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July 2015

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Two American Jews were reportedly called a racial slur, detained, and subsequently deported by the Israeli government because they are black. “Once we were detained, we were never given any reason other than one female agent screaming at me ‘Eretz Yisrael isn’t a country for cushim [a racist Hebrew slur for black people],’” Idit Malka recalled.

The spirits of the more than 2,000 Palestinians who were killed in Israel’s 50-day military operation against Gaza last summer have been immortalized in the posters that have emerged from the conflict. Catherine Baker from the Palestine Poster Project Archives discusses 10 posters created in response to last summer’s attacks that demonstrate the power with which artists wield their tools to record history, influence the discourse, and effect action.

Five children in the Abu Jarad family were killed, and a family “erased” by an Israeli Apache helicopter attack a year ago. The U.S. funds Israel’s military machine, and insures that there is never accountability for war crimes. A Capitol Hill briefing on July 29 led by the US Campaign to End the Occupation aims to end that immunity.

Rabbi Brant Rosen’s new congregational venture Tzedek Chicago continues to make news. Writing in the Forward, Jonathan Paul Katz thinks that such a non-Zionist venture rooted in universal Jewish values might fill a gap in Jewish life. That said, the issue is much more profound than Katz is aware of.