Israel’s military has cleared soldiers of criminal wrongdoing in alleged human rights violations committed during the 2014 summer war in Gaza. According to a report published yesterday, Israel closed investigations into the killing of three Palestinian families and other civilians, and the shelling of a medical clinic, Gaza’s main power plant, and a United Nations shelter, among other offenses. “We did not expect anything less than Israel’s justification of war crimes,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after the publication of the military report, and urged the International Criminal Court to investigate the offenses.

The Anti-Defamation League brought a delegation of American police officers to an Israeli prison, occupied Hebron and a settler winery in the Golan Heights as part of their 2016 counter-terrorism seminar in Israel, according to an itinerary of the trip obtained by Mondoweiss. Trips like these have come under withering controversy from Palestine solidarity activists and Black Lives Matter protesters. In an age of police militarization and a growing movement to combat police brutality, critics see these trips as potentially fueling harmful police tactics.

As long as we accept the blithe use of terms like “terrorist” to refer to Palestinians fighting for basic dignity or accept the matter-of-fact description of Israel as a “democracy”, we lose the game. Those terms have been carefully designed to leave no room for a true dialogue of ideas. We need to stop expending our energies on arguments within their parameters of thinkable thought.

French police on Tuesday forced a woman to take off her clothes on a beach in Nice because she was wearing a “burkini,” a bathing suit recently criminalized in 15 French cities. Apparently, telling women what to wear – or in this case, what not to wear – is now considered good nationalism and good feminism among a large proportion of French society. These incidents should be shocking to all of us.

On Wednesday the Israeli military closed its investigation into four cases of mass killings of Palestinian civilians during the 2014 Gaza war. The military report found that in the four cases, which included the deaths of 49 people, the Israeli strikes were legal due to either mistakes, Hamas being responsible or an attack not happening at all.

Israel has banned an American activist who has worked for years helping Palestinians in Gaza, after denying her entry into the country, detaining her for hours and deporting her against her will. The woman’s ban comes after Israel banned five U.S. citizens at the border in July, all of them the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, and another American woman last week crossing from Jordan.

Haya Abdullah Ahmed writes, “Although I love to write, I refused to write about the war or the injured in Gaza. The number of jokes I told or laughed increased. And when I heard that my best friend’s husband had been killed in an Israeli attack, I cried bitterly but not for long. And then it hit.”

For months, pro-Israel and Palestine solidarity groups have been locked in a fierce debate over legislation in California against the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Now, to the chagrin of Palestine solidarity activists, the California State Senate is set to consider the bill that would require state contractors to certify that a boycott of Israel they were engaged in does not violate laws against discrimination. Jewish Voice for Peace activist Estee Chandler says it’s likely it will pass, which would make California the 13th state to pass anti-BDS legislation.

The Clinton Foundation got millions from the royal family of Bahrain and the Crown Prince arranged a meeting with then secretary of state Clinton through the Foundation. The investment seems to have paid off when Clinton did not criticize the Bahrain government’s crackdown on democracy protesters in the Arab Spring of 2011.

Breitbart News head Stephen Bannon has replaced Paul Manafort as Donald Trump’s primary campaign adviser. Bannon describes his site as a “platform for the Alt-Right,” referring to the growing white nationalist movement, and noted pro-Israel Islamophobe Pamela Geller has praised Bannon in heroic terms. What this revamped campaign means for Trump’s take on the middle east remains to be seen, but alt-right leaders are already imagining a future where they are directly influencing foreign policy.