Last night, the student senate of the University of California at Davis passed a resolution to divest from companies which profit from Israel’s occupation and abuses of Palestinian rights. Ten senators voted yes, none voted against and two abstained.

Palestinians are expressing disappointment at the abandonment and sabotage of efforts to have Israel suspended from world football’s governing body over its systematic abuses of Palestinian players.

But campaigners are vowing to continue to work to isolate Israel.

Moti Leybel, one of the leading activists in Israel and the most vocal independent journalist was taken by police last night after only 30 seconds of public free speech and thrown into prison. The authorities are trying everything to stop the truth being told.

He is an advocate for the many parents in Israel who lose their children to the Social Services. It is usually a one way ticket, and with little hope of children ever being returned to their natural parents, due to the antiquated system and levels of corruption in the country. He was in particular showing images of a particular social worker who had been instrumental in removing a baby from a disabled mother. He has been campaigning for her for most of the year.

The United Nations is seeking to put the Israeli military on its blacklist over the regime’s aggressive policies against the Palestinian people, particularly children.

The move is recommended by Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative for children and armed conflict.

Zerrougui said such an act must be taken because of some 500 Palestinian children who were killed and 3,300 others who were injured during last summer's Israeli aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip.

The statement said that Wali has officially apologised to the Palestinian ambassador, citing huge pressure put on his country pushing it to vote against the Palestinian motion. He said that the pressure amounted to a "national security threat".

Palestinian Football Association Jibril Rajoub announced during FIFA's congress in Zurich on Friday that he was cancelling a vote on his proposal to have Israel expelled from the international soccer organization. Rajoub called for a United Nations discussion on suspending Israeli teams playing beyond the Green Line.

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A bomb threat on the site was also reported by police just before 2:30 PM. "I can confirm there has been a bomb threat against the FIFA congress, officers have been dispatched," the spokeswoman for the city police said.

The international football federation, FIFA, is set to vote tomorrow on a proposal to suspend Israel.

If the proposal receives a two-thirds majority, Israel will be dropped from FIFA and unable to participate in international matches, including the Euro 2016 qualifiers.

The vote has been requested by the Palestinian Football Association. It follows a major campaign highlighting Israel’s movement restrictions on Palestinian footballers, including a ban on their travel between the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The multinational telecom company Orange is trying to distance itself from its Israeli affiliate as it faces mounting pressure from a boycott called against its Egyptian subsidiary Mobinil.

But BDS Egypt, the organizers of the Mobinil boycott, have rejected company statements as “shameless deception” and an effort to mislead the Egyptian public.

More than 300 Palestinians in Susiya, a village in the occupied West Bank, face the threat that the Israeli authorities may demolish their homes at any moment.

On 3 August, Israel’s high court is scheduled to consider an appeal made by Susiya’s residents that they be allowed to remain on their land.

Preparing for that date, the residents had sought a judicial order that Israel refrain from destroying their homes before then. Yet on 5 May, Noam Sohlberg, a high court judge, turned down the villagers’ request for an interim injunction. Because of that refusal, the Israeli authorities may demolish around 100 homes whenever they want.

In spite of AIPAC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Saudis and some of its GCC allies having done everything they could to kill the pending nuclear deal with Iran, they have failed. The negotiations are on track. Many opinion polls show that a comfortable majority of Americans support President Barack Obama's diplomacy with Iran.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter is trying to broker a deal between the Palestinian and Israel football associations ahead of this week's FIFA World Congress at which the Palestinians have called for a vote to suspend Israel.

IS the world going mad? Military posturing is quietly reaching new extremes in Europe, the Mediterranean and the South China Sea. And the provocative bluster has just reached new heights.

The source was anonymous. But the mouthpiece has a measure of credibility. High profile military analyst and former US Naval War College lecturer John Schindler tweeted last week: “Said a senior NATO (non-US) GOFO to me today: ‘We’ll probably be at war this summer. If we’re lucky it won’t be nuclear.’ Let that sink in.”

Dozens of faculty at New York University (NYU) have signed a petition calling for the university to divest from multinational companies that profit from Israel’s occupation in Palestine.

The 130 professors are joining NYU students in their growing campaign to demand that tuition dollars not be spent to systematically deny Palestinians their rights.

The allegations are damning, but frankly, they couldn’t have come at a better time for Israel. Until Wednesday, much of the coverage of the FIFA Congress surrounded whether delegates would vote to suspend Israel from world soccer. The Palestinian Football Association is introducing the motion to suspend Israel, accusing it of unjustly restricting Palestinian soccer players’ freedom of movement and claiming that Israel’s West Bank settlement teams violate FIFA rules. Israeli officials have called the effort blatantly political and said that the Palestinians’ complaints all concern Israel’s security forces — not Israel’s soccer teams.

For Israel to be suspended, three quarters of delegates would need to approve the motion. If that were a long shot before, it’s even more unlikely now.

Than on Wednesday Israeli aircraft struck a number of sites in the Gaza Strip from the air early. Gaza residents said missiles struck several locations throughout the Gaza Strip, including places used as training camps by Islamic Jihad militants on sites that had been Israeli colonies before Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Earlier, unknown Palestinian militants fired a rocket late Tuesday from the enclave which landed near the Israeli port city of Ashdod. It was the longest-range militant rocket strike since a ceasefire which ended last summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza. There was no immediate claim of responsibility in Gaza for the rocket launching. However, Israeli media speculated that infighting among Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza Strip may have precipitated the rocket firing without the permission of Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers.

Trial of 'Auschwitz bookkeeper' told how gas chamber pesticide was so weak it could take holocaust victims 'longer than half-an-hour to die'

he killing by Israel of the peace process and whatever hopes for peace that process may have entailed is a damning proof that Israel doesn’t want peace.

Well now Gold is listed as president of the Center for Jewish Community Studies in Baltimore– an organization devoted to “Jewish peoplehood”– and in that capacity receives $227,000 in 2013, the latest figures available.

A Palestinian child from occupied East Jerusalem has lost an eye after being shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet fired by an Israeli soldier.

Yahiya al-Amudi, 10, was struck by the bullet as he walked near an Israeli military checkpoint in Shuafat refugee camp on Thursday last week. The boy was subsequently hospitalized “with a fractured skull, jaw and left ear and had surgery to remove his left eye,” Ma’an News Agency reports. Al-Amudi was described as being in a critical condition.

Rubber-coated steel bullets are among Israel’s so-called arsenal of “non-lethal weapons.” The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has referred to them, however, as “less fatal” weapons.

Denmark has canceled what could have been a major arms purchase from Israel’s Elbit Systems.

Arms industry publication Jane’s revealed on 1 May that the Danish military had canceled a plan to buy 21 155-mm self-propelled artillery systems.

IDF aircraft struck four targets in the southern Gaza Strip before dawn on Wednesday, after a rocket was fired from the Strip on southern Israel on Tuesday evening.

The Israel Defense Forces issued a short statement saying it had struck militant infrastructure in the southern Gaza Strip, in response to the rocket fire. The statement concluded by placing responsibility for the firing of the rocket on Hamas.

Earlier this month, Omar, 44, was sentenced to nine months in an Israeli prison for charges related to incitement and "supporting terror" against Israelis. He is the former secretary-general of Jerusalem's branch of Fatah, the Palestinian political party that dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.

"It was very clear from the beginning that my father was targeted because he is still an influential activist and has a lot of support and respect in the community," Iyab continued.

Statistics released this week by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel paint a devastating picture of neglect, urban blight and underdevelopment in East Jerusalem, the historic heart of Palestinian life, all a result of nearly five decades of Israeli policies, with over 75 percent of Palestinians living below the poverty line compared to the national Israeli average of 21.8 percent.

Dutch restaurant owners cited their gastronomical focus in explaining why they had replaced Israel with Palestine in a map of the Middle East they had printed.

A Palestinian child was critically injured after Israeli forces shot him with a rubber-coated steel bullet near the Shufat refugee camp on Thursday, witnesses said..

Israel has decided to seize some 202 acres of privately owned Palestinian land in the West Bank to make a new dumping grounds for its illegal settlements.

The issue with President Obama’s speech to Adas Israel Congregation in Washington yesterday was the sense of entitlement. Obama is pandering to alleged liberals at this synagogue, liberal Zionists, and he gets laughter for saying that Palestinians are not easy partners–

Israeli interrogators are using “oppressive and brutal” methods to frighten Palestinian detainees and force them into confessing to attacks against Israel, a Palestinian official said Sunday.

Lebanon Monday reiterated its right to liberate the remaining villages still occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

It seems nothing about Palestine ever escapes heated reactions, not least the Freedom Theatre’s latest production, The Siege. Conceived for a UK tour, the first in Britain by this dynamic theatre company from Jenin, it premiered in Manchester before opening in London on May 19th. In front of the venue, the Battersea Arts Centre, theatregoers were greeted by a Zionist group demonstrating and leafleting against the play. Yet again, the basic right of Palestinian freedom is threatened.

The Siege is based on the true story of Palestinian resistance fighters who sought refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during the Second Intifada, in 2002. Alongside five armed fighters, one of whom is badly injured, are some 200 priests, nuns and civilians, clearly not seen in the play but represented by a priest who agrees to shelter and initially feed them.

Palestine was elected to chair the third Meeting of States Parties to the UNESCO 1970 Convention on Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property for the first time earlier this week.

Palestine became the 195th full member of UNESCO in 2011 with the support of a large majority of countries.

Chairing a meeting of nearly 130 state parties has "both symbolic and practical" significance for Palestine, Mounir Anastas, deputy ambassador of Palestine to UNESCO, told the Anadolu Agency.

Last November, a post appeared on the blogging platform Medium which claimed that between March 1, 2014 and August 31, 2014 - a period of six months - some 80 employees of London's Metropolitan Police had "travelled to Israel."

This overlaps in part with Israel's unprecedented assault on the Gaza Strip, which lasted from July 8 to August 26. During 'Operation Protective Edge', Israeli armed forces killed some 2,100 Palestinians, including more than 500 children.

In the first four months of 2015, attorneys with Palestine Legal responded to 102 requests for legal assistance from students and faculty on college campuses across the country, including from Palestinian rights advocates smeared as “terrorists” or “supporters of terrorism” based solely on speech critical of Israeli policy.

During this period, Palestine Legal documented:

60 incidents involving accusations of anti-Semitism made against students or faculty, based solely on speech critical of Israeli policy.
24 incidents involving accusations of support for terrorism made against students or faculty, based solely on speech critical of Israeli policy.

Israeli Border Police rolled into the Palestinian Bedouin village of al-Araqib, located in the Naqab (Negev) region of present-day Israel, to demolish the few shacks left standing. It was the eighty-fourth time that al-Araqib has been demolished since 2010.

A senior diplomat announced on Wednesday that Palestinians are to submit two lawsuits against Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on June 25.

Nabil Abu Zneid, the Palestinian ambassador in the Netherlands, told “Voice of Palestine” radio that the two suits are related to the Israeli settlement in the West Bank and the Israeli war waged on the Gaza Strip last summers, Xinhua reported.

“Palestinian Foreign Minister Reyad el-Malki is to head a high-ranking Palestinian delegation that comprises rights groups, and will submit the two suits against Israel to the international court on June 25,”

said Abu Zneid.

The military has considered using the non-lethal method in the West Bank that is already used by Israeli police, but doubts regarding its lethality prevented its use.

Controversy over the issue arose after the death of 16-year-old Mohammed Sinokrot in East Jerusalem last year, whose relatives claimed he was struck by a police rubber bullet.

I was thinking how humanity could descend to such barbarity around the world. How could African migrants risk their lives to leave countries wrecked psychologically and economically by colonial Europeans to seek to arrive in the same continent that subjugated them? How could Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims be slaughtered in the thousands by the majority Buddhists and surviving people end up in boats and sent back to starve and die at sea rejected by nearby countries including countries like Indonesia with Muslim majorities? How could relatives of Jewish holocaust survivors engage in racism and ethnic cleansing for native Palestinians while relatives of Armenian holocaust survivors lead amazingly rich productive caring lives? How could a very wealthy country like “Saudi Arabia” (the quotes are needed because it is an imposed name for a country stolen by the Saud Family) spend billions to support the US/Israeli agenda of destruction and mayhem in countries like Yemen and Syria?

From Breaking the Silence’s research, I know that an Israeli commander ordered his troops to blanket-bomb the area. When asked what the troops should target, he told them to pick whatever they wished. “Good morning al-Bureij,” he said to a two-way radio.

That “greeting” amounted to a green light for indiscriminate destruction.

The government of French President François Hollande is renewing its efforts to fatally undermine fundamental Palestinian rights, particularly those of refugees.

France’s Le Figaro has obtained the text of a draft UN Security Council resolution that the Hollande administration plans to introduce sometime before September.

The resolution should be seen as the international counterpart to France’s increasingly fierce crackdown on Palestine solidarity at home under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.

International pressure on Israel over the Palestinian issue will resume once Iran and the six powers sign their expected nuclear deal at the end of June, Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday.

It is well known in the Arab community in Israel that “Flying While Muslim” will earn you extra security checks and delayed travel. Palestinian-American journalist Noor Wazwaz shared her experience of flying into Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport across her social media channels, where she has more than 28,000 followers.

Wazwaz, who says her goal is become “the first Muslim hijab [head scarf]-wearing news anchor on American television,” decided to become a journalist to better represent “[the] Arab and Muslim voice in Western media.”

Defense Ministry decides on separate transport for Arab workers and Jewish residents, to combat overload and friction.

See reversal of decision below

In 2005, Palestinian civil society implored people of conscience around the world to stand up for justice by honoring its call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. A decade later certain segments of the US left are still debating whether this Palestinian request for solidarity is a worthy enough cause.

The Nation magazine, a bastion of progressive journalism, has been at the forefront of indecision on this issue, regularly hosting debates on whether the indigenous non-Jewish inhabitants of historic Palestine merit equal rights in their native land.

A grand red carpet ran between rows of destroyed apartment blocks and houses in the Gaza City district of Shujaiya last week, temporarily transforming one of the areas most devastated during Israel’s 51 days of bombing last summer. Dozens of men, women and children were massacred in Shujaiya on 20 July 2014.

The red carpet occasion was the Karama Human Rights Film Festival, produced by the Gaza-based production company Lama Film.

A key figure in the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is facing harsh criticism from Palestinians over planned lectures at Israeli universities this month in violation of the growing international boycott.

The noted Egyptian-American jurist Cherif Bassiouni is scheduled to speak on Thursday at Tel Aviv University on “The role of the ICC as justice mechanism: Does it enhance the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace?”

He is also scheduled to speak on 25 May at Hebrew University, which has also faced persistent criticism for its complicity in the Israeli occupation.

Sixty false allegations of anti-Semitism have been recorded against students or faculty in the US since January “based solely on speech critical of Israeli policy,” according to a study by lawyers.

Attorneys with Palestine Solidarity Legal Support (PSLS) published a report on Monday documenting 84 incidents of repression on college campuses across the US from 1 January to 30 April in which Palestine solidarity activists and professors were targeted or smeared because of their criticism of Israel.

Lawmakers across political spectrum blasted program, with some cautioning impact on Israel's image and others branding it as 'apartheid.' President Rivlin: Separation would have been 'unthinkable.'

everal dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators clashed with those supporting Israel at the front gates of a baseball stadium in West Sacramento, CA on Sunday where a celebration of 67 years of the Israeli state was being held.

Chanting “Israel has nothing to celebrate until Israel’s government stops violating human rights and international law,” the demonstrators featured a near life size puppet-sign of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Madonna has stirred up controversy after posting a photo of a Palestinian man and a Hasidic Jewish man apparently mid-kiss on Instagram.

The photo, which was posted on Sunday, has already garnered upwards of 70,000 likes in just over 24 hours. It features a Jewish man with side curls wearing a large white knitted skullcap typical of the Breslover Hasidic movement, in addition to an Arab man wearing a keffiyeh. The two appear to be leaning in for a kiss.

Israel’s new government must take a firm stand in its relations with Sweden following Sweden’s acknowledgment of Palestine – otherwise it risks losing Europe

Speaking at the Jerusalem Day ceremony today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue to expand settlements in the occupied east of the city, saying this was a “decisive answer” to terrorism.

Netanyahu went on to talk up the 1967 conquest of the east and the “reunification” as “drama on a Biblical scale,” insisting they will never again allow the city to be divided.

During the last days before the election, Netanyahu vowed to dramatically expand settlement building in East Jerusalem, and to do so in such a way as to make Palestinian statehood including it impossible.

Following are reports and photos from the Palestinian Press (Click on links)

Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people alone – and not of any other nation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night during a Jerusalem Day address at Ammunition Hill.

"This is our home and here we will stay," the prime minister added.

Thousands of young Israelis, many of them children, rampaged through the Old City of occupied Jerusalem on Sunday chanting “Death to the Arabs” and other racist and anti-Muslim slogans.

Israel insists on being the historic homeland for the world's Jews, something few would disagree with. But it also insists on being a Jewish-majority country, at all costs. In order to maintain its Jewish majority, it must demonize non-Jews, particularly Muslims and Christian Arabs, as “demographic threats."

Here are five crazy things the Israeli government or the Israeli people have done to maintain this racial makeup.

The first ship taking part in Freedom Flotilla III on Monday set sail from Gothenburg, Sweden, for a voyage of nearly 5,000 nautical miles to the blockaded Gaza Strip, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said.

The trawler Marianne was jointly acquired by “Ship to Gaza Sweden” and “Ship to Gaza Norway” and will be joined by other ships en route.