Right-wing Zionism is not just about Jews vs. Everyone else; anyone who opposes unlimited settlement expansion and violent intimidation of Palestinian farmers is an enemy, even if you’re a Jewish Israeli.
3) “The Israeli government funds Jewish terrorism”, by Yossi Gurvitz. One example in depth of Israeli state-funding for terrorism. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as heralded Israeli leaders were often elected with full public knowledge that they were known terrorist leaders and supporters. It can just be hard to always remember this amidst the constant propaganda about other terrorist states, and why they’re so horrible and evil, and how great it is to live in a democracy. America and Israel don’t actually accept the Bush doctrine that claim to believe in, “states that knowingly harbor terrorists are terrorist states [therefore unilateral action against these states would be permissible…]”, because then it would apply to them too.
Zach Resnick: Thoughts from Jerusalem 