Report Reveals Major Corporations Are Funding Lawmakers Behind Anti-Democracy Bills

"It is now more urgent than ever to build a just transition away from fossil fuels and fight off attacks against protest and our freedom to vote, so that we can have a planet our communities can thrive on."

by Brett Wilkins, staff writer

Published on Monday, May 10, 2021

by Common Dreams

A participant holds a sign at a march celebrating the defeat of President Donald Trump in Manhattan on November 7, 2020. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Numerous corporations have funded the political action committees of state lawmakers backing the recent spate of anti-voter and anti-protest bills, even as many of the companies have spoken out in defense of voting rights and democracy, a report published Monday by Greenpeace USA revealed

"Even though a growing number of companies have spoken out in defense of democracy and voting rights, many of these same companies contributed to legislators sponsoring anti-voter or anti-protest bills during their most recent election campaigns."
—Greenpeace report

The report (pdf)—entitled Dollars vs. Democracy: Companies and the Attack on Voting Rights and Peaceful Protest—says that 44 state lawmakers sponsored at least one anti-protest bill and one anti-voter bill in the past year. It also reveals that 53 of the 100 top corporate donors to lawmakers sponsoring anti-voter bills also rank among the top 100 contributors to anti-protest measures.

According to the report, the top 10 corporations that have invested the most money in lobbying for anti-protest bills since 2017 are all fossil fuel companies.

The 10 companies that have contributed the most to state lawmakers sponsoring both anti-voter and anti-protest bills are: AT&T, Dominion Energy, Zurich North America and its subsidiaries, Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries, UnitedHealth Group, Mednax Services, Charter Communications, State Farm Insurance and its subsidiaries, Phillip Morris USA, and Vistra Energy (FKA Energy Future Holdings) and its subsidiaries.

"Even though a growing number of companies have spoken out in defense of democracy and voting rights, many of these same companies contributed to legislators sponsoring anti-voter or anti-protest bills during their most recent election campaigns," the report notes.

It states:


Of the 100 companies who endorsed the April 14 "We Stand for Democracy" statement opposing "any discriminatory legislation or measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot," 12 contributed to the sponsors of 43 anti-voter bills analyzed.

Five of the 10 companies that donated most to sponsors of state anti-voter legislation also rank among the top 10 corporate donors to sponsors of anti-protest bills. Similarly, in the wake of the white supremacist attack on the Capitol, at least 130 companies "paused" political action committee (PAC) contributions to members of the "insurrection caucus." But at least 47 of these companies contributed to the sponsors of anti-voter legislation introduced since the January 6th insurrection.

Additionally, the report says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the For the People Act—a sweeping plan to expand voting rights, rein in dark money, and strengthen federal ethics rules passed by the House of Representatives in March—even though many individual chamber members have raised concerns about the types of attacks on democracy that the bill aims to address.

Executives from Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, Ford, IBM, Microsoft, and United Airlines who have voiced opposition to state-level anti-democracy legislation currently serve on the chamber's board of directors, according to the publication.


BREAKING
We just released a report on the corporations funding the elections of extremist politicians behind the bills attacking our freedom to vote and our right to protest https://t.co/wfxhasMhpg
— Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) May 10, 2021


The report notes that anti-protest bills target communities of color and "are a direct response to Black Lives Matter and other BIPOC-led movements, laying bare their racist intent."

Folabi Olagbaju, director of democracy campaigns at Greenpeace USA, said in a statement that "a healthy democracy is a precondition for a healthy environment. When everyone's vote counts and when everyone's constitutionally guaranteed right to peacefully protest is protected, our government becomes more accountable and capable of meeting the demand for racial justice and enacting solutions to the rapidly accelerating climate crisis."

"We hope this report sheds light on who is behind the attack on our democracy and right to protest, and that it will push corporations to take a stand for strong national standards for voting rights and election reform, and quit supporting politicians who sponsor or vote for anti-voter and anti-protest legislation," Olagbaju continued. "It's time to ensure all of us have a say in key decisions that affect us all and our elections reflect the will of the people, not corporations."

"It is now more urgent than ever to build a just transition away from fossil fuels and fight off attacks against protest and our freedom to vote, so that we can have a planet our communities can thrive on," he added.

"Corporate platitudes are not enough—we must build a system that ensures our elected leaders listen to every American. Our time is now: Democracy cannot wait."
—Jana Morgan, Declaration for American Democracy

Jana Morgan, director of the Declaration for American Democracy coalition, said that "despite the promising news of corporations speaking out against anti-voter laws in states like Georgia, Greenpeace's latest report demonstrates that there's more to be done to make the promise of democracy real for us all."

"It's time to end the dominance of big corporations and big money in our politics, and ensure that our politicians are held accountable to the will of all Americans, and not just the wealthy and powerful," Morgan continued. "To do so, corporations and our political leaders must support passing the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. These transformative bills will ensure that politicians govern in the best interest of the people, and ensure the freedom to vote for all Americans."

"Corporate platitudes are not enough—we must build a system that ensures our elected leaders listen to every American," she added. "Our time is now: Democracy cannot wait."

The new Greenpeace report follows a Sunday Insider article revealing that several companies have broken their vows to stop contributing to the PACs of U.S. lawmakers who supported the so-called "Big Lie" that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Offenders include Cigna, JetBlue, Koch Industries, and Toyota.

After the January 6 Capitol siege, several companies vowed to stop PAC donations to lawmakers who voted against Biden’s certification.

Others made vaguer statements — and since have restarted donations.https://t.co/BRT6ZQkGWG pic.twitter.com/q0Ww8iAmpm
— Insider (@thisisinsider) May 9, 2021

Additionally, corporate PACs are indirectly funding some of the 147 U.S. lawmakers who voted against certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory by donating to congressional committees including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. AT&T, Cigna, Intel, and Pfizer have all donated thousands of dollars to such committees, according to Insider.

Michael Harrington

by Tom Gallagher

Published on Saturday, May 15, 2021
by Common Dreams

Michael Harrington, dust jacket photo from Twilight of Capitalism (1977)

A talk given to the San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America.

During the dark ages of American socialism, well before the first Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, a friend of mine used to say that he thought our role as American socialists was similar to that of the medieval Irish monks who would spend their days transcribing ancient manuscripts that would be largely ignored in their day but available to hoped-for future readers. His notion was that even if what we socialists were saying wasn’t exactly catching fire now, we were at the least preserving the idea for a hoped-for more enlightened future. And so, if you will accept the metaphor for the moment, if we were to ask who might be considered the abbot of those imagined modern-day socialist preservationist monks, a logical choice might be Michael Harrington.

And indeed, probably not coincidentally, one of Harrington’s earliest political affiliations – in 1951, when he was 23 – was with the Catholic Worker, an organization that has run hospitality houses serving meals to the down and out since 1933. The organization, by the way, continues in 187 locations today, including two each in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland.

But as for Harrington, he soon shifted his efforts permanently to organizations that viewed themselves as part of an American socialist tradition dating back to Eugene Debs. The young Harrington, like many a young socialist before and after him, cobbled together a living. He was one of the original writers for the Village Voice, and as an outgrowth of an article he wrote for the magazine Commentary, in 1962 he published The Other America, a book dispelling the illusion that the title of another prominent book of the day, The Affluent Society, actually described the entire nation. If there was one single book that became associated with the War on Poverty programs passed during the Lyndon Johnson administration,The Other America was the one, and Harrington eventually parlayed the notoriety that came with the book into becoming virtually the only socialist of that Cold War era with access to national media – as a socialist.

In 1968, he became something of a figurehead president of the Socialist Party which he then quit in 1972. By that point, the Socialist Party was no longer running its own presidential candidates, and the rift came about because the bulk of the leadership of the party did not support the anti-Vietnam War presidential candidacy of George McGovern against Richard Nixon. (Something that was also true of the leadership of the AFL-CIO.)

But by now, what was loosely described as a New Left had sprung up in America. Based primarily in the civil rights and antiwar movements, and centered in the Students for a Democratic Society and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this New Left found little to love in either of the two main claimants to the American socialist tradition – the Communist Party that had steadfastly defended the Soviet Union right through the Stalin years, or the Socialist Party, whose anti-Communism now extended to supporting the Vietnam War. (They had supported the Korean War, too, but no one much paid attention to that one – then or now.)

Harrington was about half a generation older than the leadership of the New Left and got off on the wrong foot in his relations with them by pressing them to more forthrightly declare their lack of sympathy with the Soviet Union. He would later come to regard his inability to establish better relations with the New Left as the greatest failure of his political life. As a result, the new Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) that emerged from the Socialist Party split in 1973 was never, properly speaking, a New Left organization.

What was distinctive about the new socialist organization was that it was not a political party. The highpoint of American socialist presidential candidacies had occurred back in 1912, which also was – and remains – the only presidential election since 1852 when the top two spots were not taken by a Democrat and a Republican. So the thinking was that it was probably time to try a different tack and take the fight inside – an approach that would not actually be fully vindicated for another forty years – in the 2016 campaign.


DSOC and DSA were never very large in Harrington’s day – maybe 10,000 at the most. But members included two Congressional Representatives, Ron Dellums of Berkeley and Major Owens of Brooklyn. These two self-identified socialists actually matched the highest number the Socialist Party ever had in the House – and was not exceeded until this current congressional term. The organization’s members also at one point or another included the mayor of New York City, the borough president of Manhattan, a smattering of state legislators, and a variety of local officials. (All of these numbers have also been exceeded by the current organization).

Harrington chaired DSOC – and later DSA, after its formation in 1982 – until his death in 1989. Along the way, he more or less inherited the mantle of Mr. Socialist from Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party leader and six-time presidential candidate who had followed Debs. In a memoir, Harrington once mused of perhaps being remembered in the future as a “lesser Norman Thomas.”

While it was his authorship of The Other America that first brought him the invites for such as writing columns for the New York Times or commenting on National Public Radio, it was what he had to say that got him invited back. Some may have thought the democratic portion of DSOC and DSA’s name was redundant in a socialist organization because, after all, socialism was already supposed to be a higher form of democracy that extended the public’s control past the government and into the economy. But the organizations’ founders considered it a necessity to reassert socialism’s commitment to democratic principles, due to the obviously undemocratic nature of various governments that claimed that what they were building was socialism.

Harrington wrote 16 books, and in his speaking and writing continually reflected that democratic commitment – both substantively and rhetorically. With the civil rights movement’s struggle for voting rights of paramount importance to so many – as it is again today – Harrington, for instance, would never make dismissive references to mere “bourgeois democracy,” as some others on the left might. He called socialism “the left-wing of the possible.” While operating and thinking very much in the tradition of the Marxist analysis of capitalism, he also thought that with his talk of the eventual “withering away of the state,” Marx himself arguably qualified as the last of the utopians.

Harrington believed that just as capitalism had been built within the world of feudalism, we had to build socialism within the capitalist world we have inherited. His was an ongoing effort to convince Americans that the socialist ideal was not some exotic, dangerous fantasy that would be foisted upon them. He always avoided archaic phraseology such as “smashing the bourgeois state” or establishing the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Instead, he relentlessly made the case that ultimately only a socialist approach could deal with the ever-increasing complexity of the modern world – in a democratic fashion.

Harrington thought that (and I’m quoting here) “the vocation of a radical ... is to walk a perilous tightrope ... to be true to the socialist vision of a new society ... constantly develop and extend its content ... and ... bring” it “into contact with actual movements fighting not to transform the system, but to gain some little increment of dignity or even just a piece of bread.”

Whether he is ultimately remembered as a “lesser Norman Thomas,” or something else, what we do know is that when Bernie Sanders put democratic socialism into play in the national discussion, there was an organization already in place that made sense to many of the newly motivated and newly converted socialists. And that fact is in no small part due to the lifelong efforts of Michael Harrington.

Tom Gallagher is a former Massachusetts State Representative and the author of 'The Primary Route: How the 99% Take On the Military Industrial Complex.' He lives in San Francisco. He can be reached at TGTGTGTGTG@aol.com HE STILL USES AOLOL

Why Michael Harrington Matters

BY HAROLD MEYERSON

JACOBIN 07, 2019

In a time when America and the world were moving rightwards, Michael Harrington kept the socialist flame burning.

As the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — newly grown to more than sixty thousand members — prepare to meet in Atlanta this weekend, it will have been exactly thirty years since the death of the organization’s founder.

Michael Harrington, who kept the idea and promise of democratic socialism alive and relevant in a time when the world was moving to the right, died of esophageal cancer on July 31, 1989. He’d spent his final months writing the last of his sixteen books — an account of the global corporate autocracy he feared would dominate the twenty-first century, and a scholarly, nuanced, yet impassioned case for the socialism he saw as the only alternative to capitalism’s brave new repressive world.

When Harrington founded DSA’s predecessor, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), in 1973, it was not a propitious moment for socialism. The New Left had shattered into sects, the New Deal coalition had irreparably broken apart, the labor movement was losing both members and direction, and Soviet communism, however sclerotic, still loomed large enough to constitute most Americans’ idea of socialism.

Perhaps most damaging to socialist prospects, however, was the fact that the economic legacy of the New Deal — the broadly shared prosperity created by decades of union density, progressive taxation, social benefits, and public investment — was just then peaking. Americans’ median incomes hit an all-time high in the year of DSOC’s birth, only to begin a plodding, tortuous descent.


Harrington would speak in those years of “a slow 1929” (a phrase he borrowed from a French economist), but slow 1929s had few of the radicalizing effects of fast ones. Unlike his great predecessors — Eugene Debs, who spoke for and to early-twentieth-century workers excluded from both prosperity and the polity, and Norman Thomas, whose Depression-era listeners needed little schooling in the bankruptcy of capitalism — Harrington made the case for socialism in a time when even many progressive activists saw that case as a matter of largely academic interest.

That was partly because they didn’t foresee what Harrington saw — that the social democracies of postwar Europe and the watered-down welfare state that had brought a modicum of economic equality to America were far from being permanent. He knew that they were the results of social struggles that could be overturned by capitalist power, and that that power was growing as our working-class coalitions stagnated and decayed. “This nation must go as far beyond Roosevelt as Roosevelt went beyond Hoover,” Harrington would say repeatedly during the 1970s and ’80s, “or it’s going back to Hoover.”

Even when progressives didn’t believe Harrington’s prophecies, many were wowed by the scope and depth of his vision. That’s not all that wowed them. Harrington was a more accomplished writer than either Debs or Thomas, but like them, he won most of his converts through the power of the spoken word.

Harrington delivered more than a hundred speeches a year, traveling to campuses, union halls, and rallies for social justice, invariably meeting both before and after with DSA members and prospective members over drinks. A Harrington speech was both a tour de force and a tour de horizon. He invariably made the case for the moral vision and practical advantages of democratic socialism, tailored to the causes and controversies of the moment, buttressed by scholarly consideration of social trends and statistics, strengthened by his habit of entertaining opposing arguments before dispatching them.

Harrington provided listeners with something that was none too easy to find elsewhere on either the liberal or socialist left: a sense of historic context, of how his listeners’ own activism fit into a larger pattern they might otherwise have trouble discerning, of where they stood, broadly speaking, in the flow of history. And he provided them — subtly — with one more thing: an overwhelming sense of the moral urgency that underlay his critique of capitalism.

Harrington was schooled in a culture of speaking that would be impossible to replicate today. He learned rigor and logic from the Jesuits he studied with as a schoolboy; rigor, irony, and modes of attack from the Shachtmanites (a socialist sect that looked to Trotsky as the model rhetorician) he joined when he left the Catholic Worker; and leavened these influences with his affinity for poetry, his vestigial Irish lilt and Midwestern twang, his Greenwich Village cosmopolitanism, his generosity of spirit, and his willingness to confess doubt. No one else could weave Marx, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Virgil, Proust, Willy Brandt, and Jimmy Hoffa into a talk and still sound like the boy — the brilliant boy — next door.

Underpinning it all was a deep moral intensity. Mike held out the prospect of neither certitude nor salvation in his talks, but there was always an unspoken subtext to his speeches: If this cause is as urgent as I’ve demonstrated, as plausible as I’ve shown, and so important that I’m devoting my life to it — why, then, so should you.

And probably more than any other factor, that’s how DSOC, and then DSA, grew.
Keeping the Socialist Flame Burning

Whether through the synoptic force of his talks and writing, his strategic sense, or his considerable charisma, Harrington played a double role on the American left — socialist leader and the programmatic and strategic convener of the broader left.

As early as 1964, the liberal journalist James Weschler wrote that Harrington was the person most likely to unite the fledgling New Left, the labor movement, the civil rights activists, and liberal middle-class reformers into a powerful new force. He was one of only three people over thirty, Tom Hayden wrote in those years, that the student left trusted. But it was right then, in the early sixties, that Harrington forfeited that trust.

In 1962, Harrington attended SDS’s Port Huron Conference as a kind of (slightly) elder counselor on matters strategic and ideological. He ended up attacking the SDSers for insufficient anticommunism, with an intensity that the Shachtmanites generally reserved for hard-line Stalinists and their dupes — terms that described nobody who’d come to Port Huron. Harrington soon came to deeply regret his outburst, which helped create the rift between New Left and Old that no one else was able to bridge throughout the sixties.

In founding DSOC, Harrington parted company with many of his old socialist comrades who’d grown to detest the New Left and the middle-class progressives who’d walked precincts for Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and George McGovern. As Mike saw it, DSOC, and later DSA, offered an opportunity not only to begin again the rebuilding of American socialism, but also, in the process, to bring together the various progressive constituencies that Vietnam had ripped asunder.


To that end, DSOC began building a progressive coalition within the Democratic Party, under the aegis of Democratic Agenda, a loose organization pushing for federally guaranteed full employment — the sine qua non, Harrington argued, for progressive advances. With full employment, white workers, who’d been drifting toward George Wallace and Republicans, would feel less threatened by the extension of long overdue rights to minorities and women, by their ascent into more and better jobs, and by the just demands of environmentalists. (Harrington also argued that when it came to electoral politics, given the United States’ entrenchment in a two-party system, socialists would reach a much wider audience and more effectively promote socialism by working within the Democratic Party — an argument that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have since validated.)

Democratic Agenda became a rallying point for those unions opposed to the hard-line Cold War politics of George Meany’s AFL-CIO — chiefly, the United Auto Workers, AFSCME, the Machinists, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and various regions of SEIU. These were the unions where onetime New Leftists, occasionally through the intercession of DSOC, found jobs and, ultimately, careers. More broadly, Democratic Agenda became the political vehicle for Democrats opposed to the party’s drift to the right after George McGovern’s defeat, which intensified during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Under Harrington’ leadership, Democratic Agenda spearheaded the opposition to Jimmy Carter’s economic policies at the 1978 Democratic Midterm Convention in Memphis, where Arkansas’s young governor-elect, Bill Clinton, led the Carter forces and Harrington led the 40 percent of the delegates who opposed Carter and backed the Democratic Agenda platform of federally provided universal health care, full employment, and a shift away from fossil fuels. Democratic Agenda’s successes at Memphis so stunned the party establishment that the Democratic National Committee voted shortly thereafter to abolish midterm conventions.

As the United States descended from Carter to Reagan, Harrington continued his missionary work for democratic socialism, and increasingly warned about the rise and perils of globalized capitalism. He foresaw the possibility of a reactive nationalism among American workers, and endeavored to redirect their anger to the corporations that were shuttering American factories in search of cheap labor abroad.

I was present for a speech he gave to the 1983 convention of the UAW where he told delegates their enemies weren’t Mexican workers but the companies that pitted workers against each other. The delegates were largely silent at first, but as Harrington’s logic unfolded and his passion exploded, they raised the roof with their cheers.

Harrington died in 1989, just sixty-one years old. He did not succeed in building a mass socialist organization — that would require two decades more of capitalism’s erosion of democracy and economic security, the crash of 2008, and the elite recovery that followed. But no one who’d read Mike’s writing or heard him speak could be completely surprised at the instability and cruelty of capitalism, nor by the current democratic-socialist surge against the devastation that capitalism has wrought.

In a time when America and the world were moving rightwards, Harrington kept the socialist flame burning, and fitted the socialist idea to the global challenges of the twenty-first century.

Harold Meyerson is the editor-at-large of the American Prospect. In the 1970s and ‘80s, he was a leader of the Los Angeles local of DSOC and DSA, and served on the groups’ national executive committee.

 

Israel's slaughter in Gaza goes on. Mercilessly following Ben-Gurion's Zionist edict for " maximum territory, minimum Arabs,” at least 120 Palestinians have been killed - a pregnant woman, an older couple, an entire family, chicken farmers, bystanders, 31 children. As 100 Democrats urge the U.S. to hold the lies, drones, money for ethnic cleansing, the victims clamor, "We are bleeding here." From one small furious boy, "All you nations sleeping through our pain - children are dying."

Read More...

'Palestinian Lives Matter,' Declares Bernie Sanders in NYT Op-ed

"If the United States is going to be a credible voice on human rights on the global stage, we must uphold international standards of human rights consistently."

by Kenny Stancil, staff writer

Published on Friday, May 14, 2021
by Common Dreams

THERE ARE TWO BRANDS HERE THAT SHOULD BE SHOWING SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE AND DENOUNCING ISRAEL, PUMA AND NIKE

A Palestinian man carries the body of Ibrahim Al-Rantisi, a young child who was killed during an Israeli airstrike, before his burial in Rafah, located in the southern Gaza Strip. (Photo: Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Offering further evidence that the rights of Palestinians are receiving more vocal support from U.S. Congress members than at any time in living memory, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday published an opinion piece in the New York Times demanding a more "even-handed" and morally consistent approach to Israel and Palestine that promotes peace.

"We must recognize that Palestinian rights matter. Palestinian lives matter."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

Early in his essay, the Independent senator from Vermont posed a question: "Why do we only seem to take notice of the violence in Israel and Palestine when rockets are falling on Israel?"

Whenever this happens, Sanders noted, Democratic and Republican administrations declare, as President Joe Biden did earlier this week, that "Israel has the right to defend itself."

"Why is the question almost never asked: 'What are the rights of the Palestinian people?'" Sanders continued.

"Israel has the absolute right to live in peace and security," the lawmaker wrote, "but so do the Palestinians. I strongly believe that the United States has a major role to play in helping Israelis and Palestinians to build that future."


"Israel has the absolute right to live in peace and security, but so do the Palestinians. I strongly believe that the United States has a major role to play in helping Israelis and Palestinians to build that future,” writes @BernieSanders. https://t.co/vNABZWX5L4— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) May 14, 2021

"While Hamas firing rockets into Israeli communities is absolutely unacceptable," Sanders wrote, "today's conflict did not begin with those rockets."

The senator proceeded to highlight just some of the recent steps taken by the Israeli government and settlers to violently oppress Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

As examples, Sanders cited the forced expulsion of Palestinian families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the occupied West Bank as well as the ongoing blockade on Gaza that "makes life increasingly intolerable for Palestinians."

"In the Middle East, where we provide nearly $4 billion a year in aid to Israel, we can no longer be apologists for the right-wing Netanyahu government and its undemocratic and racist behavior."
—Sanders

In addition, Sanders denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to "marginalize and demonize Palestinian citizens of Israel, pursue settlement policies designed to foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution, and pass laws that entrench systemic inequality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel."

Sanders emphasized that "in the Middle East, where we provide nearly $4 billion a year in aid to Israel, we can no longer be apologists for the right-wing Netanyahu government and its undemocratic and racist behavior."

"We must change course and adopt an even-handed approach, one that upholds and strengthens international law regarding the protection of civilians, as well as existing U.S. law holding that the provision of U.S. military aid must not enable human rights abuses," wrote the senator.

"If the United States is going to be a credible voice on human rights on the global stage," he added, "we must uphold international standards of human rights consistently, even when it's politically difficult. We must recognize that Palestinian rights matter. Palestinian lives matter."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Israeli Bombs Destroy Gaza Media Center; AP, Al-Jazeera, Others Taken Out

Israel destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press, Al-Jazeera and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by Israel to silence reporting.

by

Common Dreams staff

Published on

Saturday, May 15, 2021

 

by

Common Dreams

Smoke billows as an Israeli air bomb is dropped on the Jala Tower during an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, on Saturday, May 15, 2021. Israel's air force targeted the 11-floor Jala Tower housing Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television and the Associated Press news agency among many other media outlets. (Photo by Mahmud Hams / AFP via Getty Images)

IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY AT THE TOP OF THE PICTURE YOU CAN SEE THE SECOND ISRAELI MISSLE COMING IN FOR A HIT

Israeli bombs destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press, Al-Jazeera and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by Israel to silence reporting from Gaza amid its military bombardment. The  Israeli air raid totally demolished the structure.

The 11-storey residential building called Al-Jalaa has now collapsed. pic.twitter.com/VUFxxJCuW3

— Arwa Ibrahim (@arwaib) May 15, 2021

Live Al Jazeera video showed the 11-story al-Jalaa building, which also houses a number of residences and other offices, crashing to the ground after being bombed as dust and debris flew into the air.

The strike came just hours after another Israeli bombing of a densely populated refugee camp in Gaza City killed at least eight Palestinian children and two women from an extended family, in the deadliest single strike of Israel's current assault.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt has released the following statement:

We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.

We are seeking information from the Israeli government and are engaged with the U.S. State Department to try to learn more.

This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time.

The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.

That's why Israel bombed the AP's HQ. ⤵️ https://t.co/ACKnkTuvwZ

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) May 15, 2021

Al Jazeera’s Safwat al-Kahlout, reporting from Gaza City, said he had worked at the building for 11 years, and often did live reports from its roof.

“I have been covering lots of events from this building,” he said. “We have lots of good memories with our colleagues”.

It was not immediately made clear why the building was targeted by Israel.

“Now, no one can understand the feeling of the people whose homes have been destroyed by such kind of air attacks,” al-Kahlout said. “It’s really difficult to wake up one day and then you realize that your office is not there with all the career experiences, memories that you’ve had.”

Israel targeting media sources is so the world can't see Israel's war crimes led by the apartheid-in-chief Netanyahu.

It's so the world can't see the killing of babies, children and their parents.

It's so the world can't see Palestinians being massacred. https://t.co/AvDp3IuxUA

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 15, 2021

If journalistic solidarity means anything whatsoever, it should mean, at the bare minimum, unreservedly speaking out about Israel wiping out the building housing media organisations such as Associated Press and Al-Jazeera pic.twitter.com/0rBdIt7dhU

— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) May 15, 2021

BREAKING: Israel airstrike flattens building housing Associated Press, Al Jazeera offices.

Latest: https://t.co/6uVfDHJhk0

Ashraf Abu Amrah / Reuters

Mohammed Salem / Reuters pic.twitter.com/O0S1GcSP6e

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 15, 2021

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

"These Are Not 'Clashes'": Media Slammed for Coverage Amid Deadly IDF Attacks on Gaza

A U.S. State Department spokesperson also faced criticism for refusing to condemn the reported killing of Palestinian children.

by Jessica Corbett, staff writer

A wounded Palestinian child was brought to Indonesian Hospital to receive medical treatment after Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on May 10, 2021 in Beit Lahia, Gaza. At least 20 Palestinians, including nine children, were killed, according to local health authorities. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Amid reporting that Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 20 Palestinians, including nine children, rights activists and journalists on Monday called out some members of the media for covering the latest developments with language that misrepresents the power dynamics of the region.

After Israeli forces injured hundreds of Palestinians with rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at the Al-Aqsa Mosque—and refused to stand down—Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded with the deadly airstrikes, claiming to strike "Hamas terror targets."

As Jack Mirkinson of Discourse Blog and many other critics pointed out, outlets including the Associated Press, BBC, New York Times, Reuters, and the Washington Post used "clash" or "clashes" to describe the attack on the mosque, which is a holy site for Muslims and Jews. As Mirkinson wrote Monday:


This is not a "clash" between two equal sides. This is a straightforward attack by Israel on Palestinians. For days, the Israeli government has been systematically assaulting Palestinians worshipping at one of the holiest sites in Islam, during Ramadan, all while enforcing a move to ethnically cleanse a Jerusalem neighborhood of its Palestinian residents. Israeli forces have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades, injuring hundreds of people. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem has been filmed lamenting that Palestinian activists weren't shot in the head.

Israel is one of the most militarily advanced countries in the world, thanks to the United States. It is the government in charge. It is the occupying power. It is the one taking active steps to displace Palestinians, to attack worshipers at a mosque. The asymmetry at play is beyond overwhelming.

Some reports "are completely bewildering," he wrote, while others "are clearly so nervous about veering from the script that even when they start strong, they descend into near-gibberish."

I received zero email alerts from the New York Times about what Israel has been doing in recent days. But now that Hamas has fired a rocket, and Israel (not Palestine) is “on edge," it’s a different story. https://t.co/ssQDeZXx94 pic.twitter.com/p9jtSBQXpa

— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) May 10, 2021

Mirkinson was far from alone. In a statement Monday night, Linda Sarsour, executive director and co-founder of MPower Change, the largest Muslim-led digital advocacy organization in the United States, said, "These are not 'clashes.'"

"They are attacks," Sarsour continued. "They are violent assaults by an occupying force. They are acts of ethnic cleansing, carried out by Israeli forces, on Palestinians, for worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan, or for merely existing in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah."

As Common Dreams has reported in recent days, attempts by Israeli settlers and security forces to drive Palestinians out of the Al-Bustan and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem have sparked global condemnation—including from some progressive U.S. lawmakers.

"One word you hear a lot when you cover Israel-Palestine is the word 'clashes'. 'There are clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem tonight!' It's a word, personally, I cannot stand."

Let @mehdirhasan explain why: pic.twitter.com/5cJxj5ZV52

— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) May 10, 2021

"What we're seeing aren't 'clashes,'" Sarsour emphasized. "What we're seeing is the oppression of an apartheid state, against people engaged in peaceful worship during the holiest nights of the year for Muslims around the world."

"The Palestinians are a resilient people," she added. "They want freedom and liberation. They want to live with dignity. They want justice—all universal values, rights, and principles we all deserve. Let's stop the whitewashing of their systemic, violent oppression."

"Clashes" isn't the only word choice that has "stoked controversy," Alex MacDonald reported Monday for Middle East Eye. Others include "conflict," "property dispute," and the terms used when referring to structures at "the Old City complex which houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the Western Wall."



Terms such as "clashes", "conflict" and "property dispute" have been criticised for distorting the narrative coming out of Jerusalem.


We take a look at the words and phrases which have sparked controversy: https://t.co/PgeM7i5MBX

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 10, 2021

Reporters, rights advocates, and progressive lawmakers also called out U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price for how he handled questions from journalists on Monday, including his refusal to explicitly condemn the IDF's reported killing of Palestinian children in the airstrikes.

"Washington is increasingly twisting its tongue in knots trying to square what they say is their support for human rights with support for Israel as it commits war crimes and crimes against humanity," tweeted Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer and political analyst, with a video clip.

U.S. Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, also weighed in, tagging Price's official Twitter account:

Is @StateDeptSpox really refusing to condemn the killing of Palestinian children? https://t.co/h3tXqaxqXp
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 10, 2021

Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept—which last month published a thorough examination of U.S. President Joe Biden's record on foreign and military issues, including "what would become a career-spanning defense of Israeli militarism"—pointed out that Price's responses were not surprising.

"The questions from reporters here are solid. And the answers from the State Department spokesperson are, unfortunately, not shocking," Scahill said. "This is a bipartisan horror and Joe Biden has a very long history of defending Israel's gratuitous violence and killings."

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—who, along with Tlaib, was the first Muslim woman elected to Congress—took to Twitter Monday to address an issue Price was questioned about: the right to self-defense.

Many will tell you Israel has a right to defend itself, to safety and security, but are silent on whether Palestinians have those rights too.
Until we can defend the rights of Palestinians just as we do Israelis, we have no leg to stand on when it comes to justice or peace.
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 10, 2021

Meanwhile, some Israeli Jews took to the streets chanting "Yimach Shemam," a Hebrew phrase that means "may their names be erased," which was denounced as "sick," "shocking," and "revolting."



I am sharing this, reluctantly, to point to the song they're singing. It's a Kahanist revenge song, words from the biblical story of Samson:
"O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes"
(Yimach Shemam, may their name be effaced, the youths chant) https://t.co/OZCYNpdjUF

— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) May 10, 2021

"Hard to capture how deeply horrifying this video is. Thousands of Israeli Jews singing about revenge... dancing as a fire burns on the Temple Mount," said Simone Zimmerman, director of B'Tselem USA and co-founder of IfNotNow. "This is genocidal animus towards Palestinians—emboldened and unfiltered."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

State Dept Spokesperson Under Fire for 'Spineless' 

Refusal to Condemn Israel's Killing of Children in Gaza

"This unsurprising response is devoid of empathy and concern for human suffering," said Rep. Ilhan Omar. "He can't even condemn the killing of children."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer
Published on Tuesday, May 11, 2021
by Common Dreams

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price listens to questions from reporters during a press briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 2021. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Pressed repeatedly by reporters during a briefing on Monday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price refused to condemn Israel's killing of children with airstrikes on Gaza, offering evasive and mealy-mouthed responses that members of Congress slammed as unacceptable.

"We cannot just condemn rockets fired by Hamas and ignore Israel's state-sanctioned police violence against Palestinians—including unlawful evictions, violent attacks on protestors, and the murder of Palestinian children."
—Rep. Mark Pocan

Asked straightforwardly whether he condemns the killing of Palestinian children, Price replied that the Biden administration does not "have independent confirmation of facts on the ground yet" and is "hesitant to get into reports that are just emerging."

"Obviously, the deaths of civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinians, are something we would take very seriously," added Price.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted late Monday that "this unsurprising response is devoid of empathy and concern for human suffering."

"He can't even condemn the killing of children," Omar added.

Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer and political analyst, called Price's remarks "spineless."

Reporters press US State Department on Palestinian right to self-defence #EastJerusalem#AlAqsa pic.twitter.com/U3cmK54TRM
— The National (@TheNationalNews) May 10, 2021

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israel's airstrikes in Gaza on Monday killed 24 people, including nine children. Israel claimed it was targeting "Hamas operatives" and said the airstrikes were retaliation for rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, which reportedly caused several injuries.

Hamas claimed responsibility for a rocket attack in Jerusalem, where Israeli security forces injured more than 300 Palestinians earlier Monday in an assault on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest site.

At the start of Monday's briefing, Price stressed "Israel's legitimate right to defend itself and to defend its people and its territory." But asked whether Palestinians have the same right, Price quickly reverted to defending the broad principle of self-defense while refusing to answer the question.

"It is long past time we finally take action to protect Palestinian human rights and save lives."
—Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and André Carson

"We believe in the concept of self-defense," said Price. "We believe it applies to any state."

Given that Palestinians are a stateless people living under Israeli military occupation, they would not have a right to self-defense under Price's standard, as Associated Press reporter Matt Lee pointed out.

"Are you saying the Palestinians don't have a right to self-defense?" Lee asked, to which Price replied, "I was making a broader point not attached to Israel or the Palestinians in that case... I'm not in a position to debate the legalities from up here."

Following the State Department press briefing, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) tweeted that "we cannot just condemn rockets fired by Hamas and ignore Israel's state-sanctioned police violence against Palestinians—including unlawful evictions, violent attacks on protestors, and the murder of Palestinian children."

"U.S. aid should not be funding this violence," Pocan added.

Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) sent a similar message in a joint statement issued Monday, declaring, "We are horrified by the violent assault by Israeli forces on the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the continued violent attacks on the Palestinian people during the holy month of Ramadan.

"We continue to provide the Israeli government with over $3 billion in military aid every year—with no conditions or accountability for wanton human rights abuses and continuing illegal seizures of Palestinian land," the lawmakers continued. "For decades, we have paid lip service to a Palestinian state, while land seizures, settlement expansion, and forced displacement continue, making a future home for Palestinians more and more out of reach."

"It is long past time we finally take action to protect Palestinian human rights and save lives," the trio said.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

100+ Groups Condemn Israeli Violence in East Jerusalem and Gaza

The groups' statement says the current conflagration is part of a "broader context of Israel's ongoing policy to forcibly remove Palestinians from their homes through eviction, home demolition, and displacement."

by Brett Wilkins, staff writer

Published on Friday, May 14, 2021
by Common Dreams


Gaza residents gather at the site of homes destroyed by Israeli air and artillery attacks on May 14, 2015. (Photo: Ahmed Zakot/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As the death toll from Israel's ongoing air and artillery strikes in Gaza topped 120 on Friday and as Israeli security forces killed at least 10 Arab protesters in the occupied West Bank, over 100 U.S.-based advocacy groups issued a statement urging the Biden administration to condemn the Israeli government's plan to ethnically cleanse thousands of Palestinians from neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

"Israeli state violence is, of course, not limited to Jerusalem. We are horrified by Israel's use of disproportionate and deadly force against Palestinians in Gaza which have already resulted in the killings of dozens of Palestinians, including children."
—100+ groups' statement

The groups—which include peace, faith-based, labor, racial justice, and other organizations—wrote that they "stand in solidarity with the Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem currently at risk of losing their homes and call on the Biden administration to immediately and publicly condemn the Israeli government's plans to forcibly displace 1,550 Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Bustan neighborhoods," while urging the U.S. administration to "exert the utmost diplomatic pressure to prevent these potential war crimes from taking place."

The statement says the planned expulsions are occurring in the "broader context of Israel's ongoing policy to forcibly remove Palestinians from their homes through eviction, home demolition, and displacement, with the express intent of pushing Palestinians out of Jerusalem in order to create and maintain a Jewish majority and supremacy in the city."

Proud to be part of this statement signed by over 100 progressive organizations demanding that the Biden administration stop Israel's forced displacement of Palestinians in #SheikhJarrah, and flanking the calls of @RepMarieNewman & @repmarkpocan's letter https://t.co/7nNbmI2yWc

— Jewish Voice for Peace Action #SaveSheikhJarrah (@JvpAction) May 13, 2021

Decrying the "overwhelming violence and force from Israeli police and settlers" against Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan, the statement notes specific disturbing incidents that have occurred in East Jerusalem, including "a police officer kneeling on a protester's neck while he shouts he is being suffocated" and Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King telling a Palestinian activist it was a "pity" that he wasn't shot in the head.

The statement continues:

Israeli state violence is, of course, not limited to Jerusalem. We are horrified by Israel's use of disproportionate and deadly force against Palestinians in Gaza which have already resulted in the killings of dozens of Palestinians, including children. This comes within the context of Israel's 14-year illegal blockade on Gaza which has created an open-air prison with severe shortages of life-saving medicines, food, electricity, and clean water, making life unsafe and unbearable. We call on the Biden administration to condemn this violence and address its root causes: Israeli blockade and occupation.

The signatories said that the Biden administration must "uphold international law and act in accordance with the urgency of the moment to prevent the Israeli government's forced displacement of thousands of Palestinians."

Finally, they affirmed their support for a letter led by U.S. Reps. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and signed by 23 other House Democrats urging the Biden administration to pressure Israeli leaders to "desist from its plans to demolish Palestinian homes in Al-Bustan and evict Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah."

"We call on the Biden administration to condemn this violence and address its root causes: Israeli blockade and occupation."
—statement

The groups' statement comes a day after progressive members of the U.S. House of Representatives convened a special hour—also organized by Newman and Pocan—during which the lawmakers discussed the root causes of Israeli-Palestinian violence, namely the foundation of Israel through settler colonization, ethnic cleansing, and ongoing oppression and apartheid.

 

"If we are to make good on our promises to support equal human rights for all, it is our duty to end the apartheid system that for decades has subjected Palestinians to inhumane treatment and racism, reducing Palestinians to live in utter fear and terror of losing a child, being indefinitely detained or killed because of who they are, and the unequal rights and protections they have under Israeli law," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress. "It must end."

'Where's the Outrage, POTUS?' Rashida Tlaib Demands US Action as Israeli Forces Assault Al-Aqsa

As Israeli police wounded more than 300 Palestinians, Tlaib said U.S. lawmakers "must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed."

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

Published on Monday, May 10, 2021
by Common Dreams

Palestinian paramedics transport a protester wounded by Israeli security forces at Lions Gate in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City on May 10, 2021. (Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to Congress, demanded Monday that U.S. lawmakers and President Joe Biden take immediate and concrete action in response to Israeli forces' latest assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, where more than 300 Palestinians were injured by rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas.

"This is equivalent to attacking the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, or the Temple Mount for Jews. Israel attacks it during Ramadan."
—Rep. Rashida Tlaib

"Al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in Islam, and people praying during the holiest days of the holy month of Ramadan have been beaten, gassed, shot, and killed by Israeli forces," Tlaib tweeted Monday morning. "They are denied medics and forced to use prayer mats as stretchers. A place of peace desecrated by violence."

The Michigan Democrat went on to call out the bipartisan coalition of U.S. House members who rejected conditioning aid to Israel last month, shortly before Israeli settlers and state forces resumed efforts to forcefully expel Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem—an effort that sparked outrage from Tlaib, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and other progressive lawmakers.

"American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations," said Tlaib. "Congress must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed. Statements aren't working, [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken. Enough is enough."

"I was seven years old when I first prayed at the Al-Aqsa with my sity. It's a sacred site for Muslims," Tlaib added. "This is equivalent to attacking the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, or the Temple Mount for Jews. Israel attacks it during Ramadan. Where's the outrage, POTUS?"

Al-Aqsa is the 3rd holiest site in Islam, & people praying during the holiest days of the holy month of Ramadan have been beaten, gassed, shot, & killed by Israeli forces. They are denied medics & forced to use prayer mats as stretchers.

A place of peace desecrated by violence. https://t.co/S7kc74ceHE
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 10, 2021

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said at least 305 Palestinians were injured, several critically, in the Israeli forces' attack on Al-Aqsa Monday, which came on the Israeli national holiday that marks the country's seizure of East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War of 1967.

"We want Israel to be held accountable for its crimes against Palestinians. The Biden administration and the language of false equivalency continue to uphold this occupation."
—Mohammed El-Kurd

Observers feared that tensions and violence would continue escalating throughout the day as thousands of right-wing Israelis were planning to march through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, but the demonstration was reportedly rerouted at the last minute.

"This is good news," said Yair Rosenberg, senior writer at Tablet magazine. "Hopefully it's not too late and the police can actually keep the marchers to the new route. Let's hope more responsible decision-making follows."

Video footage of the Monday attack posted to social media shows Israeli police beating a Palestinian detained at the compound, women and children scrambling to find cover amid Israeli forces' bombardment of the mosque, and medics escorting wounded Palestinians away from the chaotic scene.

Khaled Zabarqa, a 48-year-old lawyer who had been praying at Al-Aqsa just before Israeli forces began firing on the compound, asked in an interview with the New York Times, "Why have they been attacking the Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan?"

"The Aqsa Mosque is a sacred place for Muslims," said Zabarqa. "Israel is starting a religious war."

Women are being targeted by Israeli forces in Al Aqsa Mosque. Grenades are being thrown at defence less women. (R) pic.twitter.com/koZRFPWslp
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) May 10, 2021

On top of the violence at Al-Aqsa, Israeli forces also reportedly attacked Palestinian demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah on Monday as they protested Israel's ongoing efforts to expel them from their homes.

"They beat me up then a minute later, completely denied they had done such a thing," one protester who said he was assaulted by Israeli police told Al Jazeera. "This is a terrorist government. This is what a government that protects and abets terrorist ministers within its ranks is."

In an appearance on Democracy Now! Monday morning, Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd—whose family lives in Sheikh Jarrah—said that "we want more than just condemnations" of Israeli conduct from the U.S. and the rest of the international community.

"We want Israel to be held accountable for its crimes against Palestinians," said El-Kurd. "The Biden administration and the language of false equivalency continue to uphold this occupation."

Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd says Israel is "doing everything it can to terrorize Palestinians" while Jewish settlers "can just walk around our neighborhoods, steal our homes and wield their guns." pic.twitter.com/19rXZ9UJoG
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) May 10, 2021

"I think you can deescalate the situation and the tension and the violence in Jerusalem by ending the occupation. That is the only solution," El-Kurd continued. "It is insane for Palestinians to continue living under this occupation for 73 years."

Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, argued in a column for The American Prospect on Monday that "the least Biden can do is stop the harm to Palestinians, which in turn will also prevent harm to Israelis."

"One of the first steps Biden could take is to unequivocally disavow the Trump administration's January 2020 'Peace to Prosperity' plan, which put a stamp of approval on Israel's taking of land and resources by force and excluded Palestinians from the process outright," wrote Zonszein. "The administration should also plainly condemn, as the U.K. has, the systematic efforts by Israel to dispossess Palestinians from their homes."

"The Biden administration should also enforce America's own foreign-aid laws by ensuring greater transparency and accountability for how its aid to Israel is currently used, so that Israel is held to U.S. human rights standards and other benchmarks for aid recipients—something that has increasing support within the Democratic Party," Zonszein added.

Correction: This article previously misstated that Rep. Rashida Tlaib was the first Palestinian-American ever elected to Congress. She was the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to Congress.  

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.