As tensions rise in Jerusalem right-wing Israelis are demanding that police increase the already brutal level of state violence inflicted exclusively against Palestinians. Numerous Israelis Dan Cohen has spoken to demanded police implement shoot-to-kill tactics in East Jerusalem on any Palestinian who throws a rock — which would effectively expand the tactics used against Palestinians living on the other side of Israel’s separation wall in the occupied West Bank. But, contrary to popular sentiment, police repression against Palestinians in East Jerusalem has been anything but soft. As police operate with total impunity, a climate of fear exists that has led some Palestinians to avoid publicizing information about other beatings due to fear of police reprisals like the punishment the Abu Khdeir family received this summer.

On Wednesday evening, Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi, 21, drove his vehicle at high speed into a crowd of Israelis on a light rail platform at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, wounding eight people. 3-month-old Israeli-American Chaya Zissel Braun died hours later, and Karen Yemima Muscara, an Ecuadorian woman in her twenties, died from her injuries last night. As the news of a terrorist attack spread, the Israeli public demanded the Netanyahu government punish East Jerusalem Palestinians. The day after the incident, Netanyahu convened with Aharonovich, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Shin Bet Head Yoram Cohen, and police officials ordering 1,000 more police and troops from the border police, instructing them to “exercise Israeli sovereignty” over the occupied territory. This episode illustrates how anti-Arab racism in Israeli society — what Israeli President Reuben Rivlin recently called “sick” — makes it susceptible to manipulation of facts in order to advance the far right’s agenda.

The finale of Israel’s mass destruction of the Gaza Strip during “Operation Protective Edge” was the flattening of several landmark towers that provided essential social and economic functions and which stood as symbols of the besieged coastal strip’s beleaguered professional class. While the war began with the flattening of the areas the Israeli military considers Gaza’s “hard shell” — border areas like Shujaiya and Khuza’a — it ended with a brazen assault on its soft core. The targeting of the professional class, a key pillar of Palestinian society generally considered unsympathetic to the political goals of Hamas, was a new front of economic and social warfare on Gaza.

Dan Cohen talks with Usama Abu Safer from Gaza’s Deir al Balah Rehabilitation Center. They met during the final days of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 51-day assault that killed 2,168 Palestinians and injured nearly 11,000. Frequent Israeli violence has raised the rate of disability among more than 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza to an astonishing 7.5%. According to the Deir al Balah Rehabilitation Center, 3,000 of the injured in Operation Protective Edge now have permanent physical disabilities, most of which are paraplegia and amputations. Many more suffered permanent hearing loss resulting from explosions.

Dan Cohen reports from the Jerusalem courthouse where the Abu Khdeir family is pushing for accountability in the brutal death of Mohammad Abu Khdeir, 16, who was kidnapped and burned alive by Israeli settlers in July.

Since the Netanyahu government’s decision to halt negotiations following last week’s ceasefires, Israel has resumed…

Last night, Israel dropped several one-ton bombs on a house in Rafah, killing three top…

As Israel’s bombing campaign resumed on Tuesday, I met one of the founders of Camp…

Hours before the latest ceasefire was set to expire last night, Israel resumed attacks on…

In the summer of 1998, I became a Bar Mitzvah at the Western Wall in…