Gideon Levy says that Israeli idealists dreamed of the day when Israeli soldiers would tell their society about the occupation. Then Breaking the Silence came forward, and it was crushed, with the media’s help. Israelis live in denial. “No question marks.” Only outside pressure will force them to end the tyranny over half the population, the Palestinians.

Former dean of Columbia’s school of international affairs Lisa Anderson left her position in 2008 after 12 years on the job in part because of a campaign by pro-Israel rabble rouser Bari Weiss, then a Columbia student, to hold her accountable for inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the school, says a tweeter identifying himself as Anderson’s son. Weiss is now a free speech advocate at the New York Times.

Senator Ben Cardin has released an amended version of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act following highly-publicized public opposition from national and grassroots civil rights organizers. The new version of the bill, which is being supported by AIPAC, continues to criminalize the right to boycott, which is a form of free speech, and even in its revised version would legitimize the occupation. Nada Elia says the amended version is still unconstitutional, and must still be opposed with the same energy and determination activists had last year.

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo opines that those who seek to ban circumcision are basically anti-Semites and possibly ‘well-meaning’ but naive Jews. “The attempt to outlaw this rite may not just make Jewish life impossible, but would probably end all Jewish existence. In fact, it is a call to end the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.”

Two new billboards in Connecticut raise awareness about Ahed Tamimi, the 17-year-old Palestinian activist who now faces up to 10 years in Israeli prison, and the issue of child prisoners held by Israel. Mona Abdo an activist with the Palestine Advocacy Project says, “Like Nelson Mandela for South Africa during apartheid, Ahed Tamimi has become a symbol of Palestine’s 50 years of resistance to Israeli’s brutal occupation and apartheid system. The world called for the release of Nelson Mandela then, and now we must call for the release of Ahed Tamimi and the 350 other child prisoners held in Israel’s military prisons.”

Inspired by this week’s Academy Awards, Sam Bahour offers a review of Benjamin Netanyahu’s performance at AIPAC: “Israel should heed the advice of Palestinians (echoing another Oscar winner) and just Get Out! Still, it’s no laughing matter, no film fantasy. America is increasingly more diverse. Colonialism is outdated. And young Jews are less and less attached to Israel. So, unless the state Bibi heads mends its ways, it could soon be Gone with the Wind.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that he wants the West Bank to remain under Israeli’s military control and does not want the Palestinians living there to become citizens or “subjects” of Israel, revealing an apparent hope to annex the occupied Palestinian territory while leaving its residents stateless.

Israeli leftwing legislator Stav Shaffir’s appeals for the two-state solution at AIPAC sounded a lot like rightwing nationalist appeals. She said a Palestinian majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean is a “danger” to Israel, that Trump made all Israelis happy by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, and that young American progressives are mistakenly falling for the “Palestinian narrative.”

The inquisition against UK Labour Party critics of Israel has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It is about protecting Israel from censure to insure that it can continue its human rights violations. Spinning world Jewry into support for the Zionist project and equating Judaism with it is anti-Semitic in its effort to corrupt Judaism from within.

Manal Massalha writes from Gaza,”It’s disastrous to be a cancer patient in Gaza. It’s humiliating and undignified. It’s being sentenced to a slow death. Cancer treatment is not available in Gaza and access to treatment outside of Gaza is controlled by the Israelis, the Egyptians and the Palestinian Authority, none of whom seem to care, take our condition seriously or deal with us in urgency. For them we’re just numbers.”