Israeli soldiers and border police take Zeid Taha (6 years old) to a checkpoint in Hebron. November 25, 2018

Via B’tselem (trim from longer video which included the detainment of an older child of 15 who was arrested)

How does one explain Canada’s contradictory foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel?

Trudeau’s ‘human face of neoliberalism’ is nothing but a carefully-constructed mask meant to hide the hypocritical and militant policies that Canada continues to lead.

Israeli soldiers, accompanied Jewish settlers, broke into the northern West Bank village and archaeological site of Sebastia on Wednesday, upon which confrontations with the village’s Palestinian residents ensued, according to mayor of Sebastia Mohammad Azzam.

Azzam told WAFA correspondence that the soldiers accompanied a busload of fanatic settlers in a provocative visit to the site and, while they were there, the soldiers fired teargas and stun grenades into the village, causing suffocation, especially among the elderly and children.

Young residents of the village pelted the soldiers with stones while the soldiers shot back more teargas, causing more suffocation cases, said the mayor, who added that the provocations by the settlers and army, under the pretext of visiting the archaeological site, has become an almost daily occurrence.

The Israeli parliament has rejected a draft bill affirming citizens’ right to equality. According to a report by Israeli activist Yossi Gurvitz for Mondoweiss, the Knesset voted down the bill by 71-38.

‘Basic Law’: Equality’, drafted by Meretz MK Mossi Raz, stated: “The State of Israel shall maintain equal political rights amongst all its citizens, without any difference between religions, race and sex.”

In the vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition – which has only 61 seats in the Knesset – “enjoyed the support” of opposition party Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid.

In addition, Gurvitz reported, “many members” of the Labor Party-dominated Zionist Camp faction “fled the hall before the vote”.

Israeli occupation forces seized a six-year-old Palestinian child in Hebron, the occupied West Bank, and detained him without family members for an hour, reported B’Tselem.

The incident took place on 25 November, at around 2pm, when Israeli forces seized 15-year-old ‘Abd a-Rahman Abu Daoud, and six-year-old Zeid Taha.

Both children were then taken to so-called “Pharmacy Checkpoint” in the segregated city. Abu Daoud was then transferred to Ofer Prison and ultimately sentenced to three months in prison.

The small town of Abassan in the Gaza Strip is a tough place to infiltrate — everyone knows everyone else and outsiders passing through quickly attract attention. So when strangers drove through town, suspicious Hamas security men stopped the van and questioned those inside.

The answers didn’t add up.

With their covers about to be blown, the Israeli undercover forces inside the vehicle opened fire, setting off a fierce battle that left eight people dead and triggered a brief but intense round of cross-border fighting.

A month after the exchange, the raid remains clouded in mystery. The Israeli army has kept mum, while Hamas officials have declined to comment publicly as they investigate the incident. With each side protective of its secrets, and possibly keen to spread disinformation, the full story may never be known.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson talked about the hypocrisy of Democrats who support Israel’s border wall and not the U.S.-Mexico border wall President Donald Trump wants to build during “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday.

Prior to his interview with David Rubin, a former Israeli mayor, Carlson went after Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi for labeling Trump’s plan to build a wall along the country’s southern border as “immoral.”

Chair of the Defence Committee at the Israeli Parliament Avi Dichter has called for killing all the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

As he was commenting on the peaceful protests of the Great March of Return taking place along the eastern fence of the Gaza Strip, he said:

“The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”

Dichter is a senior member of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, which is a right wing one.

Former director of Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security Dichter said that the Israeli army is prepared to use all means, including lethal force to deter the Palestinians protesters.

This morning CNN executives woke up to an ad chastising the network in the popular Sunday edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reaches over 900,000 people.

In the paper of record, in CNN’s hometown, activists sent a powerful message in support of Professor Hill and in protest of his firing.

Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN after he spoke at the United Nations in defense of Palestinian rights as part of the UN-organized International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

The Jewish Voice for Peace advertisement is part of a larger support campaign for Marc Lamont Hill, and was paid for by over 1,000 individual donations, with an average gift of $28.

IDF soldiers terrorize the Palestinian civilians during the night, especially children.

Shocking video

Since the exposure of Israeli undercover forces by Hamas fighters in the occupied Gaza Strip on November 11, an incident that triggered the most intense round of escalation since 2014, a number of reports have emerged about the circumstances surrounding Israel's thwarted raid.

On November 22, Hamas published photos of individuals it said were involved, images that Israel's military censor immediately subjected to a publication ban.

Since then, a number of articles in Israeli and international media have claimed the Israeli forces impersonated humanitarian workers, used fake ID cards of real Palestinian residents, and operated inside Gaza for weeks with a cover story of distributing medical equipment and wheelchairs.

A four-year-old Palestinian boy has died after being injured during clashes between the Israeli army and protesters along the Gaza border, the health ministry in Gaza said.

"Ahmed Abu Abed, aged four years and eight months, died as a result of the wounds he received last Friday east of Khan Yunis," health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement late Tuesday.

Protected by the Israeli occupation forces, a group of Israeli Jewish settlers yesterday stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque and performed religious rituals in its courtyards, Ma’an News Agency reported.

Firas Al-Debbis, the coordinator of public relations at Al-Aqsa Mosque, said that 45 settlers stormed the Mosque through Al-Mughrabi Gate.

He said that the settlers were escorted by a large number of the Israeli occupation forces.

Meanwhile, another group of settlers organised a night demonstration in Jerusalem’s Old City to mark the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

The settlers chanted anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian slogans and called for the demolition of Al-Aqsa Mosque and for more settlers to be allowed in to Islam’s third holiest site.

Five Palestinians were wounded yesterday morning after Israeli occupation forces stormed Al-Bireh and confiscated surveillance cameras in the area, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

More than 40 armoured military vehicles stormed the occupied West Bank cities of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, raiding a number of shops around the headquarters of the Palestinian financial ministry and confiscating CCTV footage from the area.

Local sources said that the Israeli occupation forces set up flying checkpoints in Al-Masayif neighbourhood and checked the IDs of Palestinian passersby.

The commander of the Israeli forces told journalists that they had not planned to storm the financial ministry but wanted to confiscate CCTV recordings from the area.

Israeli minister Ophir Akunis toured Israeli settlements yesterday and “declared his support” for the annexation of the so-called Gush Etzion settlement “bloc” and “Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] in general”, reported right-wing news outlet Arutz Sheva.

The Minister of Science and Technology, part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, visited the Gush Etzion settlements with local settler council leader Shlomo Ne’eman.

Akunis described the Gush Etzion settlement bloc as “one of the foundations of our people dating back thousands of years, and anyone who disputes this right is wrong”.

As we have been forced to leave here in the past, we are here to win, and here thousands of families will raise their children for generations to come

he declared.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday promised that he would never evict illegal settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories as long as he is in office, local media reported.

Speaking at an inaugural ceremony for an interchange outside the illegal settlement of Adam, which is located in the centre of the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu said: “Our enemies want to uproot us from here, but… as long as I am the prime minister of Israel, not a single Jew will be uprooted from his home.”

He pledged to build more and more settlements and settlement units. “Not only will Jews not be uprooted from their homes, but we will build and add to them,” he said.

Netanyahu said that Israel would prove that the desire of anyone to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories “will be met by an impenetrable wall. That is why we are here today.”

While Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into Israeli influence in the United States, “The Lobby – USA,” was completed in October 2017, it never aired. Though the network’s director-general attributed the problem to outstanding legal issues, many, including journalists involved in the making of the documentary, suggested Qatari censorship of the film – likely resulting from US pressure and Qatar’s desire to curry favor with Washington. (Another Al Jazeera film on Israeli influence in the UK – “The Lobby” – aired in January 2017.)

Now, the US version is no longer under wraps: Last month, the Electronic Intifada, in tandem with France’s Orient XXI and Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar, which provided subtitles in French and Arabic, respectively, released the leaked film. (Click to access.)

Marc Lamont Hill, Tim Anderson, Steven Salaita, Rabab Abdulhadi, Hatem Bazian, Ahlam Muhtasib, Norman Finkelstein and other academics have all been targets of the movement to silence their criticisms of Israel and their defense of Palestinians. This includes threats and legal actions to try to deny them employment, in violation of their free speech rights, one of the most hallowed and ancient principles of academia. Salaita and Finkelstein were, in fact, denied employment, to the great detriment of their entire career. Hill and Anderson are currently defending themselves from this threat.

Israel is facing a fierce campaign over existing settlements because of efforts against it at the International Criminal Court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Likud politicians on Monday, in response to criticism for not doing enough to advance settler activity in the West Bank.

Following a Board of Trustees meeting this afternoon, Temple University President Richard Englert released a statement on behalf of the board, announcing that professor Marc Lamont Hill will not be punished or investigated for his Nov. 28 speech during an event organized with the United Nations. In that speech, Hill called for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Englert, in delivering the statement, affirmed that Hill “spoke as a private citizen and his right to do so is protected by the constitution.”

The announcement finds Temple returning to its initial statement, which recognized that Hill’s speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Poor Jeremy Corbyn. He’s in hot water again. His latest offense? Ignoring an invitation from the leader of the Israeli Labor Party to journey to Israel to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

And the Israeli Laborites are incensed at the absence of a reply, while the Blairite centrists in Corbyn’s own party are reportedly in “shock” at the news.

“You’re a lying racist,” shouted Labour MP John Mann at former London Mayor Ken Livingstone last month after the latter pointed out–accurately, by the way–that Hitler had supported Zionist goals of having Jews immigrate to Palestine. But it seems the philo-semitic witch hunters out for Corbyn’s blood can’t be bothered with historical facts.

Having fought to get a deal between the IRA and Britain for over a decade before that was achieved, I can’t see any difference with the current situation in between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.

Israel is just under a year away from its next election. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came close to being forced out of office last month when his coalition partner, the defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, resigned his position. Lieberman’s resignation was triggered by Netanyahu’s refusal to launch a more brutal attack against the Palestinians following their alleged rocket attacks against Israel.

Radical Jewish groups today called for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be killed.

Posters placed by the groups at the entrance of the illegal Jewish settlement of Yitzhar near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus were inscribed with a phrase reading “supporter of terrorists” – in reference to Abbas and called for his death.

US-sponsored peace talks between the PA and Israel collapsed in 2014 over Israel’s refusal to halt settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

On Monday, Israeli forces raided Ramallah and the main office of the official Wafa news agency allegedly to find footage of a shooting which injured seven illegal settlers in a nearby settlement on Sunday.

The 6 December was the first anniversary of US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that he would move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. The announcement was cheered by Israel and its supporters for whom international laws and conventions are at best meaningless and at worst an irritant. Trump suggested that this move would help bring peace to the Holy Land. How wrong he was. Anyone but a diehard Zionist would have told him that he was deluded to think this, but nobody in his administration would have done so, because those tasked with developing a peace deal fall into this category.

A Qatari envoy overseeing the Gulf state's humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip said on Monday that he had proposed building an airport in the blockaded Palestinian enclave but had received no response from Israel.

In coordination with Israel and the United Nations, Qatar has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to various Gaza projects that the partners say are designed to stave off Palestinian poverty and prevent escalations in violence.

"They [Israel] said it would be discussed and they procrastinated... We will renew our request," Qatari Ambassador Mohammed al-Emadi told the Gaza-based news agency SAWA.

"The Israeli side had security concerns and we told them we can resolve them by having the planes fly to Doha and return to Gaza from there and under Qatari security supervision."

For 30 years, the United Nations has held an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29 November. The event rarely merited even a passing nod in the mainstream media. Until last week.

Marc Lamont Hill, a prominent US academic and political commentator for CNN, found himself deluged by a tsunami of outrage over a speech he had made at the UN headquarters in New York. He called for an end to Oslo's discredited model of interminable and futile negotiations over Palestinian statehood – a strategy that is already officially two decades past its sell-by date.

In its place, he proposed developing a new model of regional peace based on a single state offering equal rights to Israelis and Palestinians. Under a barrage of criticism that his speech had been anti-semitic, CNN summarily fired him.

Of all the anniversaries that punctuate Palestine’s tragic modern history, the one on 11 December may be the most important.

On that day 70 years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 by a majority of 35 out of 58 members. It has since been reaffirmed more than 135 times, remaining the bedrock of the Palestinian cause and the earliest legal underpinning of the right of return.

Resolution 194 called on the newly formed Israeli state to allow "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours … to do so at the earliest practicable date", and to compensate them for their losses. It arose from an international consensus that people forcibly displaced from their homes had a right to return in customary and humanitarian law.

With Israel focusing on decreasing Iran’s presence in Syria and neutralizing Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles and terrorism tunnels from Lebanon, it has no interest in an escalation now with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

At the same time, Netanyahu said at the regular meeting of Likud minister that precedes the weekly cabinet meeting, “If there is no choice, we are today in a situation to do much more in a military campaign in Gaza if needed, because we are taking advantage of the time to prepare. The security cabinet has already received an initial briefing.”

The 14-member Hashimeh family has become homeless after the demolition.
The family had attempted to issue licenses for their homes for the past twenty years.

Jawhar told Ma'an that the family had paid a total of 61,000 shekels of fines as they attempted to issue licenses, however, the municipality always rejected their applications before ordering the demolition of the homes last June.

The UN General Assembly has apparently rejected any connection between Judaism and the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa. In a vote held on Friday, the General Assembly passed six resolutions condemning Israeli violations against Palestinians. Among them was Resolution A/73/L.29 entitled “Jerusalem” which called for “respect for the historic status quo at the holy places of Jerusalem, including the Haram Al-Sharif.”

The use of the Arabic name for the sanctuary has been interpreted as a not-so-subtle rejection of the site’s alleged connection with Judaism. The Jewish name for the Noble Sanctuary, the Temple Mount, is not mentioned anywhere in the UN document.

The resolution received 148 votes in favour and just 11 against. It also stressed that the UN General Assembly,

Evangelical Christian groups have invested up to $65 million in projects in the “Biblical Heartland” over the past decade, however, that doesn’t include services they provide free of charge, such as volunteer laborers, according to a Haaretz investigation, Maan News Agency reports.

Haaretz news outlet reported that about 1,700 volunteers were sent by Christian Evangelical groups to the illegal Israeli settlement of Har Brakha, south of the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus.

Israel has arrested 337,000 Palestinians since the start of the First Intifada in 8 December 1987, the Palestine Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said yesterday.

In spite of the arrests, the centre’s spokesperson Riyadh Al-Ashqar said, the occupation has failed to achieve its goals of suppressing the Palestinian resistance and its efforts to liberate Palestine.

Israel has arrests Palestinians on an almost daily basis, he added.

According to the report, occupation forces arrested 210,000 Palestinians between 1987 and 1994, when the Palestinian Authority was established.

A new poll published yesterday has provided fresh evidence of anti-Arab racism amongst Israeli Jews.

Conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute for Channel 10, the poll was conceived of “as a follow-up to a CNN poll last month that revealed high levels of anti-Semitism in Europe”.

One conclusion of the poll was that “the more religious the respondent, the more likely they were to reject the non-Jewish minority”.

According to reports, 52 per cent of respondents “said they agreed to some extent with the statement: ‘Most Jews are better than most non-Jews because they were born Jews’”.

The World Zionist Organisation (WZO) used Israeli public funds to finance construction in an unauthorised settler outpost in the occupied West Bank, an investigation by Haaretz has revealed.

According to the report, the WZO’s Settlement Division “transferred public funds as loans to at least two settlers from the West Bank settlement of Itamar”, in exchange for which “the settlers mortgaged plots that had been allocated to them”.

Official maps, however, “show that the ostensibly mortgaged plots simply don’t exist”.

The legislation committee at the Israeli Knesset yesterday approved 200 extra communities where non-Jewish inhabitants can be banned, Arab48 reported.

MK Bezalel Smotrich, from the Jewish Home party, initiated the bill to add the new communities to the list of areas which enjoy power to choose the families and persons who are planning to move in to them.

The majority of the 700 communities which enjoy this right are based in the Galilee. Critics have said this racist policy is another means through which Israel plans to Judaise the areas and wipe away their Palestinian history by banning Arabs from living in them.

The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has granted loans for setting up illegal outposts in the West Bank ? Public funds were given to settlers in exchange for mortgaging of non-existent plots

In the wake of the UN General Assembly rejection of the US-drafted resolution condemning the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement and some of the other Palestinian factions, the Israeli Ambassador to the UN resorted to the usual lies and propaganda about Hamas and resistance to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“There is no difference between Hamas, Al-Qaida and Boko Haram,” claimed Danny Danon as he described acts of legitimate resistance to Israel’s military occupation as “acts of evil”. He even sought the moral high ground by claiming that Israel is always thinking of the Palestinians and the better life that they deserve. Of course, Danon and other Israeli officials know very well that there is a vast difference between Hamas and the groups he cited; and a huge difference between legitimate Palestinian resistance and “acts of evil”.

Israeli authorities are guilty of “persistent unwillingness to conduct genuine investigations into grave incidents of suspected war crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians” in the Gaza Strip, a leading Israeli human rights organisation has told a United Nations (UN) inquiry.

In a report submitted to the UN’s Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (COI), legal rights centre Adalah documented “the lack of Israeli domestic accountability mechanisms” in the context of both the 2014 war and the 2018 protests.

According to Adalah, Israel’s unwillingness to “conduct genuine investigations or to initiate prosecutions relating to the 2014 Gaza war stresses the need for international intervention to provide remedies and accountability for Palestinian victims of the 2018 protests.”

Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning, accompanied by military reinforcement security from the Israeli occupation army.

According to the sources of the Islamic Endowments Department, Israeli Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, was leading a group of Israeli extremist settlers who entered through the Mugrabi Gate in the western wall of the mosque.

Last month, the City Council in Ghent, Belgium voted to ban companies involved in human rights violations from doing business with the the city.

Palestinian solidarity activists with the group Ghent Action Platform Palestine (GAPP) were the driving force behind this vote.

Similar votes have also been passed in response to Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights in dozens of cities, including Barcelona, Valencia, Dublin and Trondheim.

Chairman for the Defense Committee of the Israeli Parliament of the Knesset, Avi Dichter, recently made an underhanded remark expressing favor for killing all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

As he was commenting on the protests of the Great March of Return, taking place along the eastern fence of the Gaza Strip, he said: “The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”

Dichter is a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling right-wing Likud Party.

A former director of Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security, Dichter said that the Israeli army is prepared to use all means, including lethal force to deter the Palestinians protesters.

In one of Ghost Hunting's most harrowing scenes, a Palestinian prisoner urinates on himself as he stares in contempt at his Israeli captor.

"God damn you!" the infuriated prison guard screams. "We have no one to clean this up - whoever makes the mess must clean it up himself!"

He gestures at another guard in the room to force the prisoner onto the floor. The two men then mop up the urine with the body of the prisoner, who bursts into paradoxical laughter and is then left in handcuffs on the ground of the cell when they're done. The scene abruptly cuts, but the cameras continue to roll.

Academics and scholars, from Lucy Peterson, University of Michigan, and Steven Salaita to Thomas Abowd, Tufts University, and Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University, have faced numerous attacks from Zionists in the US.

But the recent firing of CNN analyst Marc Lamont Hill is clear recognition that #BlackPalestinianSolidarity is the strongest threat to Israel’s attempts to maintain its hegemony over Palestine liberation discourse in this country.

All those who watched Hill’s speech at the United Nations – which was delivered on 28 November, the eve of the UN-recognized International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People – understood clearly what the Temple University professor meant with his conclusion.

“We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires,” he said. “And that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

A spokesperson for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to share the incoming congresswoman’s stance on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement when asked on Friday.

The official BDS website describes the movement as one trying to uphold “the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”

Conversely, many Jewish organizations view the movement through a lens of anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League says that the BDS movement “rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” and “is the most prominent effort to undermine Israel’s existence.”

Though Wiesel offers himself as a paragon of moral virtue, the truth is somewhat seamier. As detailed in this myth-shattering piece by Alexander Cockburn from the February 2006 print edition of CounterPunch, Wiesel assiduously campaigned for the Nobel Prize and has for decades tried to pass off his short book “Night” as a true account–a “testimony” in his words– of his experiences at Auschwitz, even though key scenes in the book have been exposed as fiction.

Israeli forces deployed along the volatile border with the Gaza Strip have fired live rounds at rock-throwing Palestinian protesters ever since demonstrations against Israel’s long-running blockade of Gaza began in March.

And for eight months, Israeli snipers have targeted one part of the body more than any other — the legs.

The Israeli army says it is responding to weekly assaults on its frontier by Palestinians armed with stones, grenades and firebombs. The military says it opens fire only as a last resort, and considers firing at the lower limbs an act of restraint.

Still, 175 Palestinians have been shot to death, according to an Associated Press count. And the number of wounded has reached colossal proportions.

A coalition of 50 feminist and women's organizations joined forces to bring thousands of Israeli women - Jews and Arabs alike - into the streets to protest government inaction.

On Friday evening, 07 December 2018, Israeli forces wounded 72 Palestinian civilians, including 11 children, 1 woman and 2 paramedics in the peaceful demonstrations in the eastern Gaza Strip despite the decreasing intensity of the demonstrations there for the sixth week consecutively and absence of most means usually used during the demonstrations since the beginning of the Return and Breaking the Siege March 7 months ago.

According to observations by PCHR’s fieldworkers, for the fifth week since the beginning of the Return March on 30 March 2018, the demonstrators abstained from burning tires while the attempts to cross the border fence and throw stones and incendiary balloons were completely absent.

At least 33 Palestinian protesters were shot and injured by Israeli soldiers Friday, at the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip, medical sources said.

Protesters were shot at with live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets as they approached the barbed-wire perimeter fence.

Of the 33 shot, one protester was critically injured, while many others suffered the suffocating effects of tear gas, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has confirmed.

Civil rights groups are warning that moves to discipline or fire Marc Lamont Hill from his teaching position at Philadelphia’s Temple University would violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution that guarantees free speech.

Hill gave a 28 November speech at the United Nations to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Since then he has been the target of a campaign of lies by pro-Israel groups falsely characterizing the speech as anti-Semitic and calling for genocide against Jews.

In fact, Hill presented a vision rooted in universal human rights of Palestinians gaining freedom, just as other peoples have. He made particular reference to the history of Black struggle against American state racism, Jim Crow and apartheid.

A large number of Batan al-Hawa residents have been there for over 70 years, many after being expelled from their ancestral homes as Israel proper was being established.

Residents now face another expulsion with a Jewish settler organisation, Ateret Cohanim, trying to wage what Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO, calls the single-largest takeover of a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem since Israel occupied it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution calling to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, current President of the UN General Assembly Maria Espinosa said in a statement.

"The result of the vote is as follows: 156 in favor, six against, 12 abstentions," Espinosa said on Thursday. "The draft resolution is adopted."

The New York University (NYU) Student Government Assembly passed a divestment resolution inspired by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) last night, in what campaigners hailed as “the first resolution of this nature ever to be presented at NYU”.

According to a press release by NYU Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the vote was carried by 35 votes in favour, and 14 against, with 14 abstentions, thus meeting the two-thirds threshold required.

The resolution, backed by 61 student groups and 34 faculty members, calls for “divesting from corporations that violate Palestinian human rights and calls on NYU to adopt a socially responsible investment policy that upholds human rights for all”.

Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups B’Tselem and Al-Haq have both received a prestigious French award, prompting a furious response from Israeli officials.

The five laureates of the 2018 Human Rights Prize of the French Republic were announced on Wednesday, an award which honours individuals or organisations that promote human rights.

The award ceremony will take place at the Ministry of Justice in Paris on 10 December, on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Attendees will include French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet.

Assault on free speech has been a common feature of Israeli governments. This week another example of its efforts to silence critical voices was revealed by the +972 magazine, which reported details of a campaign by the right-wing Netanyahu government to de-fund independent publications and human rights organisations.

In an effort to dry up the funding of the magazine and number of human rights organisations including Breaking the Silence, and B’Tselem, Israel asked the German government to pressure two left-leaning political foundations that provide funding to these organisations.

A US-drafted resolution condemning the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and other Palestinian factions has failed to get the required majority for adoption by the UN General Assembly. This was despite the US “warning” countries which planned to vote against the proposal.

The US and Israel exerted a lot of effort in trying to ensure that the resolution was passed, because while General Assembly resolutions are non-binding on member states, they are considered to be a barometer of world opinion. Introducing the resolution, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, appealed for countries to put to one side their different views of the Israel-Palestine conflict and vote for the resolution. At one stage, Haley seemed to be begging member states not to oppose the US text.

An Israeli soldier was filmed shooting tear gas into a Palestinian school in Hebron during school hours, despite military denials. A military source later said the soldier apparently shot in response to rocks thrown by students.

Palestinians have reported that soldiers have been shooting tear gas and stun grenades into schools, but the Israel Defense Forces has denied such incidents. Haaretz obtained a video documenting at least one such incident.

Last week, Palestinians reported to Israeli veterans’ anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence an increase in the scope of tear gas launched at Hebron schools located in an area of Hebron where many schools can be found, including primary schools.

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to use lethal force against the participants in the peaceful protests organized along the Gaza Strip borders, which witnessed the peaceful protests for the 35th week along the eastern and northern border area of the Gaza Strip. They also continued to use armed force as well during the incursions into the West Bank. In the West Bank, the Israeli forces on the international Day of Persons with Disabilities killed a Palestinian civilian with a disability in Tulkarm and wounded 5 others. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces wounded 98 civilians, including 28 children, 4 women, 2 journalists, and a female paramedic. The injury of four of those wounded was reported serious.

The Irish Senate voted, on Wednesday, to pass a bill to boycott the trade and importing of goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The bill was submitted to the Senate by independent Senator Francis Black who hopes that, with support, the vital bill will become law. Palestinian ambassador Ahmed Abdelrazek, along with lawyers who worked on drafting the bill and the legislation’s sponsoring organisations Trócaire, Christian Aid and Ictu (Irish Congress of Trade Unions) all applauded the passing of the bill.

The controversy that has resulted from Marc Lamont Hill’s speech is just the latest iteration of a larger effort to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights in the United States, at a time when the Trump administration is set to reveal its Israel-centric “peace plan” that is set to be a disaster for Palestinians.

Former Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon admitted on Thursday that the Israeli officials had for years lied about the existence of alleged Hezbollah tunnels beneath the Lebanon-Israel border.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio, Ya’alon said that the Israeli officials lied about the tunnels for years before they decided to carry out an operation to destroy them earlier this week.

“We did it to mislead the other side,” Ya’alon told the Army Radio. “There is an exaggeration in the way it [the operation] was presented, and I hope that does not hurt us,” he added.

Regarding previous remarks he delivered in 2016 that there was “no single tunnel” in the north, Ya’alon said: “My comments two years ago that there are no tunnels in the north was a lie in order to preserve the security of the state.”

However, he believes that there is an exaggeration regarding the ongoing operation.

America has been putting pressure on a number of Arab states in order to get them vote today in favour of a draft resolution it has introduced at the UN which condemns the Palestinian resistance.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the US Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt sent letters to diplomats from nine Arab countries asking them to support the US draft.

Haaretz reported that Greenblatt sent the letter sent to diplomats from Morocco, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Qatar.

In the letter he wrote that the Palestinian Authority’s opposition to the US proposal is “hypocrisy as it considers Hamas an enemy and imposes sanctions on it in Gaza,” while at the same time it defends its “terrorism”, Arab48 reported.

The PA and Fatah have criticised the US draft resolution, considering it “absolute” American support for the Israeli occupation against the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Energy and Natural Resources Authority has rejected Israeli threats against renewable energy projects implemented in the occupied West Bank, Quds Press reported yesterday.

In a statement, the authority said that the last Israeli threat was made against private renewable energy projects connected to the local Palestinian grid.

The authority said it only give licenses to such projects in “Areas A and B” of the occupied West Bank where the PA has full administrative sovereignty according to Oslo Peace Accords.

In the statement, the authority said that the Israeli occupation has been continuously seeking to undermine projects which help the Palestinian economy become independent.

Israel announced yesterday morning a military and engineering operation, which it dubbed “Operation Northern Shield”, aimed at destroying what it alleges are offensive tunnels belonging to the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, on the border with Lebanon. This operation represents Israel’s new approach to war, which has been Israel’s favourite in recent years. It calls this approach “the War Between Wars” (WBW) which involves fighting battles with limited goals and avoids direct confrontation, instead relying on intelligence. It focuses on air force and special forces operations in a manner in line with the army’s 2015 strategic document. Why WBW and why “Operation Northern Shield”?

Israel has been pursuing a more proactive foreign policy in the Balkans, in part aiming to weaken the EU’s stance on the Palestinian issue

There are consequences if the duty is a challenge to zion …

Another victim of the Israel Lobby: Academic and activist Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN after making statements in support of Palestinian liberation at the UN.

Cardin is making a behind-the-scenes push to slip an anti-boycott law into a last-minute spending bill being finalized during the lame-duck session, according to four sources familiar with the negotiations.

The measure, known as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, was shelved earlier amid concerns about the infringement of free speech, after civil liberties groups argued that the original version would have allowed criminal penalties for Americans who participate in a political boycott of Israel. Some of the more aggressive elements of the provision have been removed under pressure, but the American Civil Liberties Union, which spearheaded the initial opposition to the bill, is still strongly opposed.

Czech president Milos Zeman offered Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist government a fillip during his visit to Israel last week. He inaugurated a cultural and trade center, Czech House, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls.

At the opening, he expressed hope it would serve as a precursor to his country relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. If so, the Czech Republic would become the first European state to follow US President Donald Trump’s lead in moving the US embassy in May.

It is this kind of endorsement that, of late, has emboldened Mr. Netanyahu’s government, the Israeli courts, Jerusalem officials and settler organizations to step up their combined assault on Palestinians in the Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Israel has never hidden its ambition to seize control of East Jerusalem, Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967 and then annexed, as a way of preventing a viable Palestinian state from emerging.

Can leftist Jews really be part of the struggle for justice for Palestinians—a justice that hinges on an end to the violation of our basic human rights, including the Right of Return of refugees—by making Aliyah to the country that privileges them, simply because they are Jewish? In her groundbreaking essay, which remains relevant decades after she first wrote it, as an address to white liberal feminists, Audre Lorde asserted that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

Uruguay’s Vice-President, Lucia Topolansky has affirmed her country’s support for the Palestinian people’s rights and the importance of cooperation in various fields.

Topolansky made the remarks during a meeting with Palestinian Ambassador, Walid Abdel Rahim.

Ambassador Abdel Rahim stressed that the Palestinian people appreciate Uruguay’s support for their right to self-determination and to have an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders.

A few years ago German police dragged me across the bare gravel, my face pushed into the cold ground.

It was fall 2015. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, had declared that Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian political and religious leader, talked Adolf Hitler into exterminating the Jews.

A group of us protested against this disgraceful and dishonest claim outside the Chancellery in Berlin. We held placards reading “Netanyahu is a Holocaust denier.”

That evening I was hospitalized due to my violent arrest.

A Palestinian from Gaza and I had been asked by the police for our identity documents immediately after the demonstration ended. Although we fully cooperated, the police resorted to brutality.

During the holiday of Hanukkah, the town of Afula’s municipal park will be off limits to Arabs. The park was already closed Nov. 24 to visitors from nearby villages. Only the Jewish residents of Afula were allowed to enjoy time with their families in this public space. This Hanukkah will be the first holiday in which access to the park is limited to Jews.

Democratic representative-elect from Michigan, belongs to a cohort of incoming members of Congress who’ve vowed to upend the status quo — even on third-rail issues in Washington like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end, Tlaib is planning to lead a congressional delegation to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she told The Intercept. Her planned trip is a swift rebuke of a decades-old tradition for newly elected members: a junket to Israel sponsored by the education arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby group.

Israeli occupation forces shot and killed a Palestinian man during a raid on the West Bank city of Tulkarm on Tuesday.

The Israeli military claimed that its forces opened fire during “a violent riot … in which dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks.”

However security camera footage appears to show that Muhammad Habali, 22, was shot while he was walking away from the direction of the soldiers’ fire and posed no conceivable threat to anyone:

US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel's capital has set off an increasingly visible battle between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the city's eastern sector.

Observers have warned that Trump’s decision has already emboldened Israel to cement its control over the contested area which the Palestinians view as the capital of their future state.

They also say the move could give Israel an extended hand to devoid the ancient city of its Palestinian characteristics.

Twenty-two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli fire during the month of November.

Around 290 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces since the beginning of the year. Twelve Israelis were slain by Palestinians during the same period, as well as a Palestinian from the West Bank killed by a rocket fired from Gaza.

Some 180 Palestinians have been shot dead and nearly 6,000 others injured by live fire during Great March of Return protests in Gaza.

Fourteen of those Palestinians killed by occupation forces during November were slain over more than 48 hours of intense hostilities across the Gaza-Israel boundary. The fighting was triggered by a gun battle that erupted when Hamas forces discovered an Israeli commando unit operating clandestinely in Gaza on 11 November. Seven Hamas fighters and an Israeli lieutenant colonel were killed during the initial confrontation.

A major propaganda effort sponsored by the French and Israeli governments has been a failure, Israeli officials are acknowledging.

The so-called Saison France-Israël, or France-Israel Season, was a series of hundreds of “cultural” events backed by both governments, running for six months until the end of November.

“We were hoping that culture would have a diplomatic impact. We put an enormous amount of money into this operation, which had zero success regarding Israel’s image in France, or that of France here,” an Israeli diplomatic source told the newspaper Le Monde last week.

BDS France, a group that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, is celebrating the admission of failure as a victory for activism in support of Palestinian rights.

CNN has fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for a speech he gave on Palestinian rights at the UN. The speech can be found here.

You can protest this outrageous firing at this petition site.

And here is a link to his book, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, which everyone should buy and read.

CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.

The lawsuit against Airbnb’s de-listing of Israeli settlement properties sounds pretty flimsy: religious discrimination (illegal settlements are by definition all-Jewish); failure to provide equal access (Palestinians are barred completely – and it’s their land); Airbnb is siding with Palestinians against the occupation (everything about the occupation and settlements is illegal, so, yeah).

Gideon Levy, in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, calls out American media’s cowardice. He highlights the double standard in which Palestinians can only be villainized, but Israel can only be defended, and the misuse of the term “anti-Semitism.”

How is it that an Israeli newspaper can publish this, but in the US, CNN is required to fire Marc Lamont Hill?

Palestinians in Gaza are dealing with more fallout from the blockade – and their protest against it. Now in addition to thousands of gunshot wounds from Israeli snipers, and their accompanying disabilities and amputations, many are at risk of infection. The healthcare sector is lacking in supplies thanks to import restrictions; patients can not go abroad for treatment thanks to visa restrictions.

One Israeli human rights org reports over 180 Palestinians killed (31 of them minors) and 21,000 injured.

Israeli forces posed as medical aid workers and used “detailed but fake” ID cards of real Palestinian residents during their thwarted undercover raid in the occupied Gaza Strip last month.

According a report in the Independent, citing a number of Hamas sources, the Palestinians civilians whose identities had been “stolen” came from across the enclave “but not the area where the Israeli uncover operation was taking place”, in case “they were discovered by local residents”.

Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesperson, said the ID cards were “very accurate”, and included the correct full names, ID numbers and details of the residents.

Qassam told the paper that the Israeli soldiers were posing as aid workers when their car was stopped. “[They] were posing as NGO workers, there were women in the car as well. They used this to justify why they were stealing into Gaza and had a story prepared should they be questioned”.

“The past years have seen a significant decline in the cultivation of strawberries because of delayed export and closure of the crossings on a continuous basis and the high cost of planting,” the Ministry of Agriculture said. It added that the cultivation of one hectare costs about $2,500.

The export of strawberries from the Gaza Strip is described as “an adventure” and will prevent farmers from suffering large losses. The goods are expected to be sent to Europe from the West Bank.

Israel’s Supreme Court yesterday backed a decision by the army to carry out a punitive home demolition in Am’ari refugee camp in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The petition was brought by the family of Islam Yousef Abu Hamid, who has been charged by Israeli occupation authorities with throwing a marble slab from a roof at invading Israeli soldiers during a night time raid of the camp in May. One soldier was hit on the head and died.

The ruling came despite the fact that Abu Hamid has not yet even been convicted. The court also supported the planned demolition of all four storeys of the building in question.

According to the report, Justice Yael Wilner rejected the Palestinian family’s petition “saying that Israeli military courts are not legally required to wait for a conviction before issuing demolition orders”. Israeli military courts have a near 100 per cent conviction rate of Palestinians.

Czech president Milos Zeman offered Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist government a fillip during his visit to Israel last week. He inaugurated a cultural and trade centre, Czech House, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls.

At the opening, he expressed hope it would serve as a precursor to his country relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. If so, the Czech Republic would become the first European state to follow US President Donald Trump’s lead in moving the US embassy in May.

It is this kind of endorsement that, of late, has emboldened Mr Netanyahu’s government, the Israeli courts, Jerusalem officials and settler organisations to step up their combined assault on Palestinians in the Old City and its surrounding neighbourhoods.

Israel has never hidden its ambition to seize control of East Jerusalem, Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967 and then annexed, as a way of preventing a viable Palestinian state from emerging.

Marc Lamont Hill, a professor at Temple University and a fierce advocate for equality, was perhaps the strongest, most articulate and most passionate voice against racism and bigotry among CNN’s regular contributors. Today, CNN fired him because he believes Palestinians, too, fit into a vision where all people deserve equal rights. For CNN, that was just too much.