What are the costs of the inhumane Israeli blockade? A reported 250-300 Gazans fleeing to Europe from the open-air prison that is Gaza were killed in the Malta boat sinking last week

IMEMC reports: The Yesha Council of Settlements has reported that the number of Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, including in and around occupied Jerusalem, has reached 382,031, adding that 7,500 Israelis have moved into West Bank and Jerusalem settlements in the last six months.

Foolish Simon Schama defends Israel’s killing of 500 children in Gaza recently by saying Israel lost 1 million children in the Holocaust, and Gazans brought this slaughter on themselves.

Dan Cohen talks with Usama Abu Safer from Gaza’s Deir al Balah Rehabilitation Center. They met during the final days of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 51-day assault that killed 2,168 Palestinians and injured nearly 11,000. Frequent Israeli violence has raised the rate of disability among more than 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza to an astonishing 7.5%. According to the Deir al Balah Rehabilitation Center, 3,000 of the injured in Operation Protective Edge now have permanent physical disabilities, most of which are paraplegia and amputations. Many more suffered permanent hearing loss resulting from explosions.

Rabbi Danielle Leshaw has called on Ohio U. student leader Megan Marzec to resign because her action for Palestine allegedly made Jewish students feel “unsafe.” But Leshaw is administrator of a pro-Israel group that in its logo denies the existence of Palestine or an occupation.

When Zoe Goorman tried to explain to Democratic politicians in Marin County, California, that Israel is the elephant in the room that they’re not talking about, she let them know graphically: with a poster of an elephant in the room. Maybe others should follow suit?

As evidence the Salaita firing is a catastrophe for the University of Illinois keeps stacking up, the American Studies Association (ASA) issued a statement from their Executive Committee characterizing the UIUC administration’s decision to rescind the offer of tenured faculty position to Salaita’s as “a de facto assault against the Program in American Indian Studies at UIUC ” that sets a “dangerous precedence”.

After Bruce Shipman, a Yale chaplain, wrote to the New York Times about anti-semitism in the wake of Gaza, the top chaplain wrote him to say that angry alumni were calling the Yale president’s office demanding his termination.

Since Operation Protective Edge began in Gaza in early July, Israel has strengthened economic relationships with its closest allies. Within days of the air campaign starting, the U.S. and Israel penned a mutual recognition customs agreement which will lift screening barriers and tariffs. Then on Monday Israel cinched a similar Declaration of Intent from Canada, while focusing on the threat of ISIS, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Israel should accept a long-term hudna, or cease-fire, if the resistance groups offer it—ten years of a “time out” might permit the breathing room needed for a new generation of Israelis to push aside her obdurate, reactionary leadership, clear the ideological dead-wood, and let light in on a dark land; while likewise permitting a new generation of Palestinian leaders to determine perhaps not what it wants, but what it needs. Should Israel end the blockade, commit to self-determination for the Palestinians, and non-interference in their affairs, a decade without violence could be secured for both sides.