The Democratic presidential nomination debate on Sunday night was remarkable in part for Senator Bernie Sanders’s strong support for normalizing relations with Iran, and Hillary Clinton’s demurral on that same question. The difference is likely to play out in the Democratic primary process.

For Ahmed Jaber, the new year has brought nothing special to his cramped house which he shares with his parents and other seven siblings. 2016 has started in Gaza in abysmal darkness as the power crisis has worsened, putting nearly all facets of life into serious danger. “What does it mean to celebrate the New Year,” Ahmed asks. “The word celebration does not even exist in our terminology; it is a very luxurious expression which has no place in Gaza”.

There is not much difference between the Israeli settlers of 1967 and those of 1948. The liberal Zionists anguish in “shoot and cry” fashion about the moral corruption of the settlement enterprise, but they actually furthered it, and it serves their nationalist purposes.

In a groundbreaking new report, Human Rights Watch has joined the chorus of voices calling on countries to label goods made in the Israeli occupied territories as the products of settlements, and calls on countries to withhold aid to Israel that can be used to “offset the costs of Israeli government expenditures on settlements.” The report titled Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights puts pressure on a “multitude” of private companies to stop doing business in the occupied territories, because they are helping to sustain an illegal settlement project that deprives the Palestinian population of their human rights.

On Sunday, Pope Francis traveled across town to visit Rome’s synagogue that stands within the old Jewish ghetto, but he missed an opportunity to move the Jewish-Catholic friendship to a new level of honesty. As the Pope correctly apologized for the Church’s role in the ghettoization of Jews, he remained silent about the ongoing ghettoization of Palestinians in Israel-Palestine.

On December 3rd 2015 a statue was unveiled in honor of Richard “Dick” Cheney at the United States Capitol. Coincidentally, the previous day witnessed the British parliament, specifically the House of Commons, inadvertently honor Cheney in the debate on whether to extend the military intervention aimed at ISIS in Iraq into ISIS’s supposed heartland in Syria.

For the second time in a year, Israeli vandals targeted a Christian church in Jerusalem Sunday with extremist anti-Christian graffiti. Assailants tagged the religious site with messages in Hebrew: “Death to the heathen Christians, “the enemies of Israel”, “Let his [Jesus’] name and memory be obliterated” and “Christians to Hell.”

Wisam Marwan Qasrawi, 21, was shot at Huwwara checkpoint in the northern West Bank Sunday after allegedly trying to stab a soldier. He is the 159th Palestinian killed by Israeli soldiers in the last 3-1/2 months.

Craig Corrie writes about the actor Alan Rickman, who died last week at the age of 69 and had edited his daughter Rachel’s writing into the play ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie.’ Corrie writes, “The care Alan took for our family, his courage to take on this particular project, and most of all, the respect he showed for Rachel and her writing, impress me still as truly extraordinary.”

Israeli forces continue to use excessive force in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports that nine Palestinian civilians, including two children, were killed, and one armed resistance fighter was killed by Israeli troops in the past week. During the same time, 21 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children, were wounded in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces conducted 72 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and a limited one in the southern Gaza Strip. 64 Palestinian civilians, including 8 children, were abducted.