A portrait of a rightwing Israeli lawyer in the Times is a transparent effort to show Israel supporters who monitor the paper closely that the Times takes rightwing Zionists more seriously than it does leftwingers or Palestinians.

Founded after Black teen Trayvon Martin’s 2012 death, the Dream Defenders are focused on challenging racism in America. They have helped lead the burgeoning #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations that have swept the nation and recently have joined U.S. Palestinian rights groups in calling for an end to Israeli human rights abuses. At the start of 2015, members of Dream Defenders went on a delegation to Palestine along with members of other U.S.-based racial justice groups to expose the activists to the Israeli occupation. After returning, the participants have drawn parallels between the Black and Latino experience in the U.S. and the Palestinian experience.

David Green responds to Cary Nelson’s talk in Israel which attacked the BDS movement at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. In short, “The picture Nelson paints regarding pro-Palestinian activism on the UIUC campus is false.”

Dennis Ross used to lead Middle East policy for Obama. Now his Jerusalem-based Zionist thinktank calls for 120,000 French Jews to leave France for Israel in the next four years.

Ma’an reports: “Israeli forces on Sunday detained a young Palestinian boy and his uncle in the al-Tur neighborhood of East Jerusalem, leading to clashes in the area, witnesses said. Locals told Ma‘an that Israeli special forces assaulted 10-year-old Muhammad Afeef Khweis as he was sitting in a park in the neighborhood, causing him to panic. Israeli forces also assaulted Khweis’ family members, who tried to stop the arrest.”

The case of Palestinian refugees is a prevailing topic when discussing Palestine and liberation, but when Palestinian refugees are being besieged and slaughtered in Syria there is a piercing silence towards them. Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus has been under siege for nearly 550 days and counting. Over 1,020 Palestinians have died in the camp by torture in regime jails, execution, and bombing.

If it was outrageous and inappropriate and unprecedented for the Republicans to ask Netanyahu to speak to Congress, thereby undermining Obama’s Iran policy, those who oppose war should take action, and give Netanyahu the cold shoulder when he comes to Congress

70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Jews must recognize that they live after that era of Jewish history and after the Nakba too. Jewish identity must reflect both, Marc Ellis says

Occupation at work: A Palestinian family fights religious settlers who try and build a synagogue on their land. Now the settlers send the family a bill for $22,000 in property taxes, more than they earn in years. From Jonathan Cook.

Israeli forces have twice violently raided a Palestinian home in occupied Beit Ummar, once tying up a mother whose husband is in jail, and demanding of her son, Where are your brothers?