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Israel Tag

Top Palestinian business leaders are following the lead of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and refusing to attend next month's economic workshop in Bahrain, The New York Times reported Monday. The report noted the objections of several prominent Palestinian businessmen. Their primary complaint echoed that of the PA: economic incentives cannot replace the necessary political elements of the peace process, the ending of the Israeli occupation.

In the first part of my documentation of the bias of Human Rights Watch, I focused on HRW’s “Israel and Palestine Country Director” Omar Shakir. I demonstrated that, given his long record of anti-Israel activism, it is laughable for HRW to insist that Shakir would be able or even willing to impartially monitor Israel’s human rights record.

In a devastating blow to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Germany's parliament has passed a resolution condemning BDS as antisemitic. The resolution titled "Stand Resolutely Against the BDS Movement: Combat Antisemitism" calls for cutting state funding to organizations supporting anti-Israel boycott. The motion is first of its kind adopted by any European country.

Israel has refused to renew a visa for Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch (HRW) to remain in Israel as a human rights worker, based on his long history of anti-Israel activism. This has caused a storm of controversy and lawsuits, leading to the fair question: Is Shakir entitled to a work visa to promote human rights if what he really is promoting is anti-Israel activism and the destruction of Israel? Not surprisingly, the international media has taken Shakir's side.

The Palestinian rocket barrage on Israeli civilian communities continues unabated today. In all, over 500 rockets have been fired on Israeli cities and towns, causing at least four Israeli civilian deaths. Homes and the maternity ward of a hospital have been hit, among other civilian locations in Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are threatening to expand the rocket fire to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and even further north.

In an exclusive report this week, Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which is tasked with fighting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to isolate Israel internationally, revealed that the BDS movement has deployed hundreds of bots to promote a campaign to boycott this year's Eurovision Song Contest, which is slated to be held in Tel Aviv later this month.

A fierce backlash was perhaps all but inevitable when a recently published special issue of the academic journal Israel Studies provided a powerful counterpoint to the incessant delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state. Under the title “Word Crimes: Reclaiming the Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” the volume (co-edited by Legal Insurrection contributor Professor Miriam Elman) examines the “academic jargon draped in scholarly prestige” that is used to imply “that Israel’s founding in 1948 is not settled history” but rather a “historical wrong” that can and should be righted according to Palestinian demands.

The Faculty Council at DePaul University passed a resolution condemning professor of philosophy Jason Hill after he wrote an article in The Federalist in support of Israel and condemned Hamas. Hill wrote that "Israel has the moral right to annex all of the West Bank (even Area C) for a plethora of reasons." The article offended Muslim students and some faculty, which caused protests and a demand for censure.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent re-election has irked the European mainstream media. Many leading European media outlets decried the Israeli leader's "right-wing" policies that mobilized Israeli voters ahead of Tuesday's vote. German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau described Netanyahu's victory using anti-Semitic terminology with the headline: "The Eternal Netanyahu," a reference to the 1940 anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew.