Helena Cobban debunks what she calls Israel’s “But Khamas!” ploy, the maneuver Israelis and their propagandists use to try to shut down any discussion of the actual plight of Gaza’s two million people and Israel’s own responsibility for causing it.

Memo to Tom Friedman: Israel is not your “ancestral homeland,” that is a Zionist myth. There was never an exile from Judea. Jews were all over the Roman Empire as converts; and your ancestors were surely among them. And mythical Jewish history doesn’t convey rights to someone born in Minnesota.

Roman Levin, 19, is the latest Israeli soldier to be imprisoned for refusing to continue serving in the military after on moral objections to the occupation: “I heard soldiers talk about how they raid villages at night to detain suspects. It grieves me to see how the Jews, in the past one of the most oppressed peoples, now occupy another people.”

In a new report issued Monday by the UN Human Rights Council, officials condemned a number of Israel’s ongoing policies in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Israel’s exploitation of Palestinian natural resources and its impacts on the environment and the catastrophic effects the 12-year siege has had on the Gaza Strip. The report reads, “For the almost five million Palestinians living under occupation, the degradation and alienation of their water supply, the exploitation of their natural resources and the defacing of their environment is symptomatic of the lack of any meaningful control they have over their daily lives as Israel, the occupying power, exercises its military administrative powers in a sovereign-like fashion, with vastly discriminatory consequences.”

A new Bernie Sanders ad highlights his criticism of Israel. Just as Sanders spoke out against South African apartheid ahead of others, says activist Shaun King, “today he speaks out against apartheid-like conditions in Palestine even though it’s not popular.” The progressive base wants that message.

Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked launched a bizarre parody video portraying ‘fascism’ as a kind of perfume, where she ridicules leftist claims against her attempts to control activism and the judiciary as fascist. But her critics make a strong case.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American Muslims for Palestine are calling on US congressional representatives to take action against Israel for the March 12th assault of two American sisters at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Pitzer’s College Council took a historic and overwhelming vote to suspend a study-abroad program in Israel following years of organizing by progressive faculty and students. President Melvin Oliver’s swift veto of the resolution shows the discomfort that the mainstream left is feeling about Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and also the growing moral importance of the issue on the left.

A New York Times travel piece about Jaffa describing it as an “ancient neighborhood” of Tel Aviv now revived by Israeli chefs so erased Palestinian history that the paper had to issue a correction about its lapses. But the Debra Kamin article still says there are “accusations” that the city’s Palestinian history is being erased, an implicit denial of the Nakba.

The Israeli High Court ruled yesterday that the leader of the Jewish Power Party, Michael Ben Ari, is barred from running in the upcoming Israeli elections due his racism. But Jonathan Ofir asks what about the racism of the whole party he is part of, that is still permitted to run? “One less racist potential lawmaker in the Israeli parliament, such as Ben Ari, is no doubt a welcome absence,” Ofir writes, “But this does not root out Israeli Zionist racism – that one is a completely mainstream and permanent feature.”