Violence / Raids / Suppression of protests / Arrests Two detained teens speak of abuse,…

The decades-long “peace process” has clearly shown attempting to work through bilateral or even multilaterals tracks where Israel is assumed to be acting in good faith is utterly futile as long as the Israeli government exerts absolute control over the situation on the ground. Scott Ratner says only the international arena offers a venue where Palestinian national aspirations are not encumbered by Israeli desiderata or obstacles that will forever prevent the materialization of a Palestinian state.

Crunch time. Palestinians are pushing for action against the occupation from the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Security Council. Will the US finally do a gamechanger, and abstain?

“Israel exceptionalism” and the “vengeance of the Jewish establishment” stops liberal Jews who protest police killings in the U.S. from saying a word against the occupation in Palestine, Shaul Magid writes at Tikkun

Sarah Helm’s riveting account of visiting Gaza for Newsweek describes all 1.8 million people as “human shields” because civilians had no place to go when the missiles landed

Kairos has been around for five years and the facts on the ground are worse. Marc Ellis calls for a renewal of Jewish prophetic thought, rooted in an awareness that Palestinians have been wronged and there is one state between the river and the sea.

Lehava is a rightwing Israeli group that opposes intermarriage of Jews and Arabs. Three young followers of the movement, including two settlers, are said to have confessed to the arson of a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school in Jerusalem.

“What will the nature of Israel be? A religious Jewish state? A state of all its citizens? A secular, democratic and Jewish state? Roland Nikles says Israel’s new proposed Basic Law to define the country as the nation state of the Jews would provide legal cover for a system that privileges Jews over all others in all aspects of life. Anyone who cares about the character of the state that wields power in the name of Judaism should be paying attention.

Avi Oved and Avinoam Baral are pro-Israel advocates at UCLA who hold student government offices. Funding for their campaigns was provided by a rightwing Israel supporter, LA real estate exec Adam Milstein

A group of 20 Zionist scholars has come out for “personal sanctions” against four right-wing Israeli figures, including finance minister Naftali Bennett, in order to end the Israeli occupation and forestall the BDS movement