Megan Hanna reports from Bait al Karama – “the House of Dignity” – a cooking school situated in the heart of the Old City of Nablus. Established in 2008, the school rests on the principle that it is just as effective to fight the Israeli occupation through food as Molotov’s and stones.

Ambassador Daniel Shapiro’s sharp criticism of Israeli policies earned him the insult “little Jewboy” from a former Netanyahu aide. The flap demonstrates an important sociological trend: American Jews, even mainstream ones indoctrinated to love Israel, are breaking more and more publicly with the Jewish state. The Netanyahu government is proving to be embarrassing to American Jews; they do not want to be associated with rightwing apartheid policies.

Israel still portrays itself as a Jewish and democratic state. Yet in practice, as its Palestinian citizens can attest, it functions as a Jewish ethnocracy, leaving small margins of freedom for its Palestinian citizens that have been steadily shrinking in the past few years. Now the Israeli state has come under the complete control of the far right wing, which sees no need even for such limited margins of freedom. This is evident in the wave of discriminatory legislation and the use of the Emergency Regulations against established non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and movements such as the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel.

In the last nine days, Israeli authorities have cracked down on activists associated with Ta’ayush, the Jewish-Palestinian partnership that works to stop settlement growth in the occupied territories. There is a gag order on the case, but details have emerged. Israeli authorities have arrested Ezra Nawi, the great campaigner against human rights abuses in the occupied territories, as well as another member of Ta’ayush and a staffer of the human rights group B’Tselem.

Green metal panels shutter recently out of business storefronts along al-Wad Street, a narrow stone road inside of Jerusalem’s Old City walls that links Damascus Gate to the holy sites of the Western Wall and the al-Aqsa mosque. During the summer foot traffic was heavy on this Muslim quarter walkway lined with souvenir mongers and restaurants. Yet six stores on al-Wad street alone have closed since October when violence erupted across Israel and the West Bank in what many Palestinians are calling the start of an uprising.

IMEMC reports: The Israeli Supreme Court refused to reconsider a decision to demolish the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, and ordered to evict all its residents, Adalah center reported on Sunday. Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, requested that the court reconsider its decision to approve Israel’s plane to evict the village’s 1,000 Palestinian Bedouin residents, in order to build Jewish town of Hiran, and expand the Yatir Forest over its ruins.

While in Hawaii, Hatim Kanaaneh uses the local homelessness crisis to explain Middle East politics.

Beginning to get a bad feeling about Peter Baker, the likely next Jerusalem chief for the New York Times: He has twice offered Israel as a model for American conduct, in how to deal with terrorism and with prisoners accused of terrorism.

Omar Barghouti writes, “Though Human Rights Watch does not endorse BDS or call for a boycott against Israel or companies profiting from its violations of international law, it actually calls for something quite radical: sanctions against Israel.”

Over the weekend, in a victory for diplomacy, the U.S. lifted sanctions on Iran in place since 2006 as the two countries also completed a prisoner exchange. But no sooner than the plane carrying released prisoners had left the tarmac in Iran, the U.S. Department of Treasury slapped new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile testing last fall, breaking the spirit of the agreement with Iran.