A video of a traffic stop in East Jerusalem reflects perfectly how an ordinary person might respond to a constant police presence, a suffocation that’s untenable. This is the “battle of Jerusalem” Americans don’t see.

Israeli police ransacked seven apartments and urinated inside one while demolishing the Silwan apartment of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, 21, the Palestinian motorist from East Jerusalem who killed a three-month old Israeli-American Chaya Zissel and one Ecuadoran tourist in a light rail attack in Jerusalem on October 22, 2014. “They urinated on the mattresses in my brother’s apartment, said Enas al-Shaludi, 43, the mother of the deceased driver. “You can see the urine on the mattresses.” In addition to the demolition, which the family expected after receiving a demolition order last Friday, all of the other apartments in the four-story residential building were raided.

David Remnick treats Israeli president Reuven Rivlin’s talk of a one-state future as nutty in a piece in the New Yorker, while holding out for a two-state solution that would deny Palestinians any real sovereignty

Shmuley Boteach was joined by Elie Wiesel, Samantha Power, and Noah Feldman at the Cooper Union on Monday night for a discussion called “Genocide and the Jews: A Never-Ending Problem” — a title that evoked Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. It was an evening characterized by uneasy contradictions, as the panelists differed on the basis for criticizing Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, the significance of accusing the Jewish state of genocide, and the prospect of a Shoah-like catastrophe in the age of Zionism.

Gaza’s bombardment convinced John Fearey to visit Palestine at last; and the unjust conditions he observed in Jerusalem are seared in his mind and explain Palestinian resistance

Did you read Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech following the attack on the West Jerusalem synagogue Tuesday? Phil Weiss found it bloodcurdling. Netanyahu called on “the state of the Jews” to unite in a “battle for Jerusalem.” Calling Jews to put aside their little differences and take up arms for the “battle for Jerusalem” is a vision of holy war, with fascistic trimmings. The battle for Jerusalem is deadly for all of us. Americans must affirm that this city belongs to the world.

In Jerusalem, “here we go, again again again” — Descent, a poem from Marc Ellis

PNN reports: “Israeli forces on Monday razed the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in Negev Desert for the 78th time on the pretext that it had been built illegally, eyewitness said. Local resident told Andalou agency that “Dozens of Israeli forces backed by five bulldozers stormed the village at dawn today and began demolishing homes and other structures, the soldiers were heavily armed. They drove us out under the rain before they demolished our homes for 78th time in four years.””

On August 31, Israeli declared that almost 1000 acres belonging to the villages of Jab’a and Wadi Fukin would become state land, marking the largest attempt in decades to expropriate territory in the West Bank.

Bloodshed in Jerusalem and beyond won’t be remedied by apolitical prayers and statements from Rabbis for Human Rights and Jewish Voice for Peace, Marc Ellis says