The late Amos Oz’s lecture from last year, translated and analyzed by Jonathan Ofir, is a summary of his political credo: Palestinians suffer from the “illness” of “Recontritis,” the desire to return to a land that has disappeared. And Zionists must use violence to maintain their own place on that land.

The Israeli parliamentary system is designed to prevent any challenge to Zionism. Thus, the upcoming elections are not going to bring any change that is meaningful for Palestinians under Israel’s control. Though Israeli opposition figure Tzipi Livni wants us to call election day “revolution” day.

Jonathan Ofir is a tourist in Portugal, contemplating how colonialism can become the past– and how it’s still a present-day reality in Israel.

Many Jews have kept their silence about Israel, knowing that a critique of Israeli policies (not to mention Zionism) can get you labeled as a “self-hater” and have detrimental consequences to reputation and career. I know such people, and I don’t blame them. But it appears that this climate is beginning to change.

It has been very hard to understands what Airbnb’s actual policy concerning illegal Israeli settlement listings is. A statement in Hebrew was issued saying it halted the ban policy, and was later contradicted by another saying it had not changed, and that this is all “incredibly complex and emotional.”

Last week, the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung reported that Israel asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to stop funding the Jewish Museum in Berlin, among other institutions. The reason behind the demand: the museum’s exhibition on Jerusalem “presents a Muslim-Palestinian perspective of the city.”

The liberal-Zionist organization Commanders for Israel’s Security has a new campaign calling on Israel to “divorce” the Palestinians, as a response to growing calls from the right to annex parts of the West Bank. Jonathan Ofir writes that the struggles between right and left Zionism have always historically been not about a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but about the speed at which Israeli expansionism needs to happen. While the Commanders for Israel’s Security are warning about the dire consequences of annexation, Israel is engaged in ongoing slow-motion ethnic cleansing that the group approves of, and is accomplishing similar goals.

The Hanukkah story is also a religious-political one from its beginnings – and it still is. It poses the question of how we view religious fundamentalism and separation of church and state. We need no more proof than Sheldon Adelson’s aptly named Campus Maccabees crusading against the BDS movement by way of free trips to Israel.

CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill was fired last week after he advocated Palestinian rights “from the river to the sea”. Of course that has been Israeli policy from the days of Ben-Gurion, in defiance of the indigenous population, and no one advocating Israeli sovereignty in those boundaries ever loses their job, Jonathan Ofir explains.

Airbnb’s decision to pull listings in Israeli settlements has shed light on another service that offers listing in illegal colonies in the West Bank – Booking.com, which does not seem inclined to act similarly. It seeks to avoid a storm, which is surely coming anyway.