“The settlers came in the middle of the night, no one knew. By morning they had paved a road up to the mountain, set up their tents, and had soldiers protecting them,” Zafer Attayah, a resident of Kfar Ni’ma told Mondoweiss. Ever since the settlers showed up two months ago, the Palestinians from Risan’s three surrounding villages have been staging weekly Friday protests on the mountain in attempts to stop the confiscation. “We have to maintain our presence in the area,” Attayah said. “They think they can just come and take the land, but we will not make it easy for them.”

“I fell asleep early Monday night and about 20 minutes into my sleep everything turned into massive chaos mixed with my brother-in-law loudly screaming,” Suhair said who shares a flat with her six children, “I rushed to my children’s bedrooms to check if they were alive.”

Palestinians are still demonstrating along the Gaza-Israel border on Fridays, but in fewer numbers and with less fury than seen in recent months as Egyptian mediators work to lessen confrontations along the fence. Ahmad Kabariti asks Palestinians in Gaza if they believe the protest should be suspended in exchange for an easing of the blockade.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent statement, “Empires have conquered and replaced entire populations and no one is talking about it,” is yet another fascistic justification for ethnic cleansing from Israeli leaders. It goes back a long ways, and it has support from the worst regimes in the world.

David Kattenburg gives an update on his effort to prevent wine from Israeli West Bank settlements labeled “Product of Israel” from being sold on Canadian store shelves.

A Netanyahu official once again shows contempt for American Jews in the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. Israeli consul general Dani Dayan calls out British leader Jeremy Corbyn as an “anti-Semite” because he supports Palestinian rights and Iran as a “genocidal regime.” Dayan says not a word about Trump, though 3/4 of US Jews hold Trump responsible for Pittsburgh.

Jewish spaces in New York host one discussion after another this week featuring Jews arguing about the Jewish and Israeli future, and all these panels are segregated; because the Jewish leadership is terrified of actually hearing Palestinians speaking on their own terms.

“At least we can always go to Israel if there’s more anti-Semitism,” Liz Rose’s mother used to say, but as an anti-Zionist wrestling with the Pittsburgh massacre, she does not feel that way herself and is disturbed by the fact that she represents to other Jews what she is herself afraid of, more anti-Semitism.

In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, leading Orthodox Jewish rabbis would not recognize that the Conservative synagogue was indeed a synagogue. This is because they fear legitimizing other forms of Judaism that may endanger their political-Zionist-state monopoly in Israel. Their intolerance should be a wake up call to liberal Zionists, to recognize the dangers of mixing religion and state, a core principle for Israel.

Trump once called Marco Rubio Sheldon Adelson’s “perfect little puppet.” Well who’s perfect now? Trump is to award medal of freedom to a bunch of famous Americans including late Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth and Antonin Scalia — and to Dr. Miriam Adelson, advocate for Israel who has given Trump millions along with her husband Sheldon.