Settler attacks across the West Bank and Jerusalem, including stonethrowing in Hebron which police did nothing to stop and an assault on a Palestinian bus driver, dragged from his bus

Arieh King wants Jerusalem for the Jews but when he comes to NY, the public can’t attend his speech. You have to apply for admission. Desperate times in the Israel lobby.

The regime change at the New Republic is continuing to command headlines and two storylines sympathetic to Chris Hughes are emerging. One is technocratic/neoliberal: He bought the goddamn magazine, what did they expect? The other is political: despite the New Republic’s claim to being a progressive leader, the old regime was not liberal; it was racist and neoconservative/rightwing Zionist. More evidence the Hughes putsch is epochal: it ends an era in which neoconservatism was fanned inside the liberal Democratic political community, out of concern for maintaining US support for the Jewish state.

34 department heads at the U of Illinois have written to the president that the unfair firing of Steven Salaita for outspokenness on Gaza has “damaged” the school because excellent scholars don’t trust it to honor free speech and will not come there to teach.

Last Friday, the American Anthropological Association’s annual business meeting in Washington, DC was packed with more members than any other time in recent memory – over 700. On the agenda was a proposed resolution against boycotting Israeli academic institutions. The atmosphere in the room was electric, as anthropologists from across the profession discussed the boycott and the ongoing violations of Palestinian academic freedom and human rights. Of the 24 members who spoke, three-quarters opposed the resolution, arguing that it was an attempt to shut down a crucial debate. In the end, the effort to prevent the boycott discussion backfired spectacularly: members present overwhelmingly voted down the measure, which mustered a mere 52 supporters.

RE/MAX is one of the largest real estate corporations in the world. RE/MAX International, based in the US, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado, oversees 7,000 offices in almost 100 countries and several of RE/MAX’s Israeli franchises sell property in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. During the first week of December Palestinian solidarity activists across the US flooded RE/MAX offices demanding that the real estate giant cease its activities in illegal, Jewish-only settlements.

Israeli academic Simona Sharoni writes: “I am writing to you because the Israel of my childhood and of your dreams has become a nightmare, which we can no longer ignore. The passing of the “Jewish Nation-State bill” by the Israeli government makes clear what Palestinian citizens of Israel have known for years: that Israel is a democracy for Jews only. By legalizing its Apartheid policies, the Israeli government has forced us to re-evaluate our relationship to Israel.”

Haim Saban, a leading Israel supporter in the U.S., openly confronts Israeli minister Naftali Bennett: “We live in different realities… Are you willing to cut commercial ties with Europe, because this is what’s going to happen if you have your way in annexing Area C.”

Attending a Sabeel conference at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Liz Rose recounts her own path from being a Zionist student at the school to being an anti-Zionist supporter of Palestinian rights.

Ynet reports: “The Military Police will investigate the circumstances surrounding the killing of 50 Palestinians during Operation Protective Edge, the IDF said on Saturday night following a decision by the Military Advocate General (MAG) to expand criminal investigations against IDF soldiers over a number of incidents that occurred in the Gaza Strip during the summer’s military operation”