Retired Gen. Amnon Reshef told a NY synagogue that the two-state solution is a dream that is years away and the only way to sell it to Jewish Israelis is: “They support separation. They don’t want to be a part of one state. They want to be separated. It’s a Zionist dream. They don’t care about the Palestinians.” Isn’t that apartheid by another name?

A new report released by Israeli human rights group reveal “broad, systemic abuse by Israeli authorities,” against hundreds of Palestinian teens detained in occupied East Jerusalem. “Palestinian teenagers from East Jerusalem are pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, unnecessarily handcuffed and interrogated without being given the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or their parents before the questioning begins and without being informed of their right to remain silent,” the groups found. The report concludes that Israeli policy toward the children is an intentionally formed policy used by the state to pressure Palestinians in the city to leave.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed an executive order Monday barring state business with those who support BDS. Saqib Ali, co-founder of Freedom2Boycott and a former Maryland state legislator, said Monday’s executive order shows the hubris of staunchly pro-Israel voices and their disregard for democratic institutions. “You don’t have to be somebody who pays close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be outraged by this,” Ali told Mondoweiss.

In a lecture to the Tantur Ecumenical Institute on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his book Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, Marc Ellis asks, “what are Jews to do with the permanent occupation that leaves Jewish identity permanently infected with atrocity?”

Israeli colonists flooded dozens of Palestinian olive trees with sewage water Tuesday, near Nablus, according to the Israeli Rabbis for Human Rights organization, as the olive harvest begins. Human rights groups documented ten cases of settler violence and theft directed at Palestinian groves.

On October 22, 2017, a party was thrown to celebrate the 120th Anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Worker’s Bund of Russia, Poland and Lithuania, sponsored by YIVO Institute in NY. The Bund in the interwar 1920-39 period provided a model of secular Jewish identity without separatism and in Poland demonstrated effective Jewish participation in a multiethnic state. The Bundists elevated the principle of Doikayt, “hereness,” working in the society in which one lives, rather than toward the religious other world, or toward a Jewish state.

At a British Labour Party gathering, Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest applause came when he said the oppression of Palestinians must end. No wonder he snubbed an invitation from the Jewish Leadership Council to commemorate the Balfour Declaration at 100. And no wonder a UK diplomat says Balfour’s promise to non-Jewish communities has gone unfulfilled. Balfour anniversary is dividing British opinion on Israel.

Anyone in America who wants hard truths about Israel/Palestine today must read Haaretz instead of the U.S. press. The New York Times acknowledged the Israeli newspaper’s supremacy with the ultimate compliment: it ran a hatchet job on the journal.

A conference on the academic boycott of Israel in Ireland hosts Steven Salaita as a keynote. Co-organizer Conor McCarthy writes, “The first keynote, Steven Salaita (independent scholar) gave a powerful presentation on “Freedom to boycott: BDS and the modern university.” Salaita, who lost a promised tenure track position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) withdrawn, allegedly because of his forceful and emotional tweets during the 2014 Gaza War, has become a cause célèbre and an icon in the struggle to protect academic freedom, and his keynote revealed the institutional and the human ramifications of his dissent.  Despite winning his legal case against UIUC, precipitating the resignation of the university’s provost and revealing a concerted campaign to deny him a position that went well beyond his Twitter activity, Salaita has been unable to secure ongoing academic employment, in spite of a productive and exemplary level of scholarly activity, and must now resign himself to working and living as a freelance writer and lecturer. Referring to his own experience, Salaita began by reflecting on why there is a general assumption in favor of Israel’s colonial project, while arguments in favor of Palestinians’ rights often run into “benevolent contempt” and need to be (endlessly) proven as valid.”