On October 22, 2017, a party was thrown to celebrate the 120th Anniversary of the founding of the Jewish Worker’s Bund of Russia, Poland and Lithuania, sponsored by YIVO Institute in NY. The Bund in the interwar 1920-39 period provided a model of secular Jewish identity without separatism and in Poland demonstrated effective Jewish participation in a multiethnic state. The Bundists elevated the principle of Doikayt, “hereness,” working in the society in which one lives, rather than toward the religious other world, or toward a Jewish state.

At a British Labour Party gathering, Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest applause came when he said the oppression of Palestinians must end. No wonder he snubbed an invitation from the Jewish Leadership Council to commemorate the Balfour Declaration at 100. And no wonder a UK diplomat says Balfour’s promise to non-Jewish communities has gone unfulfilled. Balfour anniversary is dividing British opinion on Israel.

Anyone in America who wants hard truths about Israel/Palestine today must read Haaretz instead of the U.S. press. The New York Times acknowledged the Israeli newspaper’s supremacy with the ultimate compliment: it ran a hatchet job on the journal.

A conference on the academic boycott of Israel in Ireland hosts Steven Salaita as a keynote. Co-organizer Conor McCarthy writes, “The first keynote, Steven Salaita (independent scholar) gave a powerful presentation on “Freedom to boycott: BDS and the modern university.” Salaita, who lost a promised tenure track position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) withdrawn, allegedly because of his forceful and emotional tweets during the 2014 Gaza War, has become a cause célèbre and an icon in the struggle to protect academic freedom, and his keynote revealed the institutional and the human ramifications of his dissent.  Despite winning his legal case against UIUC, precipitating the resignation of the university’s provost and revealing a concerted campaign to deny him a position that went well beyond his Twitter activity, Salaita has been unable to secure ongoing academic employment, in spite of a productive and exemplary level of scholarly activity, and must now resign himself to working and living as a freelance writer and lecturer. Referring to his own experience, Salaita began by reflecting on why there is a general assumption in favor of Israel’s colonial project, while arguments in favor of Palestinians’ rights often run into “benevolent contempt” and need to be (endlessly) proven as valid.”

Trump gave red meat to the neocons in his Iran speech, using the word “regime” 29 times in an evident threat to change the regime. He needs their support politically, and Netanyahu and the Israel lobby are very happy with the result.

Belgium, France, Spain, Sweden, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, and Denmark are demanding that Israel pay over €30,000 ($35,400) in compensation for destroyed solar panels and classrooms the countries had installed in Bedouin communities in the West Bank.

The Telegraph’s recent travel article about Israel didn’t mention Palestinian Arabs once. They make up two thirds of the population of Western Galilee, the region extolled in the article as the “Tuscany of the Middle East.” Culture in Israel is Ashkenazi Jewish. Anything else, even if occasionally present, is seen and interpreted from that perspective.

Did the law in Britain and the United States allow apartheid South Africa to advertise job opportunities to white Britons and Americans that were not also available to those countries’ black citizens? This is exactly what is happening right now in the US and Europe in a different context: Israel.

In the aftermath of one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the Texas coast in years, one city is requiring all applicants for relief money to provide in writing a guarantee they do not and will not support the boycott of Israel.