In the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris, which included an assault on a kosher grocery store, Israeli leaders have called on Jews to leave France because Israel is their true home. This, of course, is what Zionism believes, that Israel is the “homeland” of all Jews. But, it is an ideological construct which has no relationship to reality. Israel should be content to be the “homeland” of its own citizens, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, and Diaspora Jews should stay in their countries and help build them.

The New York Times’ Isabel Kershner says the stabbing of Israelis by a Palestinian in Jerusalem “broke a period of relative calm.” Can we retire that phrase permanently? Have Palestinians ever experienced a period of relative calm?

Ahmed Moor writes the idea that Palestine is a Muslim issue is one that a lot of people believe in even though Palestinian society is not Muslim and Palestinian history never developed solely within an Islamic context. So who are the people who seek to offer it as a credible structural description? And why is the Palestine-is-a-Muslim-problem line so destructive?

We are moving toward a confrontation over Iran sanctions. President Obama vowed to veto sanctions on Iran and give negotiations time in his State of the Union speech. But today House speaker John Boehner on behalf of bipartisan congressional leadership invited Israeli PM Netanyahu to speak to a joint session Feb. 11 in a rebuke to the president

More than 80 cartoonists and other workers in the comics industry from over 20 countries signed an open letter to the head of the prestigious International Festival of Comics at Angoulême demanding it sever ties with Sodastream, an Israeli manufacturing company complicit in the occupation of Palestinian land. The authors of the letter include 10 prize winners at Angoulême itself, two winners of the MacArthur “Genius Grant,” many Eisner and Ignatz awardees, and a Palestinian cartoonist previously imprisoned for his work by the Israeli military.

A grieving father has recounted to NBC News how his five-month-old son froze to death after the family’s Gaza home was bombed by Israel.

Today, a Palestinian man from the West Bank town of Tulkarem stabbed 13 passengers on a Tel Aviv bus seriously injuring four. The attacker Hamza Matrouk, 23, told police interrogators he was motivated by Israel’s 50-day summer war in Gaza and tensions at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound where right-wing Israeli politicians have have taken groups of religious-nationalists throughout the fall. Although no Palestinian political faction took credit for the attack, Israeli leaders were quick to place blame on Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas.

Since the conclusion of the summer’s devastating war in Gaza, the pressure on residents to leave the rubble-covered ghetto has become unbearable. Between the slash-and-burn Israeli assaults — another of which appears to be inevitable — and the Israeli-Egyptian siege that suffocates the economy and severely restricts the entry of basic necessities, there is little hope among the 1.8 million Palestinians living inside Gaza.

Veteran CNN journalist Jim Clancy’s resignation this week is one of the odder media fallouts from the Charlie Hebdo Paris attack. On January 7, 2015 Clancy got into a late night Twitter spat regarding the French satirical magazine with online adversaries. He told them they were ganging up on him and practicing “hasbara,” the Hebrew word for “explaining” that describes pro-Israel advocacy. As it turns out, Clancy was not off base. Some that spared with him have worked for the Israeli government and pro-Israel lobby groups.

Critics of Israel have long known Alan Dershowitz’s power to smear their reputations. Now Ronn Torossian, a fellow Israel advocate, accuses Dersh of virulent bullying for calling him a “despicable human being” and lying about his record