The second presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump featured a Muslim voter named Gorbah Hamed who asked Trump about the rise of Islamophobia that coincided with his rhetoric against them. Trump and Clinton sounded similar tones on what responsibility both Muslims have in alerting law enforcement to attacks plotted by fellow Muslims. Trump puts their responsibility in much more hostile terms, but both demand Muslims remain America’s first defense, and cast their inclusion as being essential to defeating terrorism.

UC Berkeley’s cancellation of a course entitled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis” (since reinstated) is the latest in a series of 43 attacks on academic freedom pertaining to discussion of one foreign state, namely Israel, state a group of over 200 California scholars at 20 institutions.

Israeli new historian Benny Morris writes himself into a scholary cul-de-sac by stating that there was “no ethnic cleansing” by Zionist forces in 1948, after he stated in a 2004 interview that it was “ethnic cleansing” and it was necessary and didn’t go far enough to make peace.

An Israeli police officer and an Israeli woman were shot dead and at least five others were injured in a drive-by shooting near the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah Sunday morning. The gunman, Misbah Abu Sbeih, a native of occupied East Jerusalem, was shot and killed by Israeli police at the scene.

In March, Ramzi Abu Ajamia got word that Israeli forces were looking for him. Terrified of getting arrested, Ramzi stopped sleeping at home and going to school. He succeeded in dodging Israeli forces for five months before he was spotted at clashes during an Israeli night raid on Dheisha refugee camp. Israeli forces spotted the boy on the streets around 1 a.m., and fired. Ramzi was shot in both legs and doctors were only able to remove the two bullets in his right leg. Ramzi underwent six surgeries over the course of a few weeks before he was sent home to recover. Then a few days into Ramzi’s homestay, Israeli forces stormed his house, blasting off the family’s front door before raiding the home and arresting the injured 13-year-old. “That night I had a feeling they would come for me, I was sitting up in my bed waiting,” Ramzi told Mondoweiss, both legs still bandaged and unhealed.

Avigail Abarnabel grew up in Israel and came to view the society as a cult. Here she writes a letter to Israeli Jews explaining why she decided to leave: “I left the cult because I wanted to find out who I was. I refused to accept that the only purpose of my life was to defend the cult and allow it to continue.”

Latest Democratic Party emails published by Wikileaks show Clinton campaign aides bending over backwards to please the Israel lobby and big pro-Israel donors, to balance her support for the Iran deal.

In the middle of the morning on October 5, sounds of bombs reverberated throughout Gaza. The news would trickle out later that an extremist Salafi fringe group had shot a crude rocket into an Israeli settlement, reportedly as a way of pressuring the Hamas government to release some of its members from prison. Some in Gaza said they believe the Salafis are actually being manipulated by the Palestinian Authority. Israeli forces responded with more than 30 airstrikes and tank hits in two hours, these are the Palestinian accounts of that incurrsion.

Nonviolent protest organizer Mohammad Khatib of occupied Bil’in was on his way to his olive groves Friday when Israeli soldiers stopped him. He lay in the road in front of his car refusing to move. Israeli soldiers arrested him and seized the car.

Emails leaked from the Clinton campaign chair show Stu Eizenstat urging Hillary Clinton to come out against BDS and get close to Netanyahu, to assuage the “great angst in the Jewish community” over Israel, which is tearing US Jews apart.