Portside

Reader Comments: Report from Austria - Neo-Nazis Rise Again; Response to 21st Century Labor Movement from Marilyn Albert; Bernie, Hillary - Krugman, Latin American polices promoted by Secy. Clinton; Israeli Conscientious Objector; Jackie Robinson - readers correct the story; This Week in History - Celebrating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; Announcement - Jeremy Corbyn and the State of Working Class Politics in Britain - New York - May 26

I stand against the government's saber-rattling, against ruling over and harming a civil population. It's important to me to say: No more! I'm not willing to take part in that. I want to represent a different path, to show that there's a choice and that it's possible to resist. Through my refusal I choose to represent a path of solidarity and peace, and I believe this path will create a more secure life for us all.

Reader Comments: Bernie - Jewish Secular Values and what they represent; Long Legs of Bernie's Army; 2016 is not 1968 or 1932; John McCain: Salute to a Communist; Fidel's Message to Brother Obama; the Right Minimum Wage; Tech Workers and the Working Class; Israeli Minister Calls for 'Civil ' Targeted Killings of BDS Leaders - Azmi Bishara is No Enemy of the Israeli State; Military Leviathan and the Draft; Announcements: Washington, DC; Brooklyn; Berkeley; New York

The Israeli mainstream newspaper Yediot Ahronoth held its first conference targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The Yediot Achronot conference attacking BDS has become a veritable carnival of hate. Everyone from delusional Hollywood celebrities (Roseanne Barr) to cabinet ministers, to the leader of the Opposition have pledged fealty to the cause. Two of the speakers are under criminal investigation for corrupt political or financial dealings.

Unlike the other four presidential candidates, Democrat Bernie Sanders declined the invitation to speak at the AIPAC conference in Washington on Monday, and instead delivered a foreign policy address in Utah. The speech has gotten wide circulation because of its affirmations of Palestinian human rights. Katie Miranda imagines what would have happened If Bernie Sanders had delivered his Israel speech at AIPAC instead.

Reader Comments: Donald Trump: Racism and Mob Mentality; After Super Tuesday; Melissa Harris-Perry Firing; Take Action for the Release of Tair Kaminer, Conscientious Objector in Israel; Criteria for Negro Art; Lawyers Fight for Their Rights; and Flint; Haiti; China; UK; Announcements: March 8 Celebrate International Women's Day in New York - Play on Harriet Tubman with Vinie Burrows; C.L.R. James and Race Question - New York - March 25 and more...

The Palestiaan community in Israel held its first ever conference on BDS in February. Responding to charges that the BDS would chiefly hurt Palestinian workers, activists echoed the retort of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa: ‘Apartheid hurts us more’.”

An amazing turn for a major leader of the American Jewish mainstream - David Gordis rethinking view of Israel. He writes: Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal and the visionary. These values have been subordinated to a cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism, severe inequalities...and distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.

Reader Comments: How Social Change Happens; Bernie, Hillary, Kissinger and Scalia; AFL-CIO Election Survey; DNC Lets Lobbyists Back In; Bernie as the Peace Candidate and Remembering 1972; Teaching - With Protest Music; Obama's Military Aid to Israel; Announcements - 50 Years After the Mississippi Summer Project; Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism; Labor for Bernie and Beyond - National Meeting;

Reader Comments: What do Wealthiest Deserve?; Bernie or Hillary - Ben Jealous, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Lee Saunders; Teaching with Protest Music; Israel Crackdown on Palestinian Peace Activists; Uber Drivers; B-52's Failed Against Hanoi; Announcements: Rebellious Lawyering; "The Fight to Vote Resources: New York Times Spoof Site Back Up; New Rosa Parks website; Black History Month - A Bad-ass from History; Tufts University Study on TPP'; The Armenian Genocide