In arguably the strongest signal Congress has ever sent in support for Palestinian human rights, 19 members of Congress sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urging the Department of State to make the human rights of Palestinian children a priority in the U.S. bilateral relationship with Israel. Rep. Betty McCollum makes it clear that this letter is intended to result in decisive action. In the Congresswoman’s own words: “Israel’s military detention of Palestinian children is an indefensible abuse of human rights. I hope this letter results in State Department pressure on the Government of Israel to end this systemic abuse immediately. Palestinian children should be treated exactly the same as Israeli or American children, without the fear that one day soldiers will arrest them, beat them, and lock them away in prison.”

AFP reports: An announcement by a [Palestinian] lawmaker that he plans to join a pro-Palestinian flotilla seeking to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza caused outrage Monday among the country’s political class. Basel Ghattas, an Israeli MP with the Joint Arab List, sparked controversy after he announced he would join other parliamentarians and public figures from around the world in the latest attempt to reach Gaza by ship later this month.

The Palestine News Network announced this week that the suicide rate in the Occupied Territories jumped 68.4 percent last year. In Gaza, Al-Shifa Hospital said that at least one person attempted suicide every day. Gaza writer Anas Jnena shares one story of an attempted suicide in the besieged Gaza Strip that helps sheds light on the statistics.

In March, The Carey Academy, Israel announced the 1st Israeli Feis, a competitive tournament of traditional Irish dancing, to take place in Tel Aviv in August. In response, the Irish Palestinian Activist Collective has called on organizers to cancel it in solidarity with the Palestinian BDS call: “Your performance in Israel is the moral equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era.”

The 51-day summer war between Hamas and Israel was not only “heartbreaking,” but rampant with “possible war crimes” according to a much anticipated United Nations report published Monday. Investigators conducted nearly 300 interviews over the past year. All took place outside of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, as Israel denied entry to the researchers. Witnesses and victims—both Israeli and Palestinian—gave testimonies about the targeting of civilians, medical facilities and United Nations shelters, along with the existence of human shields (and the lack thereof), collective punishment, and the proportionality of the attacks.

A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli member of the Border Police at the Damascus Gate Sunday, and Netanyahu hailed the victim as a “fighter”. The Border Police serve as soldiers in the occupation, and the use of the term police is pure semantics.

A thought experiment: Israeli president Reuven Rivlin announced today that he was removing the Israeli flag from his presidential residence in Jerusalem as an acknowledgment of the more than 500 children killed by Israel in Gaza a year ago.

Léa Georgeson Caparros writes about crossing the Qalandia checkpoint while traveling in the occupied Palestinian territories with the Palestine Festival of Literature in May 2015.

“Six Jews sitting in the White House, three Israelis and three American Jews, discussing the Palestinian state. It happens all the time. Very often the only non Jewish person in the room was the vice president or the president.” Michael Oren counts Jews.

The UN Human Rights Commission report on last summer’s Gaza war is inappropriately “balanced.” It is more or less equally critical of Israeli and Hamas actions, without regard to the differences between the vast and horrific extent of civilian destruction caused by Israel and the far lesser civilian deaths and destruction that resulted from the largely ineffective Hamas attacks. –Scholar Jerome Slater