From The Times of Israel (TOI) :
Meanwhile, a TOI staff editorial reports:
The editorial ends with ...
There is an increasing recognition that to perpetuate the "shared fiction" about Israel is to be complicit in an occupation that increasingly taints Israel while shamelessly shackling the Palestinian people. The proper response to this escalating travesty is, indeed: "No way in hell!"
‘No way in hell’: Likely starting trend, Ilhan Omar to skip Herzog speech to Congress
“We should not be inviting the president of Israel — a government who under its current prime minister barred the first two Muslim women elected to Congress from visiting the country — to give a joint address to Congress,” Omar tweeted in all caps, noting that ban had meant fellow Muslim congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was unable to visit her grandmother who lives in the West Bank.
“It comes as extreme right-wing Israeli cabinet members directly attack President Biden, saying Israel is ‘no longer a star’ on the US flag,” referring to a remark made by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir after Biden called Netanyahu’s cabinet “one of the most extreme” he has ever seen.
“It also comes as the Israeli government is pushing through what legal experts describe as a judicial coup to centralize power and undermine checks on their power, prompting months of mass demonstrations against the government throughout Israel,” Omar continued, referring to the Netanyahu government’s contentious effort to overhaul the judiciary.
“And above all, it comes during the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in history, immediately following Israel’s largest incursion into the occupied West Bank in two decades, one that flattened city blocks, and killed at least a dozen people,” she said.
Meanwhile, a TOI staff editorial reports:
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman penned a column Tuesday warning that the Biden administration is reassessing its ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, amid growing American alarm over the actions of the hard-right Israeli coalition.
Friedman said US President Joe Biden believes the government is using its judicial overhaul push as a smokescreen to engage “in unprecedented radical behavior… that is undermining our shared interests with Israel, our shared values and the vitally important shared fiction about the status of the West Bank that has kept peace hopes there just barely alive.”
The editorial ends with ...
The judicial overhaul has inspired months of massive protests, with critics warning that it will effectively snuff out Israel’s democratic system of checks and balances by concentrating power in government hands.
Despite clashing with the Biden administration on several matters, Netanyahu has shown himself to be sensitive to US criticism, and his government’s decision to alter the proposed legislation and pass it piecemeal may have been aimed at swatting away potential White House brickbats.
Before Netanyahu agreed to pause the overhaul in late March in order to allow for talks with the opposition, the Biden administration had been gradually raising its voice against the plan, noting that the countries’ shared commitment to strong democratic institutions is what has helped bolster their bilateral relationship for so many decades.
There is an increasing recognition that to perpetuate the "shared fiction" about Israel is to be complicit in an occupation that increasingly taints Israel while shamelessly shackling the Palestinian people. The proper response to this escalating travesty is, indeed: "No way in hell!"
