A week before Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib were barred from entering Israel and Palestine by Benjamin Netanyahu, a group of congressional staffers attended a tour of the area carried out by a former Israeli intelligence official. According to the itinerary filed with the House Ethics Committee, the staffers traveled to various sites on a 7-day excursion that featured lectures from an Israel Defense Forces base commander, a Palestinian billionaire who has worked alongside occupation forces, and an Israeli settler who advocates for the annexation of the West Bank.

The Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC exhibits Palestinians from refugee camps, Israel, Gaza, the U.S. and Canada. “Having the museum open was not something easy to be done, especially with financial challenges and starting a space in DC, collecting items to exhibit. It takes courage to do that,” says museum curator Nada Odeh.

A 17-year old Palestinian from Lebanon who was set to begin classes at Harvard University was denied entry into the United States on August 23. Ismail B. Ajjawi says he was questioned about the political posts of his friends before he was deported.

The Israeli election is three weeks away, and the conventional wisdom is that Netanyahu is likely facing his political sell-by date in Israel. One American liberal Zionist group is pushing Netanyahu’s chief rival, the politically clueless Benny Gantz, to bring the hammer down now to crush Netanyahu’s campaign.

Jewish Voice for Peace Health Advisory Council’s monthly round-up of health in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. This month JVP shares articles on injured children in Gaza, a nurses strike in Israel, Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike who are in solitary confinement and more.

Israeli warplanes strike a base belonging to the Palestinian group the PFLP-General Command inside of Lebanon near the border with Syria early Monday morning, according to Lebanese state media. The attack comes days after an Israeli drone crashed near Beirut.

“Militant Palestinians have lobbed rockets and gunfire at Israel, especially targeting the soldiers at the border,” PBS host John Yang said last week. This is a lie. The report he introduced, by Jane Ferguson, highlighted gunfire from Israel on Palestinian protesters, and quoted human rights officials calling that a war crime.

If we do not distinguish between valid critiques of the policies of the Israeli state and anti-Semitism, we are allowing rightwing forces to weaponize anti-Semitism, suppressing freedom of speech and open debate, and making the term anti-Semitism meaningless at a time when it is critical to identify and oppose it.

In pushing the case in Canada to have settlement wines labeled as such rather than products of Israel, David Kattenburg was identified as a wine lover, educator, publisher, and child of Holocaust survivors. The last designation — CHS — has caused howls of outrage, but Kattenburg’s parents’ experience helped him to set his moral compass.

A bill that would have required all California high school students to take an ethnic studies course will be delayed for at least a year after pro-Israel groups complained that the curriculum failed to address anti-semitism and singled “Israel out for condemnation.” Some of the backlash was initiated by an organization that is funded by the Israeli government.