Several people were wounded on Wednesday evening in a suspected terror attack near the light rail train station near Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. According to eyewitnesses, a car drove up to the station and ran over passersby disembarking from the train.

Nine people were wounded in the attack, including the suspected terrorist. A baby in critical condition, a woman in seriously condition, two people moderately and four more lightly.

The car drove 14 meters on the tracks itself, hitting disembarking passengers and continuing on along the length of the track. The driver hit a pole a few hundred meters down and attempted to flee on foot, when he was shot.The driver was arrested soon after the attack and hospitalized with moderate to serious wounds.

Israel Wednesday reassured Jordan that it would not allow Jewish prayer at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, after reports of a possible change raised concerns in the Arab world.

"There is no intention of changing the status quo on the Temple Mount," a source in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, using the Israeli term for the compound which is located in the Old City.

The plaza is often at the center of tensions because it is the third holiest site in Islam but also the most sacred place in Judaism.

Intelligence and strategic defense minister cited post-disengagement Gaza, as well as Middle East turmoil, as proof that leaving West Bank would endanger Israel.

One month ago Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz made headlines when he called on the Brooklyn Book Festival to reject sponsorship from Israel’s Office of Cultural Affairs. Two weeks later he expanded on this during a lecture at Clark University where he commented on the pressure scholars feel who speak out for Palestine, and shared how his personal history brings him to supper the Palestinian people. Now Díaz has come out in support of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel sent out the following press release today saying that Díaz joins Chuck D and Boots Riley as prominent artists who have recently endorsed the boycott:

A prominent Los Angeles hotel that has come under fire for hosting a conference organized by what critics call an anti-Israel hate group is standing by its controversial decision to permit the organization on its premises.

The L.A. Westin Bonaventure will host in November a conference organized by the American Studies Association (ASA), a controversial nationwide academic group that is known as one of the largest champions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), which seeks to isolate Israel and its citizens.

The Westin Bonaventure, as well as its parent group, Interstate Hotels & Resorts, has faced intense criticism from the pro-Israel community and Jewish groups for agreeing to host the ASA.

The Israeli Antiquity Authority (IAA) continues to expropriate Palestinian land in Hebron, on the Tel Rumeida hillside. On Sunday 18 May 2014, the IAA workforce, under the instruction of project coordinator Emmanuel Eisenberg, continued to cause structural damaged to the Abu Haikel land, deploying questionable and illegal archeological practices, while at the same time utilizing the Al Jobeh family’s land without the family’s consent.

The excavations are illegal under Israeli law, according to the Oslo Agreement, which Israel signed in the mid-90s— a process jointly agreed upon by Israel and Palestine as a vehicle to peace and stability. Article 2 of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement describes in detail how Israeli and Palestinians would jointly administer archeological projects in Palestinian territory. The IAA has not abided by this agreement in Tel Rumeida.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian, right-wing legal organization, has written to a Los Angeles hotel warning it against hosting the American Studies Association’s annual meeting next month.

The letter, addressed to the general manager of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, argues that by passing a resolution in support of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, the American Studies Association (ASA) will practice “unlawful discrimination” over who is permitted to attend the meeting, scheduled to take place 4-9 November.

Instead of providing this training, the US should have been seeking accountability for the attack in which a US teenager was shot in the face at point blank range after he already lay wounded. But when it came to the only independent international inquiry into the attack, the UN Human Rights Council's Fact-Finding Mission, not only did the United States vote against the resolution to investigate, but the country tried to derail it. One cable noted that the US Mission in Geneva, where the council is located, had "explored ways to 'turn off ' the flotilla fact finding mission" and that "we very strongly favor having this fact finding mission (FFM) fall away."

The European Union is interested in opening negotiations with Israel with the aim of preventing a series of Israeli moves in the West Bank deemed “red lines” which may jeopardize the possibility of a future Palestinian state alongside Israel, an internal EU document obtained by Haaretz reveals. Officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry are concerned the negotiations are a prelude to further European sanctions against Israel.

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.

The Block the Boat coalition of Los Angeles claimed another victory this weekend after an Israeli cargo ship, the Zim Savannah, delayed docking at the port of Long Beach for at least 34 hours.

Cookie Partansky, an organizer with the LA Block the Boat coalition, told The Electronic Intifada that approximately 150 activists gathered at the Los Angeles port at 6am on Saturday, 18 October. The morning’s action followed weeks of communication with the longshoremen’s union and educating workers about Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, as well as the group’s reasons for targeting Zim, an Israeli shipping line.

The Israeli air force has been removed from the list of armed forces now taking part in multinational military training exercises on the Italian island of Sardinia following a campaign by anti-war activists.

Poetry and prose by Palestinian writers has been celebrated by the organizers of two international literary awards.

The longlist for the Sheikh Zayed Prize — an Arabic culture award — features three Palestinian writers.

An Israeli military general admitted that the army failed to achieve its military goals during the recent war on Gaza.

Yaakov Amidror, the former national security advisor, said: "Despite the limited military capabilities of Palestinian organisations, Israel failed to achieve significant gains during their ground offensive in the Gaza Strip although it used all of its military power and pulled all of its efforts. With all of this, they failed to break through the Palestinians' defence lines which succeeded in neutralising many of the air force and armed forces' efforts."

Forty seven years ago this month Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was murdered by the CIA in Bolivia.

Below is a heartbreaking letter from the mother of Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian in Gaza murdered by similar forces of hatred just over three years ago. Imagine the letter having been penned by the mother of Che …

But lo and behold, the most prestigious academic body in Israel, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, organizes a conference about the other which is characterized mainly by an exclusion of the other.

It’s not just about the ethnic origin issue. It’s possible that a very small minority of the participants are of Sephardic decent. The problem is also about opinion and outlook and a school of thought.

I don’t know whether anyone else has noticed the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolph Hitler share uncomfortably similar personality and character traits. Certainly there are, and have been, other politicians who also share the same traits, but it is of particular concern today that a man of this nature dominates events in the Middle East. In the case of Hitler we can read about his personality and character in any of a number of scholarly biographies and histories of World War II. In the case of Netanyahu, we can see them displayed on the world stage despite an immense amount effort by public relations flaks and apologists to airbrush them. We have also, something we do not always have for contemporaries, the first-hand testimony of several world figures about key aspects of his behavior to which we wouldn’t otherwise be exposed.

The department store chain Macy’s has stopped carrying Israeli settlement products of SodaStream, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Macy’s has been targeted the past year by pro-Palestinian activists, who have called on it and other major chains to stop carrying the SodaStream home carbonation system and soda flavourings due to the company’s role in the military occupation of Palestine.

An Israeli lawmaker says there is no difference between Israeli soldiers and militants of the ISIL and that both are “armies of murderers with no boundaries and red lines.”

“They (ISIL) kill one person at a time with a knife and the IDF at the press of a button [kills] dozens of Palestinians,” Haneen Zoabi said in a Sunday interview with Channel 2 Online.

The Arab member of the Israeli Knesset added that an Israeli pilot is no less a terrorist than a person who takes a knife and commits a beheading.

"The Palestinians are devastated, but the Israelis are the big losers following the bombardment of Gaza".

We spoke about 'solidarity', controlled opposition, political paralysis and activists' impotence. I also spoke about the structures and the building of cognitive elite. I attempted to explain the difference between Palestinian subservient elite (Ramallah) and combatant one (Gaza).

He said [settlement] construction would go on in East Jerusalem for both Jews and Arabs. He added that nobody could prevent his government from building homes for Jews in the ancient city.

"We are ready to fight with an iron fist anyone who seeks to divide our city," Netanyahu said assertively.

IF SO, WHY IS HE SUPPORTING A NEW ONE??

Young Palestinian ‘beaten by Jewish mob’ in Jerusalem hotel

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a Christian, right-wing legal organization, has written to a Los Angeles hotel warning it against hosting the American Studies Association’s (ASA) annual meeting next month.

A local council in north Wales last week voted to condemn Israel’s summer war on the Gaza Strip by blocking all trade relations with Israel, local press reported.

News North Wales quotes councillor Owain Williams, who put forward the motion, as condemning the “over-reaction and savageness used” by Israel in Gaza.

Councillors on 9 October voted 42-3 in favor of the motion, with six abstentions.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is notorious for making theatrical attempts to find “distractions” or “red herrings” in order to divert attention from his unceasing efforts to decapitate all chances for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank.

When Israel’s international janitorial crew gathered this week in Cairo with a pledge to raise $5 billion to help rebuild the $8 billion in damage Israel caused to Gaza’s civilian population, it was assured by Israeli Minister of Transportation Yisrael Katz that its efforts were utterly futile. "The Gazans must decide what they want to be Singapore or Darfur,” Katz remarked, leveling the threat of genocide against the fantasy of economic prosperity. "They can pick between economic recovery and war and destruction. If they choose terror, the world should not waste its money. If one missile will be fired, everything will go down the drain."

The message was not lost on the diplomats assembled in Cairo. As one told AFP, ”We have seen infrastructure projects that we have contributed to which have been destroyed.” The diplomat complained that the sustained Israeli assaults on Gaza’s infrastructure had prompted “considerable donor fatigue.”

On 14 October, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People invited Professor Noam Chomsky, leading American philosopher and political activist, to deliver a lecture at the United Nations as part of the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. H.E. Ambassador Fode Seck of Senegal, Chair of the Committee for the Exercise of Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, opened the meeting and then gave the floor to Amy Goodman of the independent news program Democracy Now. Ms. Goodman moderated the audience question and answer session that followed and introduced the Professor. Dr. Chomsky focused his remarks on the Palestinian struggle for statehood and the related responses of the international community.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Friday for the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque against Israel. Abbas stated that the holy site was being desecrated by settlers and that a continued Palestinian presence is required there to protect it.

Appears in today’s Jerusalem Post

While many of us have been concerned about, and appalled by the recent Islamophobic ads on NYC subways and buses and have responded to them in a number of different ways, we also recognize that Islamophobia extends far beyond those ads.

A 13-year-old boy has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in a village near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

Bahaa Badr was shot in the chest on Thursday evening during clashes between protesters and Israeli forces who entered Beit Liqya near the separation wall with Israel.

According to reports, soldiers opened fire after demonstrators threw stones and Molotov cocktails at three Israel army Jeeps that entered the village west of Ramallah.

It is still unclear whether Badr took part in the clashes, which the Israeli army described as an “illegal riot”.

A British Jewish lawmaker has branded the government “cowardly” after it abstained from the vote on Palestinian statehood.

Speaking with the Anadolu Agency on Wednesday, Gerald Kaufman accused the government of running away from the debate in "a very cowardly way."

"Members of the government and conservative backbenchers were instructed not to vote, which was a very cowardly thing to do,” he said.

Ebola may be part of God's judgment for President Barack Obama's alleged attempts to "divide Jerusalem," said John Hagee, a San Antonio-based pastor and founder of Christians United For Israel.

PHOTOS: How To Turn a Gaza War Into Art

The bombing of these buildings was the finale of Israel’s mass destruction of the Gaza Strip, flattening landmark towers that provided essential social and economic functions, and which stood as symbols of the besieged coastal strip’s beleaguered professional class. While the war began with the flattening of the areas the Israeli military considers Gaza’s “hard shell” — border areas like Shujaiya and Khuza’a — it ended with a brazen assault on its soft core. The targeting of the professional class, a key pillar of Palestinian society generally considered unsympathetic to the political goals of Hamas, was a new front of economic and social warfare on Gaza.

British newspaper The Independent reported that Britain’s ambassador to Israel has warned that the Jewish state is losing support in the UK, blaming the summer offensive in Gaza and increased settlement construction in the Occupied West Bank. His remarks came as a former Conservative minister described the situation in one Palestinian city as “apartheid”.

The ambassador, Matthew Gould, issued the warning hours after MPs backed a motion to recognise the state of Palestine, albeit in a non-binding vote. Speaking to Israel Radio, the ambassador said the vote in the Commons showed that public sentiment was moving away from Israel.

There was never any ‘roadmap to peace’ as ringleaders in Washington would have you believe. That’s why nothing has happened in 30 years since “peace negotiations” started. Israel made sure it went no where by insisting that Palestinian statehood, or any other form of liberation from occupation or apartheid would come about only as from negotiations with the Israel. Meanwhile, Israel stayed busy building its Berlin walls and increasing its manifest destiny condo communities to gerrymander its own conveniently undeclared borders.

The formula is simple: Israel gets bigger, while Palestine gets smaller. While they’re add it, they might as well demolish some 30,000 Palestinian homes and kill a few thousand women and children. Not too difficult to see when you take off those cheap AIPAC-issued 3-D glasses.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, described the destruction in Gaza from the recent conflict with Israel as “beyond description” and a source of “shame to the international community” as he visited the war-devastated coastal strip on Tuesday.

Urging a speedy reconstruction effort, he announced that Israel was permitting the first truckloads of construction materials to enter the coastal strip, which has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since before the conflict.

“I am here with a heavy heart,” Ban told a press conference. “The destruction which I have seen coming here is beyond description,” he added.

Ban said the damage was far worse than what he had seen after the previous conflict – Operation Cast Lead – that took place in 2008-09.

Sweden recognized “Palestine” on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and on Monday the UK followed suit in a non-binding vote – now “frustrated” European officials reveal that they are ready to take their diplomatic war on Israel to the next stage.

Israel warned Tuesday that a vote by the British parliament in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state risked undermining the prospects for peace.

They said the same last week when Sweden’s Parliament voted the same ….

Israel obviously likes things as they are …. Occupation strengthens the prospects of peace according to ziologic. It maters not what the rest of the world has to say. Occupation = 30 BILLION DOLLAR$ a year … no way are they prepared to give that up!

Many countries in the EU – along with the likes of the United States, Japan and Australia – do not recognise Palestine, but here is a map of all the countries that do:

Israeli settlers set fire to the Abu Bakr Mosque in the town of Aqraba, Nablus in the northern West Bank, at dawn today.

An activist said a number of worshipers who were on their way to the mosque for dawn prayers were shocked to find the women's room in the basement on fire. The fire damaged the carpet, copies of the Quran and caused a number of windows to break.

He added that settlers also graffitied racist slogans on the wall on the mosque calling for the death of the Arabs and for them to be killed.

Yara Salameh was shocked when she watched Jibril Nadaf, a priest from Nazareth, repeat a call on fellow Palestinian Christians to serve in the Israeli military.

Nadaf claimed Israel was the only country in the Middle East where Christians are “not persecuted” during a speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council on 23 September.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Salameh, a 25-year-old pharmacist from the village of Turan, home to both Christians and Muslims, located in the Galilee region of present-day Israel.

“He represents no one but himself. The army he wants us to join is the same one shedding the blood of our innocent brothers and sisters — Palestinian blood just like ours,” she told The Electronic Intifada.

Israel has criticised a vote by British lawmakers to recognise Palestine as a state. The motion was passed in a historic vote by a majority of 274 to just 12.

Though the move is not expected to change government policy, Israel expressed its concern on Tuesday that the move could "undermine peace prospects."

Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Today at the Salaymeh checkpoint in al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli soldiers fired four long-range tear gas canisters, and threw three stun grenades, all towards children leaving school to walk home.

One tear gas grenade was also thrown directly at ISM activists documenting the military violence.

In majority of 274-12, Parliament decides to support the motion calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Ever hear of MEMRI? (Middle East Research Institute)

The institute was co-founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-born, American political scientist. MEMRI states that its goal is to “bridge the language gap between the Middle East and the West”. Critics charge that it aims to portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, through the production and dissemination of inaccurate translations and by selectively translating views of extremists while deemphasizing or ignoring mainstream opinions. (FROM)

Emphasis on Critics charge that it aims to portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light, through the production and dissemination of inaccurate translations and by selectively translating views of extremists while deemphasizing or ignoring mainstream opinions.

Consider me one of those ‘critics’!

On Saturday evening, October 11th, a meeting was held at the Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Community Center in Harlem, NYC. It was formerly the Audubon and the conference took place in the ballroom, almost sacred ground because it is where Malcolm was assassinated. It began with a very good buffet dinner and the music of an excellent Latino band. Tables were set up around the side of the large room selling beautiful handmade Palestinian goods, Mumia T-shirts and giving out information. The theme of the evening was solidarity among oppressed peoples and the interconnections between the various peoples struggles.

It is difficult to imagine that sooner or later Israel will not face a massive upheaval on its doorstep. So how does Israel propose to avert a scenario in which it must either savagely repress a mass uprising by Palestinians in Gaza or sit by and watch them tear down their prison walls?

Reports in the Arab and Israeli media – in part corroborated by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas – suggest that Egypt may be at the heart of plans to solve the problem on Israel’s behalf.

Some 300 ex-diplomats, former ministers and activists sign letter supporting Labour lawmaker’s non-binding motion to be voted on Monday

A donor conference in Cairo to raise money to aid the Gaza Strip after this year's war between Hamas and Israel ended with pledges of $5.4 billion, Norway's foreign minister said Sunday.

A group of Israeli settlers have burned and vandalized Friday evening a number of olive trees in Yassouf town in Salfit under Israeli occupation forces protection.

Local sources confirmed that Palestinian farmers confronted the settlers and prevented further damage to their olive groves located near Tafuh settlement.

Israeli settlers and forces have daily carried out systematic attacks against olive groves especially during olive harvest in order to prevent the farmers from picking their own fruits.

Israel must play a role in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, a top US official said on Wednesday ahead of key donor talks in Cairo, also pressing all sides to agree a lasting ceasefire.

At a Cairo conference Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized the importance of getting funds to the people of Gaza as soon as possible: "The people of Gaza do need our help desperately, not tomorrow, not next week, but they need it now" he said.

An Israeli Facebook page launched earlier this month to assist Israelis in escaping their apocalypse through migration has now gone viral reaching more than 700,000 Israelis. It is called Olim Le-Berlin, ‘Ascending to Berlin,’ using the same positive Hebrew expression ‘Aliya’ attributed to the Jewish Diaspora emigrating to Israel.

Apparently, the confident Zio-patriotic balloon has been burst by a few Palestinian rockets landing in Tel Aviv. In truth, this implosion is occurring because the Jewish State is an inconvincible concept. As much as the Jews yearned to return to their phantasmic ‘homeland,’ they failed to make Palestine into a true home. On the contrary, Israel has become the definitive showcase of every problematic Jewish ideological and cultural trait: it is racially supremacist, it is exclusive, it is an abusive ghetto suffocated with goy hatred, and its treatment of its own people and especially its poor is despicable.

In case you missed it, Netanyahu and President Obama were blindsided hours before their October 1 Oval Office meeting by an announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem. Final approval had been given for 2,610 housing units at Givat Matos, across the old pre-1967 border on the road to Bethlehem. These announcements crop up regularly at delicate moments in U.S.-Israel relations. It’s almost a ritual.

My daughter and her fiance? have never been involved in any wrong doing or security violations. However, Israel is so notorious for invoking the security mantra to justify denying Palestinians their basic rights.

One Civil Administration official in Hebron told me that “if your daughter wanted to join her husband in Gaza, she would have to sign documents, wavering her right to return to the West Bank. In other words, she would have to willfully accept eternal deportation.

The event reported in yesterday’s post seems to have rocked the foundations of zion. The last thing Israel wants is to be publicly criticized, especially by American Jews. Even worse is when those very same Jews endorse the BDS Movement.

As always, Israel’s only defense is to lie about the situation and to use their latest tactic of artificial anti Semitism as is reported below …

In Pensilvania Pittsburgh a restaurant, PA's Conflict Kitchen, has come under fire by some members of the city's Jewish community on the grounds that they're upset that the restaurant is serving Palestinian food.

The European Union (EU) has decided to ban imports of dairy products made in Israeli settlements of the occupied West Bank as of January.

In a Middle East region that continues to suffer from the consequences of violence, the people of Palestine continue to live under occupation and in exile. Palestinian Christians, the descendants of the first Christians, are an integral part of the Palestinian people, continue to suffer, just like our Palestinian Muslim and Samaritan brothers and sisters, we have been denied of our national and human rights for almost a century Heads of churches and Christian clergy in Jerusalem wrote in a letter send to European Union officials.

They said in the letter:"From Jerusalem, our occupied capital, we send our urgent message to the whole world and particularly to Europe: We are yearning for justice and peace. Recognizing Palestine and defining Israel's borders is a first step towards that goal".

When activists arrived at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn to protest a Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces fundraiser that was coupled with an exhibition game between the Nets and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, the police were waiting with a message of their own. As the night unfolded, this message spoke volumes. Protesters would not be allowed on the expansive plaza that unfolds from the front of the Barclays Center all the way to the Atlantic Yards subway entrance. Instead, they would have to be in a fenced-off pen on the narrow strip of sidewalk to the side of the arena. Yes, an outdoor space built with public funds was deemed a privatized, no-free-speech zone, enforced by armed public employees, otherwise known as the police.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told police chiefs and the Shin Bet security service on Tuesday to get tough on violent Palestinian protest in Jerusalem, which has spiked in recent months.

Fed up with settlement expansion, officials in Brussels are working on punitive measures to be implemented as soon as the political leadership wants to do so

Jordan has slammed the storming of occupied East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound by Israeli troops on Wednesday, urging the international community to pressure the self-proclaimed Jewish state to "lift its siege" on the holy site.

In a statement, government spokesman Mohamed al-Momani denounced what he described as the "heinous crime" committed by Israeli forces, accusing the latter of opening fire inside the mosque, leading to the injury of several worshippers.

"Continued Israeli assaults on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and worshippers therein have become one of the most commonly-used justifications for terror and religious extremism in the region," he said.

WAFA Palestinian News & Info Agency reports that a group of people from the illgal Betar Illit settlement, located to the west of Bethlehem, set fire to lands adjacent to the settlement which were planted with olive, cypress and pine trees. Thirty Roman-time olive trees were reportedly burnt.

The Nahhalin Village Profile indicates that Nahhalin village is an agricultural area, characterized by grape vines, nuts and various other crops. It also shows that 15% of local laborers work in the agricultural sector, the workers of which are listed among the economical groups most affected by Israeli occupation restrictions.

Furthermore, Nahhalin is bordered by illegal Israeli settlements: two to the north; Betar ‘Illit and Hadar Betar, and a number of which are part of Gosh Etzion settlements (Rosh Zurim, El’azar, Allon Shevut and Kfar Etzion), to the south.

Today I came across a uniquely banal rant by Asa Kasher, a Jewish ‘philosopher’ at Tel Aviv University. Kasher, who also authored the ‘IDF ethical code,’ defended Israel’s military conduct in the recent Gaza campaign in an article published in the Jewish Review of Books.

The Israeli authorities have delayed indefinitely the entry of 60 truckloads of building materials into the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official said.

“We were notified by the Palestinian National Company that Israel has indefinitely delayed the entry of the 60 trucks into the Gaza Strip,” Mounir al-Ghalban of Gaza’s border authority told our media sources.

The move came despite Israeli “promises” to allow the entry of the construction supplies into the blockaded enclave on Tuesday through Kerem Shalom crossing, he added.

As a preface, yesterday Mondoweiss posted a letter by Alan Levine written to Schumer & Gillibrand urging them to follow the Leahy law which states that countries who use arms against a people in a way that violates international law and creates war crimes will no longer receive arms or $ for arms from the US.

SodaStream stocks dropped another 21% today, an all time low for the home seltzer corporation whose principal manufacturing facility is located on a Jewish settlement in apartheid Occupied Palestine. Officially the story is revenues:

Unofficially, it’s the boycott.

WHOA ___________________________

That didn’t happen at all ….

*

Here’s what did ….

Obviously, Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian ones …

Sweden’s new Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, has announced that that nation will be the first of the European Union to grant official recognition to Palestine. To date, 134 of the 193 member states of the United Nations recognize Palestine. This is a reasonable step that will, hopefully, set the example for other European nations to do the same.

The United States, Israel’s best friend in all the world, and that bottomless pit of financial assistance for Israel, is, not surprisingly, seriously displeased. A spokeswoman for President Barack Obama said this: “We believe international recognition of a Palestinian state is premature. We certainly support Palestinian statehood, but it can only come through a negotiated outcome, a resolution of final status issues and mutual recognitions by both parties.”

SodaStream International Ltd. on Tuesday projected sharply lower-than-expected revenue for the third quarter, as sales were hurt by a continuing struggle to gain new customers and by weak demand for its soda makers and flavors.

As a result of the sluggish demand, the maker of beverage carbonation systems said it must change its strategy and improve its execution.

British lawmakers will next week hold a symbolic parliamentary vote on whether the government should recognize Palestine as a state, a move unlikely to shift official policy but designed to raise the political profile of the issue.

A specialized community active in treating cancer patients in the Gaza Strip strongly criticized Israel for impeding treatment of Palestinian cancer patients, and said the Zionists' wars on Gazans have caused a sudden growth in the spread of cancerous patients in the besieged population.

For many of us who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement’s early days, Woolworth’s was our first ‘battle ground’ Every week for over a year picket lines were set up in front of every Woolworth Store north of the Mason Dixon Line. We called for a boycott of the chain because of their discriminatory policies in the South.

We eventually won that ‘battle’ and the video below became history.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hit out on Sweden for a decision to recognize Palestine as a state.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says that the Palestinians are to blame for the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 in which 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by or fled Zionist militias and were never allowed to return. In his new book Israel: Is It Good for the Jews? Cohen says that by resisting the Zionist movement to take their lands, the Palestinians gave the Jewish immigrants, with their “advanced culture,” no choice but to force them from their homes.

The following was written days before the Jewish fast of Tisha B’Av: a day of mourning for the calamities that have befallen the Jewish people over the centuries. Among other things, the traditional Tisha B’Av liturgy includes the chanting Biblical book of Lamentations.

Given the profoundly tragic events currently unfolding in Gaza, I offer this reworking of the first chapter of Lamentations. I share it with the hope that on this day of mourning we might also mourn the mounting dead in Gaza along with what Israel has become.

It seems that, perhaps, Israel’s latest slaughter of defenseless Palestinians may have been a bit too much even for the United States to condone. In what may be the U.S.’s harshest, although still quite mild, criticism of its puppet master, President Barack Obama said that the plan to increase illegal settlement building could alienate Israel from ‘even its closest allies’.

There is, of course, no closer ally of Israel than the United States. Israel is able to disdain international law, violate the most basic human rights of Palestinians, slaughter men, women and children, bomb United Nations refugee centers, kill journalists and commit genocide only because of U.S. funding and use of its veto power in the U.N.

But the U.S., this time, went even further in its criticism. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the newly-approved construction would cause the global community to ‘question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement’ with Palestinians.

Pat Perry is an artist from Michigan. He currently lives and works itinerantly in the US.

This image was created for Imaging Apartheid, a Montreal-based initiative aimed at bringing awareness and support to the Palestinian struggle for liberation through the production and dissemination of poster art.

Israeli army vehicles have entered the southern Gaza Strip and soldiers have opened fire on Palestinian agricultural areas in a flagrant violation of a recent ceasefire agreement.

A dozen Israeli military vehicles entered Gaza from a gate east of the southern city of Khan Yunis on Wednesday, crossing some 200 meters into the Palestinian territory.

Israeli soldiers then fired shots on Palestinian farms. Witnesses say the assault, which occurred in the early morning, forced agricultural workers to leave their lands. No injuries have been reported so far.

Earlier this week, Israeli military forces shot and injured a Palestinian farmer in northern Gaza near a fence separating Israeli-occupied territories from the blockaded coastal enclave. An Israeli military spokesperson claimed the farmer had come too close to the border fence.

Palestinian officials say they’ll start proceedings to pursue war crimes charges against Israeli officials if the UN fails to approve a deadline for Israel to pull out from the occupied territories.

Israeli occupation military officer said that "the upcoming war on Gaza will be greater, and will down more victims," Israeli sources say.

Eyal Eizenberg, Israeli Occupation Army Home Front Command, in a lecture in The Institute for National Security Studies (Tel Aviv University), said that "the recent assault on Gaza is not at all similar to the upcoming war that the Israeli army is preparing for."

Eizenberg added that "the future war will require stronger abilities and more sacrifices to pay a bigger price."

A UN-sponsored agreement for the reconstruction of Gaza is facing sharp criticism from senior international officials and NGOs, who say it will create a restrictive new monitoring regime for building materials that risks putting the UN in charge of a continuing Israeli blockade.

Israel has the capacity to stop power interruptions today. Sympathetic nations have the influence to insist that Israel does this. If international leadership cannot agree that providing electricity to the people of Gaza — a very achievable goal — should be an immediate priority, how can we possibly imagine that the larger political issues can be resolved anytime soon?

To all of my Muslim family and friends, EID MUBARAK! May your prayers for Peace and Justice become a reality in the coming year.

To my Jewish friends and family, may you be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Sweden’s new center-left government will recognize the state of Palestine in a move that will make it the first major European country to take the step, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Friday.

I listened to Netanyahu utter the following words at the UN …

“I stand here before you today ashamed and mortified. I’m ashamed and mortified by the outcome of the brutal Israeli attack on Gaza. Ashamed and mortified by the alarming number of civilians my country killed, ashamed and mortified by the scope of devastation its unrestrained army spread. The Israeli army made a certain effort to reduce injury to civilians, but I know that this was no more than conscience-soothing measures, if any conscience still remains in Israel, and the rest is propaganda tricks.

But alas ...

It’s all a daydream

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at the White House after Washington criticised Israeli plans to build thousands more settler homes in east Jerusalem, Israeli media reported on Thursday.

Israeli public radio quoted Netanyahu as telling US President Barack Obama in talks in Washington Wednesday to “study the facts and details before making statements” about the settlement plan.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will seek a vote at the UN security council demanding that Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian territories and East Jerusalem – which began in 1967 – by November 2016.

The two-year deadline is contained in a draft resolution, drawn up by the Palestinians, which has been circulated among Arab states and some security council members.

The rise of ISIS and its rivalry with other groups does pose a challenge but in a less direct way than Netanyahu suggests. In a visit earlier this month to Jordan, I found Da’ash (as ISIS is known according to its Arabic acronym) on everybody’s lips regardless of an individual’s political affiliation. Those of an Islamist bent regarded the upstart as a challenge and a rival, not an ally.

A senior Palestinian official on Tuesday likened Benjamin Netanyahu to the leader of the Islamic State group, after the Israeli prime minister compared Hamas to the jihadist organisation.

"Netanyahu is trying to disseminate fear of the Islamic State led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but Netanyahu forgets that he himself leads the Jewish state," said Saeb Erakat, the Palestinians' chief negotiator in peace talks with Israel.

"He wants us to call Israel the Jewish state and supports terrorist settlers who kill, destroy and burn mosques and churches... like Baghdadi's men kill and terrorise," Erakat told AFP.

Israeli settlers forcefully took over 25 apartments in Arab east Jerusalem Tuesday, residents and Palestinian leaders said, with the new occupants claiming they had legitimately bought the properties.

The incident led to clashes between Arab residents and Jewish settlers in the Silwan neighbourhood, which is right outside Jerusalem's Old City, near the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

It came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas traded inflammatory accusations at the UN General Assembly in New York, making the prospects of peace look even bleaker.

Mohammed al-Khayat, whose family owns three apartments in one Silwan building, told AFP settlers had broken the locks on empty properties and then changed them.

Much of the grim and murky circumstances of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the late 1940s have gradually been exposed over time. One aspect – rarely researched or deeply discussed – is the internment of thousands of Palestinian civilians within at least 22 Zionist-run concentration and labor camps that existed from 1948 to 1955. Now more is known about the contours of this historical crime, due to the comprehensive research by renowned Palestinian historian Salman Abu Sitta and founding member of the Palestinian resource center BADIL Terry Rempel.

The facts are these.

The study – to be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies – relies on almost 500 pages of International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) reports written during the 1948 war, that were declassified and made available to the public in 1996, and accidentally discovered by one of the authors in 1999.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the UN General Assembly today, presented a black and white, and upside down world view in which aggressors are victims and human rights violators deserve applause. Consistent with his now predictable approach to diplomacy, Netanyahu deployed fear-mongering and Islamophobic language to deflect attention from Israel’s aggression in Gaza this summer, and its ongoing occupation and illegal siege of Palestinian civilians.

Condemned by such noted liberals as the ADL, Dinesh D’Souza, and the Daily News, banned by the Great Neck Synagogue (but embraced by Chabad), Geller is the anti-Muslim wacko who takes ads on buses and subways to remind us all that followers of Islam are “savages” and that there’s no such thing as a moderate Muslim. (Someone better inform Dr. Oz.)