This Week on CP+

HERE'S WHAT YOU ARE MISSING [SUBSCRIBE TO CP+ FOR AS LITTLE AS $4 A MONTH]( July 12, 2021 CounterPunch+ [The Twilight of Zionism]( by Daniel Beaumont The price was high but the Palestinians had the attention of the world press again in May. It took an eleven-day bombardment of Gaza and assaults of various forms on Palestinians in the West Bank and even within Israel itself. The daily violence visited on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is not news. Otherwise, Israel’s historical mission to be “a light unto the nations”—that is to say, its theft of Palestinian land and its violation of Palestinian rights—proceeds mostly unremarked. Most of the time the only thing that varies with that process is the pace of the thefts and violations. The pace quickens when Israel, like a thief, thinks no one is watching. But now another factor seems to be accelerating these events. Israeli anxiety is growing because anger and disgust around the world with its behavior is growing. At the same time both the power and influence of its only real friend, the US, are waning, and Israel finds itself more isolated. Its new friendship with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco hardly lessens its isolation and in any case is only for show. Israelis are now welcome to vacation in Dubai. Israel remains a Zionist island in a sea of 360 million Arabs who despise it. All of these things suggest that the time is coming when the rest of the world may finally say to Israel enough. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [They Called Him a Star]( by Jeffrey St. Clair Perhaps the best thing you can say about Donald Rumsfeld is that Henry Kissinger hated him. The antagonism dated back to the Ford Presidency, when Rumsfeld undermined Henry K’s freelance diplomacy and covertly sought to destroy Kissinger’s détente project. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [Hold Up the Mirror of Human Trafficking and What To Do You See?]( by Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark There are hundreds of ugly faces of poverty. And most people can see the connection between it and one of the most heinous crimes humans can commit, within our own species: humans selling humans. Humans who are not poor, vulnerable, and traumatized selling others who are. Yet it tends to be defined in logistical terms as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit. Without moral considerations, the crime seems much blander than it really is. After all, force, fraud, deception, and exploiting for profit are pretty standard fare. Politicians, the people who supposedly represent us in the public sphere, often engage in these things. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [The Assault on Critical Race Theory]( by Paul Street The sloppy fascist Donald Trump may no longer reside in the White House but he’s back on the [hate rally campaign trail]( his big [Hitlerian Stolen Election Lie](. Meanwhile, Trumpist white nationalism is booming in the “red states,” where Amerikaner Republicans hold the reins. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( [Bend it Like Meghan]( by Ed Rampell LFG is similar in a number of ways to another documentary – FTA, which was made half a century ago. As in the latter, the “F” stands for “fuck” in LFG, too. In the case of the 1972 nonfiction film, the initials stood for Fuck the Army (see: [FTA (imdb.com)]( while LFG is the acronym for Let’s Fucking Go. Both productions are also protest pictures: FTA chronicled the shows of a troupe of political performers, who entertained GIs at coffeehouses, etc., near military bases, encouraging soldiers to resist the Vietnam War with antiwar skits and songs. On the other hand, LFG documents the struggle of the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national soccer team (USWNT) for gender equity. Furthermore, the leaders of the teams of artists and athletes are inspirational, iconic, larger-than-life women: Jane Fonda in FTA, and Megan Rapinoe in LFG. [READ THE REST ON COUNTERPUNCH+]( CounterPunch | 707-629-3683 | [email us](mailto:counterpunchbiz@gmail.com) | [homepage]( Connect with us [[Facebook] ]( [[Twitter] ]( [[Pinterest] ](#) CounterPunch | P.O. Box 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Update Profile]( | [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by counterpunch@counterpunch.org powered by [Trusted Email from Constant Contact - Try it FREE today.]( [Try email marketing for free today!](