Israeli soldiers have killed two Palestinians just this week. By Akbar Shahid Ahmed

By Dilip -
On Wednesday afternoon, as lawmakers and journalists fixated on efforts to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for saying political influence made American politicians unduly loyal to Israel and afraid of criticizing its policies, 15-year-old Saif A-Din Abu Zaied lay dying in a Gaza hospital after being shot in the head by Israeli soldiers. Zaied and other Palestinians didn’t get a mention in the resolution Democratic leadership pushed through the next day that condemned various forms of hate, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism. And the discussion of Omar’s comments ended up mostly being about America’s national conversation: What’s really shaping policy toward Israel if it’s not, as the congresswoman once claimed, “all about the Benjamins” and how this country has, from the Oval Office on down, kept alive the bigotry she’s accused of invoking.

Peter Beinart: Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic
Some information for Israelis (and the rest of us)

That left the underlying human rights crisis as overlooked as Omar suggested. “Nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine,” she said last week at the bookstore appearance where she sparked her latest controversy. So, in the spirit of refocusing a smidgen of the sudden attention to U.S.-Israel relations to the millions whose lives are affected by them on a daily basis, consider the news out of Palestine ― the West Bank, globally considered illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, and Gaza, which Israel has cut off from the outside world since the militant group Hamas took over in 2007 ― since Omar spoke. 
(The U.S. today has effectively no relationship with internationally recognized Palestinian leaders as a result of President Donald Trump declaring the disputed city of Jerusalem the capital of Israel, cutting off nearly all American aid and closing their Washington mission.)

The day after Omar’s remarks, the United Nations concluded that Israel had violated international law and potentially committed war crimes by responding to a fresh wave of Gaza protests in 2018 by killing 189 Palestinians, including 35 children, three clearly marked paramedics and two clearly marked journalists, and injuring thousands. U.N. investigators noted one death of an Israeli soldier and injuries to eight others but rejected the government’s claims that the rallies ― aimed at Israel’s blockade of Gaza and refusal to let over a million registered refugees there return to their historic homes ― were overall a military operation.

The next day, Israeli forces again shot at demonstrators at the fence between the country and the Gaza Strip, wounding 17. Some protesters involved in the new “Great March of Return” campaign that began March 30, 2018, have used stones and devices like incendiary kites, but their leaders have urged peaceful activism, and Israeli forces have in many cases attacked people too far from the fence to cause harm... read more:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ilhan-omar-palestinians_n_5c82f5dee4b0d93616281ab3

see also
Peter Beinart: Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic
More posts on American imperialism
Some information for Israelis (and the rest of us)
Ilhan Omar and the weaponisation of antisemitism: Joshua Leifer: ..what she said was not antisemitic: on the contrary, the full text of Omar’s remarks shows that she was careful not to conflate the pro-Israel lobby (which is also comprised of non-Jewish evangelical Zionists) or the state of Israel with all Jews, nor did she employ the dual loyalty canard..


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