January – 2019 – Mondoweiss

Every day brings another sign that Democrats are dividing over Israel
Mondoweiss – Philip Weiss on January 17, 2019
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2019/01/another-democrats-dividing

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Every day brings another sign that there is at last going to be a wide-open debate about American support for Israel in US politics, as the old Democratic Party consensus disintegrates.

We chronicled the efforts of Senate Republicans to push anti-boycott legislation and paint the Democrats as the anti-Israel party. The Women’s March is now riven by the Israel issue, with the Democratic establishment distancing itself from the organizers.

The Democratic leadership is also plainly stunned that two new congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, are both BDS supporters, and that star NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is critical of Israel. Tlaib tells the Intercept today that she wants to withhold American aid to Israel so long as it denies equality and dignity to her grandmother in Palestine.

Several mainstream figures are warning the Democratic Party not to let Israel divide them. Though Nancy Pelosi pooh-poohs the anti’s as a mere fringe: Don’t pay “attention to a few people who may want to go their own way,” she said last month.

A couple more signs. Buzzfeed has an article up by Emily Tamkin and Alexis Levinson titled, “Israel Will Be The Great Foreign Policy Debate Of The Democratic Primary.” It begins bracingly. (...)

#Gentrification in #Haifa soars as Palestinian homes are converted into luxury real estate – Mondoweiss
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2019/01/gentrification-palestinian-converted

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Haifa city was founded some 250 years ago by Daher el-Omar, a Palestinian who ruled the Galilee during the Ottoman Empire. However, the city’s Palestinian history does not exist in Haifa’s public spaces.

“In Haifa, you have museums for exhibiting Japanese art, but you can’t find an exhibition that describes the Palestinian history of the city,” Switat said.

This gentrification process, Switat added, is aimed at “erasing the Palestinian narrative” from the city.

#Palestine

Are U.S. newspapers biased against Palestinians? Analysis of 100,000 headlines in top dailies says, Yes – Mondoweiss

▻https://mondoweiss.net/2019/01/newspapers-palestinians-headlines

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A study released last month by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, supports the view that mainstream U.S. newspapers consistently portray Palestine in a more negative light than Israel, privilege Israeli sources, and omit key facts helpful to understanding the Israeli occupation, including those expressed by Palestinian sources.

The largest of its kind, the study is based on a sentiment and n-gram analysis of nearly a hundred thousand headlines in five mainstream newspapers dating to 1967. The newspapers are the top five U.S. dailies, The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.

Headlines spanning five decades were put into two datasets, one comprising 17,492 Palestinian-centric headlines, and another comprising 82,102 Israeli-centric headlines. Using Natural Language Processing techniques, authors of the study assessed the degree to which the sentiment of the headlines could be classified as positive, negative, or neutral. They also examined the frequency of using certain words that evoke a particular view or perception.

Key findings of the study are:

Since 1967, use of the word “occupation” has declined by 85% in the Israeli dataset of headlines, and by 65% in the Palestinian dataset;
Since 1967, mentions of Palestinian refugees have declined by an overall 93%;
Israeli sources are nearly 250% more likely to be quoted as Palestinians;
The number of headlines centering Israel were published four times more than those centering Palestine;
Words connoting violence such as “terror” appear three times as much as the word “occupation” in the Palestinian dataset;
Explicit recognition that Israeli settlements and settlers are illegal rarely appears in both datasets;
Since 1967, mentions of “East Jerusalem,” distinguishing that part of the city occupied by Israel in 1967 from the rest of the city, appeared only a total of 132 times;
The Los Angeles Times has portrayed Palestinians most negatively, followed by The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and lastly The New York Times;
Coverage of the conflict has reduced dramatically in the second half of the fifty-year period.

Report: Palestinian education increasingly a target of the Israeli #occupation – Mondoweiss
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2019/01/palestinian-increasingly-occupation

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The tear gas and sound grenades were fired into residential areas including seven schools affecting more than 3,000 students. The report documents that these recent acts of aggression were arbitrary, unprovoked, and especially intended to target Palestinian school children, their schools and their neighborhoods.

#Palestine #sionisme #terrorisme