The young Jews of IfNotNow are making Israel’s occupation an issue in the Democratic race, and the group Democratic Majority for Israel is fighting back, calling IfNotNow anti-Israel and advising candidates to avoid answering IfNotNow’s questions. IfNotNow says the Democratic Majority group is a front for AIPAC, the Israel lobby, which has long had a home in the Democratic Party.

House Democrats, including 9 of the 11 ViceChairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are backing an anti-BDS bill that they think is constitutional but it’s destined to backfire on them.

A generous donor has set a challenge for the Mondoweiss community. He will contribute $20,000 if we raise $60,000 by August 1 to press forward in sharing the truth about Palestine. We can only get there with your help.

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is appealing to her supporters to sign a petition in support of her freedom of expression after she received a letter from the Israeli Supreme Court that the public prosecution was seeking to reopen the case against her. Despite already serving her time in prison, and a court partially acquitting her of the charges against her, Tatour fears that Israeli authorities are attempting again to silence her voice.

Liberals want leftwing votes, but they dismiss leftwing goals. Michelle Goldberg says Democrats must “court” nihilistic leftists, but what does courtship mean? Supporting a warmonger, Hillary Clinton, because she’s a foreign policy genius. And the same on health care and the climate crisis: we are supposed to settle for policies that are at best inadequate and at worst catastrophic. Who are the nihilists here?

Benjamin Netanyahu has the inside track to remain prime minister of Israel because he supports the “Jewish identity” of the state, says political scientist Tamar Hermann. The left is a marginal factor in the Israeli election in September, and Israeli Jews overwhelmingly don’t want Palestinians in any governing coalition. The only thing Israeli Jews and Palestinians agree on is that the Trump peace plan won’t work.

Israeli police forced out the Siyam family from their home in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem last week, the final chapter in their 25-year legal battle against a powerful settler organisation. The family’s defeat represented much more than just another eviction. It was intended to land a crushing blow against the hopes of some 20,000 Palestinians living in the shadow of the Old City walls and Al Aqsa mosque.

Richard Falk praises Noura Erakat’s new book ‘Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine’: “What Erakat seeks and achieves is less about the emancipatory interpretation of legal norms and more about allowing us to grasp the manipulative nexus that underlies international legal discourse, and shapes political patterns of control and resistance.”

Hanna and Marion Kawas write that the recent visit of a Jewish National Fund delegation to Havana besmirches the long history of joint struggle and solidarity between the Cuban and Palestinian peoples.

Following an international media controversy and intense pressure from Palestinian rights groups, the northern Israeli city of Afula will end its “residents only” ban on its parks, which was used to prevent the entry of Palestinian residents of surrounding areas.