The Trump administration threatened to sanction the International Criminal Court and its staff yesterday on the eve of an impending announcement where The Hague-based tribunal will decide if it will investigate American soldiers for war crimes committed in Afghanistan dating back almost two decades. Speaking at a Federalist Society event in Washington DC, National Security Advisor John Bolton outlined a series of retaliations the U.S. would take if the investigation is opened. “If the court comes after us, Israel or our other allies, we will not sit quietly,” he cautioned. 

On Saturday, the Trump administration’s announced it would be cutting $25 million in aid to Palestinian hospitals in occupied East Jerusalem. “We ask the American government, why do the sick people in the hospital have to pay the price of political conflict?” the Secretary General of the East Jerusalem Hospital Network Walid Namur asked during a press conference on Monday. “We are humanitarian organizations and hospitals, and should be left out of political problems. We serve to treat sick people.”

If the Oslo peace process between Israel and Palestine had succeeded, Donald Trump would not have been elected, says the eminent Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar. He surely imagines a scenario in which neoconservatives did not push the Iraq war, which helped Trump defeat Clinton in 2016.

The Trump administration ordered a Palestinian representative office to close today, ending the near 25-year diplomatic presence of the PLO Mission in Washington DC. “This is yet another affirmation of the Trump Administration’s policy to collectively punish the Palestinian people, including by cutting financial support for humanitarian services including health and education,” PLO official Saeb Erekat said in a statement.

From the author of “P is for Palestine,” comes Goldbarg Bashi’s next children’s book “Counting Up the Olive Tree: A Palestine Number Book,” due out in January 2019. Young readers learn to count with a band of Palestinian children who ditch their soccer game to save “the last olive tree” from a “woeful woodcutter.”

On Thursday lawyer Dimitri Lascaris called on two Liberal MPs to denounce death threats made by B’nai B’rith supporters against a number of other Liberal MPs and the Prime Minister. But instead of condemning those who called for politicians to face the “guillotine” or “stoning”, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and Canadian politicians smeared the individual drawing attention to the death threats.

NY State Democratic Party mailer smearing Gov. Cuomo’s challenger Cynthia Nixon as an antisemite cites a real difference between the two, Nixon has backed boycott of a West Bank settlement, while Cuomo has been outspoken against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, BDS campaign.

On Friday, Israeli soldiers killed 17-year-old Bilal Mustafa Khaffaja and injured at least 210 others, during the Great Return March protests in several parts of the besieged Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Itay Tiran, a top Israeli actor who is leaving for Germany, gives an interview to Haaretz where he endorses BDS and says that Zionism equals racism. He sounds free as a bird, and the interview is liberating for others.

Andrew Gillum, the progressive star who is running to be Florida governor, supports McCarthyite legislation to restrict BDS. Ayanna Pressley, a MA progressive running for congress, also disappoints. But there’s good news too: the New York Times and NPR have both run stories with positive references to the movement for equal rights.