Last year, we ran a satirical post titled “Birthright ends trips to Israel — ‘American Jews are better off imagining Israel than seeing it.’” Who could have known how right we were! Last month, Brand Israel Group released a study comparing a 2016 survey they did of Americans to one in 2010 and it shows the more Americans learn about Israel, the less they support it. This explains why Israel’s supporters fear the truth: people who learn about Israel’s actions understandably come to reject them. And that’s the core of Mondoweiss’s mission and our daily work. Please contribute today so that we can keep them shaking in their shoes.

The Tour de France is exploiting horrific crashes in this year’s race for publicity and profits, and when top rider Dan Martin called the Tour for its conduct, NBC commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen say the riders are to blame for taking risks. This is self-serving BS and sports fans need to call NBC on it.

Tune in Saturday, July 15 when the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) will be hosting a live web conversation with Roger Waters on his support for the cultural boycott of Israel and Palestinians’ rights.

The newly-elected Labor leader in Israel, businessman Avi Gabbay, has inspired comparison to France’s Macron as a change-agent. His refusal to work politically with Arab parties or to commit to withdrawal from settlements shows that he is just the latest variation of Labor support for the Zionist status quo.

An Israeli military court on Monday extended the detention of Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar for at least another 48 hours, threatening the politician with administrative detention, a policy that allows Palestinian prisoners to be held without charge or trial for indefinitely renewable six-month periods, according to documentation from the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

Lydia Noon reports from the Palestine Expo in London. Even though Britain’s Israel lobby tried to ban the event it still attracted some 16,000 people over two days.

In the New York Times, Nikil Saval treats the hostility leftwingers feel towards centrist liberals as unfair. He mentions some past issues, like Vietnam, but he doesn’t dare mention Iraq or Libya or Israel, and tie them together into the critique that leftwingers justifiably have today of liberal interventionism and liberal hypocrisy on war and peace issues.

Israeli leaders suggest that the UNESCO resolution to include Palestinian sites as world heritage sites is ‘anti-Semitic’ and that it denies Jewish connection. But UNESCO says the cave of the Patriarchs has Jewish significance, just that it’s in Palestine! That’s the problem.

Ma’an News Agency reports the Palestinian Authority has interfered in Hamas and Egypt’s fuel deliveries by blocking payments, “The ongoing electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip deepened on Saturday after fuel purchased from Egypt was reduced by between 33 and 50 percent, with Gaza’s power authority claiming the Palestinian Authority (PA) froze all bank transfers to Egypt that were paying for fuel used to operate the besieged coastal enclave’s sole power plant. Additionally, Egyptian power lines, which typically provide up to 28 megawatts of electricity to Gaza’s southern districts, were also damaged and have thus ceased to provide any power, according to a statement from the Gaza Electricity Distribution Corporation. The developments came amid reports that the Ramallah-based PA has been moving to block the growing alliance between Gaza’s de facto leaders Hamas and Egypt, particularly since fuel deliveries from Egypt that arrived in late June served to avert a full humanitarian collapse in Gaza, after Israel drastically reduced its fuel supplies at the request of the PA. “

Last week, the Mennonites passed a historic BDS resolution regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The thrust of the resolution focuses on adopting a “third way” in Israel-Palestine, meaning a dual solidarity with Palestinians and Jews. Marc Ellis writes, “The question must be faced: Do these BDS resolutions, as important as they are symbolically, actually, because of their limitations, enable the further conquest of Palestine? The interfaith ecumenical dialogue/deal has always been contextual. As times have changed the details of the dialogue/deal have changed as well. The dual solidarity with Jews and Palestinians seems to be the devil in the details. While moving forward, Christians want it both ways.”