Contributing Writers

Republican senators in Washington are attempting to block Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting rights advocate, from a top Justice Department position. The Senate Judiciary Committee has deadlocked on an 11-11 vote on whether to move Clarke’s nomination for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to the Senate floor for a full vote.

Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi says Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is turning life in the besieged territory into “sheer hell,” aided by U.S. military and diplomatic support. “Israel has total license to use unbridled power to kill and destroy and maim and get away with it,” Ashrawi says.

As the death toll in Gaza reaches at least 119 amid Israel’s escalation of its aerial assault, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, delivered a powerful speech on the House floor Thursday to denounce the violence and attempted erasure of the Palestinian people. “I am the only Palestinian American member of Congress now,” Tlaib said. “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.

As MOVE family members and hundreds of supporters held a memorial Thursday to mark the deadly May 13, 1985, police bombing of their home in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced the resignation of the city’s top health official over stunning new revelations he cremated some of the bombing victims’ remains, including bone fragments, without the knowledge or permission of the families.

We look at the crisis unfolding in Israel-Palestine with Nathan Thrall, former director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group and writer now based in Jerusalem, who says despite a buildup of Israeli troops on the Gaza border, Israel wants to avoid a ground invasion of the besieged territory and return to the status quo that existed before the latest round of violence.

Televised images of Israeli mobs attacking Palestinians have been widely denounced by Israeli media and public figures, but Palestinian writer Budour Hassan says the selective outrage ignores decades of occupation that have led to this point. “There is some mention of these lynch mobs that are attacking Palestinians in mixed cities. What is not mentioned is who emboldened these lynch mobs.

On Monday, we spoke to writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd, whose family is facing forceful eviction from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. He also spoke on CNN and MSNBC. After these interviews, Israeli forces arrested him and forcibly removed him from Sheikh Jarrah. It was captured in a dramatic video shared widely on social media. “They just threw me in the street and told me that I couldn’t come back into the neighborhood,” El-Kurd says.

The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 83, including 17 children, and hundreds of people have been injured, as Israel’s aerial bombardment of the besieged territory continues. Israel is now sending troops to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion as many Palestinians are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

This week marks the 36th anniversary of the day the city of Philadelphia bombed its own citizens. On May 13, 1985, police surrounded the home of MOVE, a radical Black liberation organization that was defying orders to vacate. Police flooded the home with water, filled the house with tear gas, and blasted the house with automatic weapons, all failing to dislodge the residents. Finally, police dropped a bomb on the house from a helicopter, killing 11 people, including five children.