Portside

Reader Comments - Remembering September 11 and The Other 9/11; Fast Food Strikes; Retail Workers Find Better Deals With Unions; Justice Dept. to Probe Ferguson Police; Working Families Party; Death Row; Israel Confiscates More Palestinian Land; One-Third of Israelis Consider Emigrating; Wal-Mart-ization of Education; Wages for Housework; Gluten-free; Eugene Debs and Debs Museum; Charlie Haden; New resource - International Human Rights Law: Violations by Israel; more..

Reader Comments - "I Question America" -- Remembering Fannie Lou Hamer; The Coming Race War Won't Be About Race; Ferguson - Politicians and AFL-CIO - Both Missing; Israelis in US: An Open Letter to American Jews on Gaza; Minnesota Home Health Care Workers Unionize; Ukraine and Neo-Nazis; Sanctions & the Dollar; Economic Democracy Project's first event: Economic Democracy And The Struggle For Black Independence - Sept. 3 - New York

In the repressive one-state reality of today's Israel, which Mr. Netanyahu clearly wishes to make permanent, we need a joint Israeli-Palestinian movement to attain those rights and the full equality they imply. Only such a movement can lay the groundwork for the necessary compromises that will allow the two peoples' national cultures to flourish. They should know that Israel is not Judaism. Jewish history did not culminate in the creation of the state of Israel.

Reader Comments - We need a special prosecutor ((Cornell William Brooks, NAACP); Ferguson, Racism, Economic Inequality, Michael Brown, Police Militarization; Racism and Misuse of Genetics; Rosetta Comet; Jewish Resources for Resisting Nationalism; Robin Williams; Israel, Gaza and Hamas; NFL's New Low - Asks Performers to Pay to Play at Super Bowl; Today in History - Nat Turner's Rebellion; Tomorrow - Fannie Lou Hamer & the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

The polarization of American Jews, said Dov Waxman, Professor of Political Science, International Affairs, and Israel Studies at Northeastern University, has increased with each large-scale eruption of fighting between Israel and Palestinians. Jewish Voice for Peace has seen an increase in new supporters, the formation of new chapters since Operation Protective Edge, and in three weeks 50,000 new people signed up for its email updates.

Reader Comments - Victory for Americans: Walgreens Won't "Invert"; Rosetta Comet Rendezvous; Reflections on My Seven Months in Israel; Incipient Inflation Freak-Out Could Wreck Economy; Jews Who Protest Israeli Policy; Academic Freedom Under Attack - The Firing of Steven Salaita; Anti-Semitism; Virgin America Flight Attendants Vote To Join Union; Healthcare - the NHS; Market Basket Srtike - Why Its So Important; On This Day in History - FDR Signs Social Security Act

Reader Comments - Gaza War - Israel, Palestine, the Jewish community and Zionism; Why Is Washington Risking War With Russia?; Labor - Kellogg Lockout and Coal Miners Anger; The Whitewashing of James Brown; Criminal Prosecution for Environmental Crimes; Bill Gates and the testing industry; Teacher Tenure (video); Celebrate the Life of Vito Marcantonio - Aug 9; 9th annual Dissident Arts Festival - Aug 16 - both in New York Today in History

When Israelis and Palestinians appear fated to fight more frequently and with ever-bloodier consequences, and when peace initiatives seem to be utopian pipe-dreams doomed to fail, the liberal Zionist faces something like an existential crisis. They will have to decide which of their political identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a Zionist. And that is a choice they don’t want to make.

Reader Comments - Woody Guthrie; On the Waterfront; McCarthyism; Screenwriters and the Blacklist; Third Party politics; Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Israeli peace movement and War Crimes; Zionism and the Jewish community; Saudi Arabia's role; Prisoners, Parole (or lack) and Obama; Teachers; Food; Thank you, Anonymous and contributions to Portside; Screenwriters and the Blacklist: Before, During, and After - New York - August 22-September 2

The Zionist strategy of branding its brutal policies as an ad hoc response to this or that Palestinian action is as old as the Zionist presence in Palestine itself. It was used repeatedly as a justification for implementing the Zionist vision of a future Palestine that has in it very few, if any, native Palestinians. And nowadays the vision is of an Israel stretching over almost the whole of historic Palestine where millions of Palestinians still live.