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.

How dare New York Times columnist Roger Cohen suggest that Gaza, a part of my homeland, is “nowhere!” Sam Bahour writes

Four women have sued the feds for cutting a deal with financier Jeffrey Epstein over sex abuse charges; one of them says Epstein compelled her to have sex with Alan Dershowitz when she was under 18 and Epstein’s “sex slave.” Dershowitz vehemently denies the charges.

The Congress has voted to supply Israel with additional military equipment “in a crisis,” the Israel lobby group AIPAC crows in a video saying that the bond between the two countries has been “dramatically strengthened”

Kai Bird’s New York Times Op-Ed “Israel, a Jewish Republic” is another piece for readers who choose to believe the mythology of Israel over the reality of Israel. It is representative of the bait-and-switch that is occurring in liberal Zionist thought. The reader is initially enticed with the progressive rhetoric, but once you’re deeper inside the writing, the author stops short and unveils potentially colonialist rhetoric.

In a column extolling the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, David Brooks says ‘people from around the world’ can serve in Israeli military (n but the IDF says you have to be Jewish. Brooks is simply misleading New York Times readers because he loves Israel and knows ethnic discrimination would be offensive to American readers.

Alaa Radwan reflects on new year’s 2015: “It saddens me to see that other people’s wishes for the New Year are so different from what so many Palestinians would even consider possible. Why? Why can’t we dream of things other than having a year without another bloody war with Israel, having 24/7-electricity, and having the freedom to travel abroad? Why can’t Gazans just have a normal life? Why can’t we enjoy a festive beginning to the New Year as all other people around the world do? My heart aches, what I and other Gazans call wishes are what the rest of the world calls rights!”

The US said it was “deeply troubled” by the Palestinian move to join the ICC, and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called it a threat to the “most moral army in the world,” but Palestinian activists have embraced the initiative as a new chapter in Palestinian resistance to occupation