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2015

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Phan Nguyen debunks the misreadings of the Salaita report from the University of Illinois, in particular the claim that the report said that donors did not influence the decision to fire Salaita. The record is clear, the report did not establish the facts in that connection and didn’t treat damaging emails showing the Illinois chancellor juggling her schedule to meet an angry donor.

Religious-ethnic background as the basis of national identity is an anachronism in the 21st century. All states must protect individual rights from all communities. So goodbye to the era of self-determination, when the self is ethnicity.

Ahmad Samih Bdeir, 39, was crushed to death at an Israeli checkpoint near Tulkarem as he was trying to go to his construction job inside Israel. Palestinians are often crowded into metal pens inside the checkpoints, unable to leave or enter, and Israeli soldiers rarely respond to requests for movement from those stuck inside.

On Friday, American security personnel accompanying staff from the United States Consulate in Jerusalem drew their weapons on violent Israeli settlers who attacked a two vehicle U.S. convoy outside the Palestinian town of Turmusaya in the West Bank. Consulate staff were investigating a incident which took place on private Palestinian land on the first night of 2015 when six thousand recently planted olive saplings were uprooted, and dozens of old olive trees were destroyed by violent Jewish settlers from an illegal outpost the Adei Ad near Turmusaya. Officials from Turmusaya notified the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and requested an investigation because some of the owners of the land are Palestinian-Americans. When the U.S. delegation arrived in the area to investigate settlers started hurling stones at the convoy.