Palestinian leaders announced the end of the prisoner hunger strike as a major success last week, but Israel has denied it ever negotiated and stated no demands were met. Reports have since emerged alleging a secret meeting took place between Israeli and Palestinian officials where the two sides set terms to end the strike but neither has disclosed the deal. Sheren Khalel talks with one hunger striker who says if the reports are true the strike can easily start again. “In two or three months if we see the demands haven’t been met, we will go back on strike, and the next time won’t be the same as the last, a second hunger strike would be much stronger,” Ali Brijieh says. “If the Israelis think that we are not able to do another hunger strike, I can promise you they’re wrong.”

Michael Friedman reviews Jeff Halper’s book “War Against the People,” where Halper argues Israel has no intention of “winning” the conflict with the Palestinians. It’s protracted state is far too valuable for its international export brand, “In Halper’s view, Israel is an essential partner in this global pacification effort because it has developed such a model and used it successfully against the Palestinians for over 50 years. Governments buy what Israel is selling because it is not only sophisticated and comprehensive, but it has been field tested and shown to work.”

Khalid Saifi was only ten years old when the 1967 war happened. Much of his memories come in bits and pieces, but some moments will stick with him for the rest of his life. Khalid’s father, a refugee who fled from al-Walaja village in 1948, refused to flee yet again, however Khalid’s mother was adamant she get her two youngest children, Khalid and his little sister, out of harm’s way. “My mother decided to stay longer at the crossroads with me and my little sister, so we stood there in the middle of the intersection and watched my two sisters and their husbands walking away in opposite directions for a long while,” Khalid remembers. “My mother stood there watching them. I remember that image so clearly — her standing there watching my sisters walk and walk off into the distance.”

At Shavuot celebration at Tzedek in Chicago, Marc Ellis says Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust thinker who believed that Israel was the path to bring Jews out of suffering and towards redemption. Unfortunately there was no room for Palestinian suffering in that worldview. So relates Liz Rose, who used to write adoring letters to Wiesel, and planted a tree in Israel in his name.

Several Israeli Defense Forces conscripts have recently reported that they have ordered to appear in a ceremony where they were told they need to undergo a “giur,” or a conversion to Judaism. The military is doing it out of a belief – defined by former general Elazar Stern, now a member of Knesset for the Yesh Atid party – that “a Jewish soldier is inherently a better soldier.” Yossi Gurvitz writes, “Such a concept would cause generals from Julius Caesar through Genghis Khan and Heinz Guderian to raise an eyebrow, but is becoming increasingly common in the rapidly Jewified IDF.”

Tony Judt’s disillusionment with Israel as an “anachronism” began when he volunteered during the Six Day War: “For the first time I met Israelis who were chauvinistic in every meaning of the word: anti-Arab in a sense bordering upon racism; quite undisturbed at the prospect of killing Arabs wherever possible, frequently regretting that they had not been allowed to fight their way through to Damascus and beat down the Arabs for good and all.”

Tom Suarez introduces Paldocs.net, a website of declassified Mandate-era documents held by the British government that served as primary sources for his book ‘State of Terror.’ After facing a coordinated effort to silence him following the publication of his book Suarez writes, “the site is intended to make the Zionist creation myth do battle with the historical record itself, not with me. Its sampling of documents demonstrate that I am merely the messenger — and more importantly, it is my hope that it will whet the appetite of others to pursue this neglected area that is absolutely vital to ending the misery in Israel-Palestine, and indeed in the greater Middle East.”

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of what now is called the Palestinian territories. This shameful milestone is being marked with a plethora of pundit commentary about Trump’s potential role, the continuing division among the Palestinian leadership and—in the background—the ever-expanding Israeli settlements, but almost no mention of Gaza. We Are Not Numbers is a project working to break the media blackout of Gaza and is currently raising funds to start Gaza’s first all-youth news agency.

A questionable New York Times article contends Israel possibly faced “doomsday” in the Six-Day War, and therefore planned to explode a nuclear device to deter Arab invaders. The truth is that Israel started the war and its leaders knew that it did not face destruction.

In a new collection called Kingdom of Olives and Ash that decries Israel’s 50 years of occupation, Michael Chabon documents the grinding humiliations and complete loss of freedom for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, who must get permits just to travel a few miles.