Benjamin Netanyahu visited a classroom of first-graders in Ashkelon on the first day of the Israeli school year. Or Amit translates his message to the 6 and 7 year old students: “Hamas is teaching its children the opposite of peace and occasionally it tries to shoot at us, at you, and my policy is clear: zero restraint, zero containment, zero tolerance for terrorism. We respond to every launch into our territory, whether by overt or by covert operations, and we also foil terrorism.”
21 million people in Yemen are in need of humanitarian aid, but the world is largely ignoring it, an officer for international human rights organization Save the Children warns in an op-ed in the Guardian. The Saudi-led, US-backed “war has left Yemen, already the poorest country in the region, mired in a humanitarian crisis,” writes Mark Kaye, humanitarian advocacy and communications manager for the NGO.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says he can’t trust his old friend Sen. Cory Booker after he announced his support for the Iran Deal, and the Washington Post says Israeli PM Netanyahu screwed the Israel lobby when he decided to interfere in US politics by speaking to Congress against the president in March
The real meaning of BDS is that ending injustices requires substantial change in the way Israel has chosen to act and to think about itself, Bob Gelbach of Jewish Voice for Peace tells a groundbreaking forum on the movement at a CT synagogue
Isra Saleh El-Namy reports from Rafah where Palestinians are still recovering from the Israeli onslaught known as “Black Friday” a year ago when the IDF laid waste to southern Gaza following the capture of an IDF soldier.
David Plotz, travel writer, says that the Herodium is located in Tall Furaydis, Israel, when it’s in the occupied West Bank. And NPR’s Steve Inskeep echoed the error, impervious to the occupation.
Israeli intelligence tried to hurt Jimmy Carter by leaking information about his ne’er-do-well younger brother Billy in the U.S. press. Now we find out!
Alice Bach reviews Suad Amiry’s new book ‘Golda Slept Here’: “Since publishing her first gem of a story (“Sharon and My Mother-in-Law”), another decade of occupation has passed. Thus in ‘Golda Slept Here’ her wit is a bit strained. While her sassy tone is diminished in the new book, her love for the buildings and the villages of Palestine are more foregrounded. The absence of old Palestine is more important than the sitcom irony of struggling with the soldiers.”
The U.N. says Gaza will become uninhabitable in another five years of siege, and it is impossible to imagine a meaner report than the article in in the New York Times on people trying to get out of Gaza: “Faking Doctors’ Notes to Escape Gaza War Zone”
President Obama has given the Israel lobby its biggest setback in a generation with Sen. Mikulski’s announcement she is backing the Iran Deal.