Amid mass political upheaval this week, the Israeli prime minister’s government reshuffle has brought in the creme de la creme of Israel’s far-right and raised the hackles of those fearing an apparent rise in extremism among Israel’s political leadership. “The question now is: what is the world going to do?” Joint List MK Aida Touma-Souliman tells Mondoweiss. “The world until today still believes what Netanyahu says about his willingness to talk to the Palestinians. To have Lieberman as defense minister…I think this is a very clear message Netanyahu is sending to the world over his goals for the future.”

The DNC may give Bernie Sanders seats on a key platform committee to try and keep him on board with the Clinton campaign, but he is likely to push more equitable US policy in the Israel/Palestine issue, and Clinton campaign is “nervous” that this would be divisive, the Washington Post reports.

“The territories will burn like they’ve never burned before,” Gideon Levy warns in Haaretz about the deal to give rightwinger Avigdor Lieberman the Defense Ministry, but once again the New York Times hides Israel’s ugly face in a closet.

Another neoconservative says nice things about Hillary Clinton, even as the Democratic left signals its opposition to her foreign policy. Ralph Nader says “she scares the generals” and Oliver Stone slams the “viciousness” of her speech to the Israel lobby group AIPAC.

Members of the Teaching Assistants’ Association at the University of Wisconsin-Madison vote overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution to divest from the State of Israel and corporations that profit from the illegal occupation of Palestine. During a two-week vote distributed to all union members, the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA/AFT Local 3220) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the oldest graduate student labor union in the United States representing over 9,000 graduate workers and students, voted overwhelmingly (81% of voting members) in favor of adopting a resolution to divest from Israeli state institutions and international corporations complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing violations of Palestinians’ human rights.

Being ambassador to the Vatican “is the best job in Israeli diplomacy because you live in Rome and you don’t have to deal with the Jews,” Times of Israel editor David Horovitz jokes at the start of an AIPAC event in Connecticut.

Press release: “Youth Against Settlements is pleased to announce that the closed military zone orders in Hebron were not renewed today by the Israeli military. The Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron had been under closed military zone orders since November 1, 2015 with the order having been renewed at 2-4 week intervals. Youth Against Settlements attributes (YAS) this success to the Open the Zone campaign that YAS and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) launched on May 3. The campaign involved video testimony of families and individuals living in the closed military zone describing the difficulties the closed military zone created for their lives. “

More than 300 human rights and aid organisations, church groups, trade unions and political parties from across Europe have called on the EU to uphold its legal responsibilities and hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and to defend the right of individuals and institutions to take part in the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for justice and equality.

Unfair blame has come down on the heads of American soldiers and allied Afghan forces over an attack on a civilian hospital in Kunduz last year, while the general in charge of the mission, Major General Sean P. Swindell, faced no consequences, according to an Army officer who spoke exclusively to Mondoweiss, “I wish the general in charge was prosecuted for this, but that’s my personal opinion. He should be taking ultimate responsibility for it, since he set up the conditions that something like this would happen.”

On Thursday May 19, the Ontario Legislature will discuss the “Standing Up Against Anti-Semitism in Ontario Act, 2016.” The bill, however, has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and does not conceal its purpose as a bill that targets the BDS movement and, both, its organizational and individual supporters.