UNRWA officials are hitting back after a US proposal to remove the agency’s mandate by calling on countries hosting Palestinian refugees to take over food aid services. The US blames the humanitarian effort for prolonging the refugee issue. While UNRWA says political failures have sustained the issue.

NYU president James Hamilton roundly condemned graduation speaker Steven William Thrasher for endorsing BDS against “apartheid” Israel in a speech at commencement Wednesday. Hamilton issued a statement saying remarks were one-sided and made some feel “unwelcome.” Astounding obeisance to Israel supporters! And not a word about Thrasher calling Trump a “fascist.”

The German government’s campaign against BDS has taken its next step – an outright labelling of BDS as anti-Semitic, and association of it with Nazi boycotts of Jews. Palestinian civil society has now responded to the assault.

The deal of the century in the 1900s was the Balfour Declaration, which recognized Zionist colonization of Palestine, and Trump’s deal of the 21st century only continues that process, by giving Israel the right to annex portions of the West Bank and confine Palestinians to Bantustans.

The students in Birzeit University’s Israel Studies program are “trying to produce Palestinian knowledge of Israeli society” through critical engagement with Israeli culture, politics and society. In the process, they are fundamentally remaking the dominant paradigm of Israel Studies as it has been configured in the United States and increasingly in Great Britain, with its proud “advocacy” mandate on behalf of the Israeli state. Birzeit’s program turns this paradigm inside out, providing students with a radical alternative.

The Palestinian Authority is in crisis, and high rates of poverty and unemployment, few prospects of free and democratic presidential elections, and the unveiling of the widely unpopular American “deal of the century” around the corner, will only exacerbate the already dire situation. “The collapse of the PA is definitely something we could see happening, especially if this financial and political situation worsens,” Palestine Policy Fellow at Al-Shabaka, Dr. Yara Hawari, told Mondoweiss.

Yossi Gurvitz reflects on his service in the Israeli army 30 years ago. “A poisonous calculus was working. You’re here. You’re a leftist. You’re here to prevent abuse. But if you expose yourself as a leftist too soon, they’ll hide the abuse from you and you won’t be able to prevent it. So you’d better keep your protest for the really tough cases, you know, like preventing a murder. There’s no point in reporting the routine beating up of cuffed and blindfolded prisoners.”

A report by the Council on Islamic-American Relations revealed a money trail from over 1,000 largely mainstream charities to 39 anti-Muslim groups that it calls the “Islamophobia Network.” In New York City, activists protested one of the charities, the Jewish Communal Fund.

Did Cristiano Ronaldo really donate €1.5 million to Palestinians for Ramadan? The short answer: no. The long answer, however, is more interesting. From Albanian-language outlets to Russian government owned media, how the hoax was developed, how it spread, and how it eventually became uncritically accepted as “fact.”

Peter Beinart takes another brave step inside the Zionist community by endorsing conditions on US aid supporting Israeli atrocities, but he continues to count on US Jewish community to change US policy when the track record is miserable. Progressives have more diverse coalitions, and respect the fact that BDS originates from members of the oppressed group.