Hillary Clinton has gained the support of major neoconservative donor Seth Klarman. Klarman’s family foundation supports rightwing Zionist groups, including the David Project and the Israel Project, and has supported several Islamophobic groups, including one that “applauded” an Oklahoma law later struck down as unconstitutional, that would have discriminated against Muslim religious practices. A Democratic Party think tank has said that the organizations Klarman supports have put out “anti-Islam messages polluting our national discourse.”

Growing up in the US, the Israeli national anthem held special meaning for Steven Davidson. But after living with a Palestinian family in Hebron, the song gained a different meaning: “Hatikvah didn’t feel so close to my heart any more. Its solemn melody still aroused that sense of belonging through wandering, only now, this sense felt betrayed by the song’s words. Everyone singing Hatikvah in this room felt like they belonged in a state they barely knew of— to the exclusion of so many whose home this had once been.”

Prominent activist Nadia Hijab writes: Join me in supporting Mondoweiss because we need it to be a thriving and growing organization – just like we need all the organizations in our movement that support freedom, justice, and equality. We cannot and will not succeed without organizations that have the capacity to launch new and promising ventures to push for justice harder and faster, and who can achieve demonstrable and measurable change in the United States, one of the toughest arenas in the struggle for rights.

Trump’s nomination was amazing in that it demonstrated the power of ordinary people –surely many acting out of racist and nationalist resentment — to upend a party leadership. Bernie Sanders failed in the same endeavor. One reason was that he did not seize on the material available to him, the Democratic Party’s love affair with neoconservatism and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ahead of this week’s House of Lords debate about the health and well being of Palestinian children, Juliana Farha reports from a sold-out presentation by Defense for Children International-Palestine at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies: “Ayed tells us that physical torture of Palestinian children was common a few years ago, but interrogators observed that those being tortured often call up reserves of strength to resist, rendering it counter-productive. Instead, they discovered, psychological terror can be more effective: threatening to arrest the child’s family members, for instance, or to revoke his father’s work permit.”

Gaza-based activist and academic Haidar Eid responds to queries sent by some activists about international gatherings and conferences that are being organized to address BDS-related issues without acknowledging the Palestinian leadership of the movement.

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhye Muhammad Sidqi al-Tabbakhi, was killed Tuesday evening during clashes with Israeli soldiers in the occupied village of al-Ram in the West Bank after he was struck in the heart by a rubber-coated steel bullet. Police had raided the village and youths responded with bottles and stones, which were met by live fire, rubber bullets, and tear gas.

The grubby underside of US electoral politics is on show once again as the Democratic and Republican candidates prepare to fight it out for the presidency. And it doesn’t get seamier than the battle to prove how loyal each candidate is to Israel. New depths are likely to be plumbed this week at the Republican convention in Cleveland, as Donald Trump is crowned the party’s nominee. His platform breaks with decades of United States policy to effectively deny the Palestinians any hope of statehood. The question now is whether the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, who positions herself as Israel’s greatest ally, will try to outbid Trump in cravenly submitting to the Israeli right.

When asked outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland what message he has for the West Bank, Cornel West tells a Lebanese news channel: “I think our young our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters need to know that there are voices here in the United States of all colors, white and black and red and yellow and brown, some of them are young Jewish voices who are concerned not just about the plight of Palestinians, but know that the day will come when the vicious Israeli occupation will be lifted. Palestinians will be able to live lives of decency and dignity and live lives of self determination.”

Kim Jensen reports from Nazareth at the third hearing in the Israeli government’s case against Dareen Tatour, the 33-year old Palestinian poet who is being prosecuted for “incitement to violence” on the basis of a YouTube clip and two alleged Facebook status updates. Jensen writes, “The wheels of justice grind slowly in the State of Israel, at least for Palestinian activists who endure de facto and de jure inequality under the law.”