Ali Abunimah’s blog

Is Barack Obama running for reelection as President of the United States or Prime Minister of Israel? A new Obama campaign video makes it increasingly hard to tell, and even more ominously ratchets further the Israelization of US politics.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to deny comments attributed to him that The New York Times and Haaretz are Israel’s greatest enemies.

Noted French philosopher and political theorist Jacques Rancière has canceled a visit to Israel after an appeal by PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

A Dutch lawmaker is calling on Israel to continue building Jewish-only colonies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, in violation of international law.

Israel’s Ynet website has published an article supposedly by an Israeli hacker named “Yoni” (last name not given) which threatens a “war” in response to a Saudi hacker who disrupted several Israeli websites in recent weeks in what is has been described “as a tit-for-tat exchange of posturing, threats of mass credit card exposures, and denial-of-service attacks.”

Israeli courts have begun to impose a NIS 20,000 ($5,200) “guarantee” on Palestinian victims who have brought cases related to “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s 27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip which killed 1,400 people and injured and displaced thousands of others.

Two activists have filed a war crimes complaint with federal prosecutors in Belgium, against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials.

Hajar Moumni and Muhammad Najar allege they were detained, mistreated, beaten and harshly interrogated when they took part in the “Welcome to Palestine” solidarity fly-in last summer, Belgian media have reported.

University of California (UC) President Mark Yudof, an avowed supporter of Israel, has denied claims that Jewish students on several UC campuses face a climate of hostility that amounts to a violation of their civil rights, due to Palestine solidarity activism.

Tonight, Palestinian street artists struck again – as they had promised to do – this time in southern Jerusalem, or more specifically “in Talpiot, an Israeli commercial area, built on Palestinian land of Baqaa and Beit Safafa.”

Zionism’s cultural appropriation of indigenous Palestinian folklore and cuisine – such as hummus, falafel and maftoul – as “Israeli” has long irked Palestinians. Now, Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank are attempting to steal perhaps the most important symbol and source of economic sustenance for rural Palestinians: olive oil and olive culture.