Ilan Pappe’s October 25 lecture in Chicago, “The Ongoing Nakba,” promoting his new book, The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge, emphasized two things that stood out to me in particular: Israel’s importing of European pine trees and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Though these issues are not new to the discourse on Palestine, Pappe reminds his audience that the land is as alive as the indigenous people who inhabited it. The mind, body, and spirit of both land and people are still victims to Israel’s current goal of de-Arabizing Palestine, “which has gotten worse for the Palestinians every year since 1882.”

After dawn on Wednesday supporters of Palestinian-American Rasmea Odeh shut down a federal building in San Francisco to protest her conviction two days before on charges of immigration fraud for failing to disclose Israeli prison time 45 years before.

British mega pop star Robbie Williams, a UK Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) since 2001 , signed on last month to front a new campaign launched by UNICEF UK Children in Danger, which “aims to protect children from violence, disease, hunger and the chaos of war and disaster.” Less than a week later Williams announced on his website he’s booked a gig at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv on May 2, 2015, as part of his Let Me Entertain You Tour.

David Sheen writes: “In the last week, the German media has been replete with articles accusing me and my fellow journalist Max Blumenthal of spreading hatred of Jews. These baseless accusations are not only defamatory, but also amount to a real physical threat to myself, as I live in Israel, where dissidents are branded as “destroyers of Israel” and are often subject to rape threats and violent physical attacks. Despite the orchestrated attempt to smear our names and get our Berlin speaking gigs cancelled, we testified at the Bundestag – the German Parliament – about the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza and incitement to racist violence by top Israeli leaders. After giving our testimonies, we confronted one of the leading legislators who had publicly endorsed the smear campaign against us.”

The JTA reports: “The Israeli government has drawn up plans for some 185 miles of roads in the West Bank, largely for the benefit of Jewish settlers. The 44 proposed roads would connect Jewish settlements to each other and nearby Israeli cities, and their construction would require expropriating more than 6,000 acres of land, according to a report by Israel’s i24 News.”

Monday night, approximately 50 supporters of Yisrael Beiteinu, the right-wing political party headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, demonstrated in Jerusalem outside an exhibition at the Hansen House that featured a video by dancer/choreographer Arkadi Zaides. The fury of the demonstrators was directed at B’Tselem, the Israeli organization that documents human rights abuses in the occupied territories. Zaides’ video included footage from a B’Tselem project titled “Armed with Cameras.” The demonstration was organized by Mothers of Soldiers Against B’Tselem, a group whose mission is “working with legal tools to weaken human rights organizations,” according to the group’s Facebook page. Tensions were extremely high as an Israeli soldier and a settler had been stabbed to death that day in separate incidents. At the demonstration, at least one person was physically assaulted. “Somebody hit me over the head with a flag pole. They called us Nazis and said ‘May you burn in the gas chambers,’” Zafira Stern said.

As tensions seethe in Jerusalem the Israeli government has resurrected polices from the Intifada-era including punitive home demolitions as a measure of deterrence against attacks on its citizens. Even before Tuesday night when Netanyahu declared the return of home demolitions, there were calls inside of the government to bring it back. “Anyone who attacks police or civilians, his home should be demolished,” said Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovic.

Pittsburgh may be known for its steel mill past and its high-tech present, but is now emerging as the seat of a lively debate concerning Palestinian food, free speech, and criticism of Israeli policies. The Conflict Kitchen is a take-out eatery that only serves food from countries with which the United States is in conflict. The restaurant began serving Palestinian food on October 6. On November 8, restaurant co-director Jon Rubin received a letter containing a death threat. As a result, Mr. Rubin temporarily closed the Conflict Kitchen.

A video shot on an Israeli bus shows a Jewish Israeli man demanding to be able to inspect a Palestinian woman’s handbag. The exchange reveals something extraordinary about how racism is embedded within Jewish Israeli society.

On November 2, Linda Wafi participated in the 26.2 mile-New York City Marathon. The 33-year-old Palestinian resident of Washington, D.C. was not just running for exercise, though. Wafi was raising money for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a nonprofit that brings injured children from the Middle East to hospitals around the world for treatment. The fund is busy these days with helping Palestinians who were injured during Israel’s last military operation in the Gaza Strip, an area Wafi lived in for ten years.