John Kerry’s address to the Gaza Donors Conference in Cairo on Sunday was remarkably vacant, if not disingenuous. Reading through Kerry’s address paragraph by paragraph is an exercise in futility. Yet the political ramifications are extreme. Everyone knows that after the Gaza war a profound reckoning is needed. Yet John Kerry – and the Gaza Donors Conference – isn’t even close

In a historic move, the British Parliament voted overwhelmingly tonight, 274-12, to recognize a Palestinian state. The sense of the speechmaking was almost entirely in favor of the motion, with members of the House of Commons saying they were reflecting the popular will in the wake of the Gaza slaughter and the failure of the peace process. Richard Ottaway, a Conservative, said “I have to say to the Government of Israel that if they are losing people like me, they will be losing a lot of people.”

The rise of ISIS makes clear how dangerous it is to fail to separate church and state. That argument for democracy is sure to bite Israel, which uses religion to justify Jewish supremacy.

Shirabe Yamada writes about the work of Sunbula, a Palestinian fair trade organization that uses the traditional handicrafts as a tool for cultural and economic empowerment for the most marginalized. Sunbula works with 19 grassroots craft groups, which operate in refugee camps and villages of the West Bank, support marginalized groups in East Jerusalem, give opportunity to people with disability and refugee women in the Gaza Strip, and empower Palestinian community inside the Israel proper.

Ma‘an reports: A large group of Israeli settlers on Saturday morning violently beat a young Palestinian woman while she was picking olives from trees in an orchard in the village of Yasuf in the Salfit district in the central West Bank, a Palestinian official said.

The finale of Israel’s mass destruction of the Gaza Strip during “Operation Protective Edge” was the flattening of several 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.

The NYT wonders, smartly, why the world should pay to rebuild Gaza when it will just be destroyed again. As to which side is responsible for the “collapse” of peace talks, the editorial is silent. As to which side is responsible for the destruction of Gaza, and for the likelihood of it being repeated, the editorial is also silent.

Today the United Kingdom will vote on recognizing the state of Palestine. The House of Commons’ symbolic motion is poised to pass the Parliament despite Britain’s history of refusing to approve previous and similar bids. When the UK government was faced with Palestine’s own plans to seek recognition from the United Nations in 2012, Britain abstained. The bill’s backers from the Labour party have shored up votes from Liberal Democrats and Conservatives alike, making Monday a likely Palestinian victory. But the vote is coming at a cost. The Independent is reporting inside of Britian’s Labour party, pro-Israel members of Parliament are “furious.” Still the measure more or less models what former Prime Minister Tony Blair has proposed through the Quartet. And the House of Commons bill is also being pushed by heavyweights from within the government.

Marc Ellis says Shlomo Sand may have trouble resigning from Judaism. Shlomo, your article sounds like the Jewish prophetic tradition you so ably deconstructed and now you seek to resign? Is it so hard to see your own life here?

Sam Harris and Bill Maher blame Islam for political violence, but overlook the role of the west and Israel in fostering that violence. Why is Andrew Sullivan giving their bigotry a pass?