On December 14, the FCC will vote on a proposal to repeal government regulations known as “net neutrality” which ensure that internet service providers treat all data equally. As this critical issue unfolds in the U.S., it is worth looking at the case of internet freedom for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank where the severe technological gap is just another example of how Israel dominates and restricts almost all aspects of Palestinian life.

The detention of a 12-year-old boy in occupied Hebron last week while protesting the arrest of his uncle when he was trying to get medication, is an example of widespread practice of child detention by Israeli forces that has gained international attention, including 17 US congresspeople saying American funds should be cut off when Israel uses them against Palestinian children.

In 2017, despite daily horrors, one thing has visibly improved: the movement for justice in Palestine has grown enormously. Mondoweiss has published the work of more than 1,000 writers, artists, scholars and activists: A Thousand Voices for Truth! If the reports you read in Mondoweiss speak to you—if you share them to advance the cause of human rights in Palestine—we ask that you give today to keep Mondoweiss going strong.

Retired Israeli general Amiram Levin is regarded as a liberal Zionist and is a strong supporter of Labor leader Avi Gabbay. In an interview, he says “Palestinians deserved the occupation” and Israel should give Palestinian leadership “a carrot in the form of a state, and if it doesn’t want it, we’ll tear it apart…. if they violate agreements, the next time we’ll fight here they will not remain, we will toss them across the Jordan…. We were way too nice in ‘67.”

When Bret Stephens, the new super-Zionist columnist at the New York Times, states that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the “ancestral Jewish homeland,” who can take him seriously? Joseph Levine states, “My roots can be traced back to Eastern Europe, and earlier than that is all speculation and conjecture, nothing that can compete with the Palestinians’ actual residence on the land for the past hundreds of years.”

Ariel Gold writes: American Jews generally take great pride in the support we have shown for civil rights and free speech. As such, we should be appalled at the nomination of Kenneth Marcus for Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education. His appointment will greatly damage free speech rights on campuses.

Propaganda works with educated liberals. The New York Times has just enough coverage of the war crimes in Yemen, and US complicity in them, so it can say it covered the issue, but not enough to signal to readers that the issue matters. Meanwhile, a torrent of stories has convinced readers that Russiagate is the great issue of our time. For the educated liberal it is convenient to believe that whatever is really wrong can be identified with the Republican Party, so Russiagate is irresistible.

New York Times columnist David Brooks has never come clean for the time that his neoconservatism trumped any conservative notion of government action and he supported the Iraq war. Once again he offered an empty apology, “We went into Iraq because we thought it would help for democracy around the world, and we overstepped in that case.”

The largest Jewish denomination in the US, Reform Jewry, showcased a leader of the dispossession of Palestinian lands at its biennial last week: the head of the Jewish National Fund. So the Union for Reform Jewry has embraced the violence inherent in Zionism. Shouldn’t Jews debate this?

Democrats usually jump at opportunities to counter Trump’s reckless and incendiary policies. That is, when the policies don’t have to do with the state of Israel.