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October 2015

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As the crisis in Israel-Palestine devolves, with some predicting a third intifada, the YWCA in Jerusalem issued an alert calling Israel’s entrenched military occupation “the Endless State of Emergency.”

A brutal video shows undercover Israeli forces infiltrate a group of Palestinians protesters this afternoon near a checkpoint outside of Ramallah in the West Bank and open fire on the demonstrators. The video also shows unformed Israeli soldiers wound two more protesters with live rounds, critically injuring one by firing a shot into the back of the protester’s head.

In The New Atheist Threat: The Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremism, author C J Werleman argues that an atheism that does battle only with imaginary spirits and ghosts to the neglect of pressing international issues of war and peace cheapens the legacy of the old free thinkers.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. (Photo: UN Photo/Cia Pak)

Rida Abu Rass shares the speech she wishes Mahmoud Abbas had given at the UN last week. It includes: “We did our best to accommodate the Israeli need for a state alongside us, but the geopolitical reality that Israel created renders this solution impossible. On behalf of all Palestinians, I declare that our hands are still open to designing a peaceful solution for the region, but this time, as equal partners in our shared homeland.”

Can anyone say when the Israeli colonial project, dependent as it is on the suppression of a subject people in the name of the theft of their land, will reach its end? For sure not. But the downfall of such regimes often comes unforecast and without warning. It may be hard for Israelis (and their best friends abroad) to digest the reality of the situation, especially given the irony that they are bringing that future on themselves.