We are part of a group of 27 Jewish scholars of Jewish studies who have filed an amicus brief in Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration. We submitted the brief, drafted by the civil rights attorney Yaman Salahi, because we support the university’s fight against government overreach. Yet in doing so, the institution has committed a different kind of discrimination – one that violates federal civil rights law. We reject Harvard’s troubling assumption that being Jewish necessitates supporting Israel, or that criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza constitutes antisemitism. ...
Harvard’s own complaint and legal filings perpetuate a pernicious fiction: that protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza stem from prejudice against Jewish students rather than moral opposition to the systematic destruction of Palestinian life. This narrative relies on three false assumptions: that Jewish communities hold monolithic pro-Israel views, that Jewish students cannot tolerate different perspectives on Israel-Palestine, and that exposure to criticism of Israel constitutes a civil rights injury."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/12/harvard-jews-srael-discriminatory
-->Why do we have to read about this in The Guardian? Well, because no matter how you spin this story, it makes Zionists look bad. Like Joe McCarthy's famous lists of Communists in the government, antisemitism is has become a bogus claim, used to attack critics of the Gaza genocide.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Climate action, pro-democracy, and other civil society groups have warned for months that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are intent on cutting essential programs that millions of Americans rely on while providing the richest households and corporations with at least $5 trillion in tax cuts and other benefits.
But while tech CEO Elon Musk has been highly visible since President Donald Trump took office and selected him to spearhead the administration's slashing of hundreds of thousands of federal jobs at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—an advisory board Musk has since left—other billionaires who are among the top people set to cash in from Trump's policies are less known to the public, even as they wield considerable influence over corporate regulations, privatization, and right-wing attacks on renewable energy.
In a report released Tuesday, the grassroots group Popular Democracy in Action details how six of the top beneficiaries of Trump's assault on social services and his xenophobic, pro-corporate, anti-science policies are cashing in while people across the U.S. struggle with the rising cost of living; fear the administration's mass deportation campaign; and brace for cuts to Medicaid, education, and Social Security.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-oligarchy
-->The NYT talks about election strategy, rather than outline the basic economic problem that both parties have: income inequality and rule by the very rich.
=====
Electronic Intifada:
"On 13 July 2024, nine months after Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza had begun, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet, published a letter from Zion Hagay, Chairman of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), and Malke Borow, the head of the IMA legal department. ...
'The number of health workers killed in Gaza is high because Hamas appropriated several healthcare facilities as command centres … where they stored and launched weapons, and even held hostages. In such a case, the hospital loses any protection afforded it by the Geneva Convention.'
In response, I and others submitted the following letter, as an ethically necessary corrective. 'In casting the Israeli military as essentially blameless, Hagay and Borow seek to use the international stature of The Lancet to distort the public record of the Gaza crisis. They dismiss en bloc the International Court of Justice regarding a finding of genocide, the International Criminal Court, United Nations, WHO and major humanitarian agencies'. ”
https://electronicintifada.net/content/taming-medical-journal-undermines-academic-freedom/50758
-->The Zionists will use any falsehood they can to hide the genocide. This story was planted in the lancet, a world recognized scientific publication. I don't see the story in the NYT.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Guardian:
"Harvard is suing to stop the Trump administration’s unprecedented interference in the operation of the university, supposedly to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. ...
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Common Dreams:
"Joined by retired military officers and national security experts, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen on Thursday launched a campaign targeting the nearly $900 billion Pentagon budget and the $100 billion spent on nuclear weapons and 'to get our country to start funding the American Dream instead of the death of millions of people.'
Standing near Union Station in Washington, D.C. beside a towering sculpture showing what $100 billion looks like, supporters of the Up in Arms campaign—a planned four-year public education and advocacy project 'to bring common sense to the Department of Defense and the country's budgetary bottom line'—chanted, 'Money for the poor, not nuclear war!'
'There will be no peace, there will be no security, until we start using our resources to provide for the needs of our people at home and around the world,' Cohen said at the event. 'And we have the money to do it, at no additional taxpayer expense. If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want, the American Dream can become a reality again.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/cohen-up-in-arms
-->The NYT won't be the first newspaper to promote a nuclear free zone where people's needs are met. Our newspaper of record has been in favor of the last 9 wars the US has waged.
=====
Electronic Intifada:
"Twenty months into its livestreamed and accelerating genocide in Gaza, it would hardly be controversial to conclude that Israel is one of the world’s most hated countries.
But a new global survey from the US-based Pew Research Center indicates just how unpopular it has become, especially in the North American and European states where Tel Aviv has always drawn its main sources of financial, military and political support.
'In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed, around half of adults or more have an unfavorable view of Israel,' Pew reported on 3 June. 'Around three-quarters or more hold this view in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.'
Pew says it last asked the question in 10 of the countries included in its new survey in 2013. 'In seven of these countries, the share of adults with a negative view of Israel has increased significantly.' ”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/revulsion-israel-surges-worldwide-new-survey-finds
-->Bad news for Israel and its war crimes. But you won't get to read about it in the NYT.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Hundreds of thousands of people dressed in red marched through the streets of The Hague on Sunday to demand more action against the "genocide" in Gaza.
NGOs such as Amnesty International, Save the Children, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and Oxfam organized the demonstration, which ran through the city to the International Court of Justice. The protesters were all dressed in red, creating a 'red line'.
Organisers described it as the country's largest demonstration in two decades. Many waving Palestinian flags and some chanting 'Stop the Genocide', the demonstrators turned a central park in the city into a sea of red on a sunny afternoon."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/hundreds-of-thousands-form-red-line-around-the-hague
-->More bad news for apartheid Israel. But the NYT has failed to cover the story, again.
"Joined by retired military officers and national security experts, Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen on Thursday launched a campaign targeting the nearly $900 billion Pentagon budget and the $100 billion spent on nuclear weapons and 'to get our country to start funding the American Dream instead of the death of millions of people.'
Standing near Union Station in Washington, D.C. beside a towering sculpture showing what $100 billion looks like, supporters of the Up in Arms campaign—a planned four-year public education and advocacy project 'to bring common sense to the Department of Defense and the country's budgetary bottom line'—chanted, 'Money for the poor, not nuclear war!'
'There will be no peace, there will be no security, until we start using our resources to provide for the needs of our people at home and around the world,' Cohen said at the event. 'And we have the money to do it, at no additional taxpayer expense. If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want, the American Dream can become a reality again.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/cohen-up-in-arms
-->The NYT won't be the first newspaper to promote a nuclear free zone where people's needs are met. Our newspaper of record has been in favor of the last 9 wars the US has waged.
=====
Electronic Intifada:
"Twenty months into its livestreamed and accelerating genocide in Gaza, it would hardly be controversial to conclude that Israel is one of the world’s most hated countries.
But a new global survey from the US-based Pew Research Center indicates just how unpopular it has become, especially in the North American and European states where Tel Aviv has always drawn its main sources of financial, military and political support.
'In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed, around half of adults or more have an unfavorable view of Israel,' Pew reported on 3 June. 'Around three-quarters or more hold this view in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.'
Pew says it last asked the question in 10 of the countries included in its new survey in 2013. 'In seven of these countries, the share of adults with a negative view of Israel has increased significantly.' ”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/revulsion-israel-surges-worldwide-new-survey-finds
-->Bad news for Israel and its war crimes. But you won't get to read about it in the NYT.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Hundreds of thousands of people dressed in red marched through the streets of The Hague on Sunday to demand more action against the "genocide" in Gaza.
NGOs such as Amnesty International, Save the Children, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), and Oxfam organized the demonstration, which ran through the city to the International Court of Justice. The protesters were all dressed in red, creating a 'red line'.
Organisers described it as the country's largest demonstration in two decades. Many waving Palestinian flags and some chanting 'Stop the Genocide', the demonstrators turned a central park in the city into a sea of red on a sunny afternoon."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/hundreds-of-thousands-form-red-line-around-the-hague
-->More bad news for apartheid Israel. But the NYT has failed to cover the story, again.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
The Irish Times:
"The beaches here in Israel are full. Just an hour’s drive away Palestinians are starving
June is here. Summer has arrived. And the beaches in Tel Aviv are full. Just an hour’s drive away, two million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation. The incongruity of those few words and the bizarre contrast of imagery – the busy beach in Tel Aviv, the dystopia in Gaza – are hard to digest, I imagine, for many in Ireland. They are perhaps shocking, incomprehensible, and sickening even. This, however, is the reality of life, and of course death, here in Israel and nearby Gaza.
Writing those words does not come with judgment. I am simply observing. I also went to the beach in Tel Aviv last weekend. My photograph accompanies the digital version of this article. I recently returned from a 10-day holiday in Spain with my two young daughters. As we descended into Ben Gurion airport, I was struck by the casual announcement of the El Al air stewardess when she politely requested passengers to donate to the spare change program to support children in need in Israel. I wondered if, when hearing those words, “children in need in Israel”, any of my fellow passengers thought for a moment about the estimated 18,000 Palestinian children dead in Gaza and the hundreds of thousands more on the brink of famine."
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/06/07/as-palestinians-starve-an-hours-drive-away-in-gaza-here-in-israel-everyone-went-to-the-beach/
-->Reporting on Gaza is pretty straight forward in the United States. The TV networks hardly report anything at all. Sometimes The NYT will print a groundbreaking story like that of professor Maura Finkelstein who was fired for speaking out about Palestine. But readers in the United States are never presented with their lack of caring while tens of thousands of children starve. We are never reminded of our amorality. We have to go to the Irish Times to express that.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Professors Express Outrage Over UMich's Use of Investigators to Surveil Gaza Student Protestors. 'My university has no business doing this,' wrote one professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Multiple professors expressed outrage on Friday in response to reporting from The Guardian, which found that the University of Michigan is making use of undercover investigators to keep tabs on pro-Palestinian groups on campus.
'My university has no business doing this. I love the University of Michigan, and this is not how we should operate,' said University of Michigan Law School professor Sam Bagenstos, writing from his personal Bluesky account.
The Guardian spoke to several unnamed students who said that they have been followed, recorded, or eavesdropped on private investigators. Students who spoke to the outlet tracked dozens of investigators who have trailed them around campus."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/michigan-gaza-surveillance
-->The big story here is the lack of any coverage of the US Government spying on students. You can even find the story in Israeli newspapers. But not here. Is the political surveillance by our government so pervasive that no one gets upset?
=====
Common Dreams:
"Devastating Report Details an Occupied Palestine on 'Edge of Erasure ...
The world is witnessing Israel relentlessly starve and bomb Palestinians with total impunity,' said one humanitarian worker in the region.
A new report by a leading Quaker social justice organization urges observers of Israel's bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and its accelerated annexation of the West Bank to see the 'escalating violations' not as isolated pushes for control of the occupied territories but something much more sinister and profound.
According to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), SC), the policies and violence Israel is perpetrating on people across the territories are 'systematic and risk the erasure of Palestinians.'
The group joined leading humanitarian organizations that have spent years providing aid and services to Palestinians in Gaza—only to have their work impeded and made deadly by the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) attacks—in releasing The Edge of Erasure, a comprehensive look at the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestine-occupation
-->The Western media isn't too interested in the erasure of the Palestinian people. There was very little coverage of this story.
"The beaches here in Israel are full. Just an hour’s drive away Palestinians are starving
June is here. Summer has arrived. And the beaches in Tel Aviv are full. Just an hour’s drive away, two million Palestinians are on the brink of starvation. The incongruity of those few words and the bizarre contrast of imagery – the busy beach in Tel Aviv, the dystopia in Gaza – are hard to digest, I imagine, for many in Ireland. They are perhaps shocking, incomprehensible, and sickening even. This, however, is the reality of life, and of course death, here in Israel and nearby Gaza.
Writing those words does not come with judgment. I am simply observing. I also went to the beach in Tel Aviv last weekend. My photograph accompanies the digital version of this article. I recently returned from a 10-day holiday in Spain with my two young daughters. As we descended into Ben Gurion airport, I was struck by the casual announcement of the El Al air stewardess when she politely requested passengers to donate to the spare change program to support children in need in Israel. I wondered if, when hearing those words, “children in need in Israel”, any of my fellow passengers thought for a moment about the estimated 18,000 Palestinian children dead in Gaza and the hundreds of thousands more on the brink of famine."
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/06/07/as-palestinians-starve-an-hours-drive-away-in-gaza-here-in-israel-everyone-went-to-the-beach/
-->Reporting on Gaza is pretty straight forward in the United States. The TV networks hardly report anything at all. Sometimes The NYT will print a groundbreaking story like that of professor Maura Finkelstein who was fired for speaking out about Palestine. But readers in the United States are never presented with their lack of caring while tens of thousands of children starve. We are never reminded of our amorality. We have to go to the Irish Times to express that.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Professors Express Outrage Over UMich's Use of Investigators to Surveil Gaza Student Protestors. 'My university has no business doing this,' wrote one professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Multiple professors expressed outrage on Friday in response to reporting from The Guardian, which found that the University of Michigan is making use of undercover investigators to keep tabs on pro-Palestinian groups on campus.
'My university has no business doing this. I love the University of Michigan, and this is not how we should operate,' said University of Michigan Law School professor Sam Bagenstos, writing from his personal Bluesky account.
The Guardian spoke to several unnamed students who said that they have been followed, recorded, or eavesdropped on private investigators. Students who spoke to the outlet tracked dozens of investigators who have trailed them around campus."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/michigan-gaza-surveillance
-->The big story here is the lack of any coverage of the US Government spying on students. You can even find the story in Israeli newspapers. But not here. Is the political surveillance by our government so pervasive that no one gets upset?
=====
Common Dreams:
"Devastating Report Details an Occupied Palestine on 'Edge of Erasure ...
The world is witnessing Israel relentlessly starve and bomb Palestinians with total impunity,' said one humanitarian worker in the region.
A new report by a leading Quaker social justice organization urges observers of Israel's bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and its accelerated annexation of the West Bank to see the 'escalating violations' not as isolated pushes for control of the occupied territories but something much more sinister and profound.
According to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), SC), the policies and violence Israel is perpetrating on people across the territories are 'systematic and risk the erasure of Palestinians.'
The group joined leading humanitarian organizations that have spent years providing aid and services to Palestinians in Gaza—only to have their work impeded and made deadly by the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) attacks—in releasing The Edge of Erasure, a comprehensive look at the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestine-occupation
-->The Western media isn't too interested in the erasure of the Palestinian people. There was very little coverage of this story.
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