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2014

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More than 30,000 people are still living in UNRWA schools in Gaza. What does that look like?

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It’s been two-and-a-half months since Operation Protective Edge ended. During the operation, thousands of Gaza residents took shelter in United Nations (UNRWA) schools. Many have since returned to their homes, and others, whose homes were destroyed, were put up by family and friends. However, 18 UNRWA schools still house more than 30,000 people who have no home or temporary solution. They are waiting for Gaza’s promised reconstruction while living in classrooms that were modified into small one-room apartments.

Muslims’ beliefs are ‘untrue’ and ‘ridiculous,’ ‘Salon’ author says, offering support for Maher’s intolerance

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Rula Jebreal took on Bill Maher’s Islamophobia, saying that he was offering a literalist and simplistic view of the religion, like jihadists themselves. If you said this about blacks or Jews you’d be fired, she said. Now Salon has backed Maher up with a piece saying that Islamic beliefs are “untrue” and “ridiculous.” Yes and what about the parting of the Red Sea?

Part of the Jewish Voice for Peace delegation at the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly in Detroit who worked in solidarity with Presbyterian groups on divestment from companies profiting off the Israeli occupation.

Support for Israel in the U.S. Jewish community continues to erode

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Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark and Donna Nevel write: “As the discourse changes and unquestioning Jewish support for Israel continues to erode – both for its policies and for its status as an ethnocratic state– there’s reason for optimism. But the ongoing work of Jewish groups standing with, and participating in the growing call for BDS and other efforts to achieve justice, equality, and human rights for the Palestinian people, as well as for a US foreign policy committed to these principles, remains more important and more challenging than ever.”

RE/MAX cashes in on Israel’s illegal settlements

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The Israeli government’s recent announcement that it had authorized the building of another 1,000 settlement homes in East Jerusalem left the US government seeing red, with State Department spokeswoman Jen Psakicalling the settlement activity “illegitimate” and “incompatible with the pursuit of peace.” But the announcement must have left the US-based real estate giant RE/MAX “seeing green,” ready to cash in on the sale and rental of more illegal settlement homes. Among the 90 countries with RE/MAX franchises is in Israel. Since its entry into the Israeli market in 1995, RE/MAX has become the largest network of real estate agencies in Israel, boasting 100 branches and over 900 real estate agents in this small country roughly the size of New Jersey. But here is the problem. RE/MAX Israel sells properties that are not only in Israel proper, but are also in occupied Palestinian lands of the West Bank.

Israeli attacks on Al Quds University give new meaning to ‘academic freedom’

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Close to 13,000 Palestinian and international students go through at least one of 600 checkpoints in the West Bank to attend Al Quds University, the only Arab University in East Jerusalem. Established in 1984, the Abu Dis campus now houses 13 academic faculties, and has more than 30 centers and institutes, including the critically acclaimed Abu Jihad Museum for Prisoner Movement Affairs. Besides having a museum dedicated to Palestinian political prisoners on campus, Al Quds University is unique for another controversial reason: the campus community is under constant threat due to methodical and ideologically-based attacks by the Israeli military.