The official Jewish community has stated that all Jews are welcome, but not if you support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. A group of 15 synagogues nationally is resisting this policy by opening their doors to all regardless of their political beliefs for the High Holydays, in September. Rabbi Michael Davis of one of those synagogues, Makom Shalom in Chicago, explains.

When Rashida Tlaib’s J Street endorsement was publicized, the soon-to-be Congresswoman did not seek to fudge her stance for fear of alienating the powerful Zionist lobby. She made clear she supports BDS, the Palestinian right of return and the one state solution, and promptly lost the endorsement. Nada Elia celebrates the move and writes, “this outspokenness, this insistence on considering genuine solutions, rather than continuing the charade of politics as usual, while seeming concerned, that is endearing today’s rookie politicians to an otherwise utterly disillusioned American people.”

After history teachers Joel Doerfler and Shawn Redden condemned the Gaza slaughter this spring, they were soon both gone from the Riverdale Country School. A HuffPo investigation documents that school officials deferred to a small group of Zionist donors, who held a meeting with the pro-Israel group the American Jewish Committee and smeared the teachers as anti-Semitic.

Last week an unprecedented intervention occurred into the debate in the UK over the definition of antisemitism. Over 80 community, professional and rights-based organisations representing black, minority ethnic and diaspora peoples decried what they say is the framing of antisemitism in a way to ‘silence’ Palestinians, and other migrant groups, from speaking about their history.

In an interview by Robert Cohen on his latest book, “Finding Our Voice,” Marc H. Ellis explains there is only one question for Jews today, after the Holocaust, the creation of Israel and the occupation of Palestine — What side are you on?

Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement, says that even after being bought by PepsiCo, Sodastream should still be boycotted: “SodaStream is still subject to boycott by the global, Palestinian-led BDS movement for Palestinian rights. Its new factory is actively complicit in Israel’s policy of displacing the indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Naqab (Negev). SodaStream’s mistreatment of and discrimination against Palestinian workers is not forgotten either.”

In a piece in the New York Review of Books on the Labour anti-semitism controversy, Matt Seaton lumps anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish bigotry. The unspoken assumption of the article is that Palestinians have no right to be anti-Zionist and that anti-Zionism is a form of vitriolic zealotry and can never be a principled human rights position.

Palestinian flags will have to be part of the reform the Israeli state will have to go through, Yossi Gurvitz writes. And Tchernichovsky’s poem, Sachki, Sachki could be the national anthem. “A generation will arise,‎ They’ll remove their iron shackles,‎ And see daylight with their eyes.‎”

John Gunther Dean, now 92, and a former American ambassador to five countries, has long maintained that Israel was behind his attempted assassination outside Beirut in 1980, which was attributed to a rightwing Lebanese group. A new book by an Israeli investigative journalist says that group was set up by Israeli security officials to sow chaos in Lebanon.

Palestinians in Gaza are celebrating Eid al-Adha, a four day festival for Muslims observed across the world that coincides with the seasonal pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, known as the Hajj. Palestinians often seek travel outside of Gaza during the Eid holiday, however, this year Israel partially sealed the Erez Crossing on Sunday limiting travel to humanitarian cases.