Yitzhar is an extremist Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank that was founded by rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, who has commended a text condoning the killings of non-Jews. Israeli police raided it Tuesday, seizing weapons they said could be used on Palestinians or Israeli forces

Netanyahu and his supporters become hysterical as controversy builds over his planned speech to the Congress. The Zionist Organization of America says congresspeople who don’t go to the speech are un-American

Bus ads decrying US tax dollars going to Israel were censored in Seattle, but they’re now in San Francisco after appearing on buses in Denver and Portland

What is absent from much of the discussion of one state in Israel/Palestine is how this just state is to be structured economically and politically. Ellen Isaacs says that any movement which is going to enlist a mass movement in the call for a single just state must address the needs of the non-owning majority of Arabs and Jews on both sides of the wall.

Tyler Levitan writes about the role of pro-Israel advocates play in shutting down debate over Israeli policies on Canadian college campuses.

Only three paragraphs from the end of a story about the battle over Iran between Obama and Sen. Menendez does the NYT mention the Israel lobby: “pressure from pro-Israel groups that back a hard line against Iran”. Well at least they mentioned it!

Politico is reporting that Vice President Joe Biden will be out of town when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to come to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, March 3.

On February 15, a group of New York City Council members, including members of the Progressive Caucus, will jet off to Israel on the dime of the Jewish Community Relations Council. It is a ritual that usually doesn’t garner much attention. But that has changed this year. A vocal coalition has arisen to call on New York City Council members to spurn the free trip. They say it is unseemly to tour Israel following the summer attack on the Gaza Strip, and have pointed out the history of partnership between the New York Police Department and Israeli security forces at a time of national protest against police brutality.

On Wednesday the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee convened a hearing on cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority in response to joining the International Criminal Court. The hearing panel was staffed exclusively by neoconservatives—three out of four of whom have written about Palestinian children as constituting a “demographic threat” to the Jewish state. Citizens concerned about human rights in Israel/Palestine packed the hearing to represent the growing number of Americans who object to the US government’s one-sided diplomatic and military support for Israel. Subcommittee chairperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) was not amused.

An estimated 2,300 Palestinians in Gaza were killed during the summer assault by Israel. Each one was a mother, father, brother, sister, friend or spouse to someone left behind, and their deep feeling of grieving and loss is still palpable – yet the stories behind these numbers have not been told. A new project called “We Are Not Numbers” is designed to attract attention for those stories – both their beauty and their tragedy.