MN-04: Rep. McCollum keeps trying to do something for the Palestinians, but without enough company

From a recent email I got:

Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota just reintroduced her legislation in Congress that would prohibit our tax dollars from funding the Israeli military detention of Palestinian children—and this time, it’s an even stronger challenge to occupation and apartheid! The groundbreaking bill is the followup to H.R. 4391 in the last Congress, which boasted 31 cosponsors.

This bill exists because every year, Israel detains and prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts that have a conviction rate of 99.74%. Instead of living free and safe childhoods, Palestinian children fear Israeli soldiers pulling them from their beds in the middle of the night to face torture and ill-treatment. - US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

I get that Israel has a “right to exist.” I also get the population and resource pressures that country is facing. But that doesn’t give the country’s politicians, or any of its citizens, any right to treat the Palestinians as subject people without rights - up to and including extremes of exploitation, abuse, and even murder.

MN-04: Stuff about Rep. McCollum

Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) has been getting some press lately for her new gig as Chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, and what she might do with that. But I’m taking the opportunity to pass this along, that I’ve been hanging onto for a while.

In that basement hotel ballroom, though, there was still uncertainty when Rep. McCollum rose to speak. She outlined Israel's new “nation-state” law. Most of the audience was already familiar with the law, and how it had turned the country’s longstanding discriminatory practices designed to privilege Jews and disempower Palestinians, into an official component of Israel's Basic Law: the equivalent of a constitutional amendment. But would she say the whole truth? Four or five hundred people were sitting on the edge of their chairs.

“The world has a name for the form of government that is codified in the Nation-State Law,” she said. “It is called ‘apartheid.’” There was a collective gasp, and the audience, many in tears, leaped to their feet in a massive ovation. - In These Times

Here's an election guide for what’s coming up in Israel, scheduled for April 7. The general feeling seems to be that voters won’t go for a lot of turnover. But there’s always hope.