“In Hebron, I saw what to me looked like two Americans coming towards us, but they were escorted by four or five Israeli soldiers with rifles. And I was hoping to have a conversation with them. But before I got too close– the rifle kind of came out, to push me away, when it was clearly evident that I’m a tourist. It was an unnecessary reaction. Because I wasn’t at all threatening. But these were American dignitaries, and I think it was part of the deal. To illustrate this is a dangerous place. ‘Okay, we’ll take you to Hebron, but you need to have a five-soldier escort.’ That’s the narrative that is played up. Our security is paramount no matter what happens.”

Palestinian support for “armed resistance and intifada” surged from 43 to 60 percent in the last two months, according to lead Palestinian pollster, reflecting overwhelming belief that Gaza militants defeated Israel in the May conflict by stopping expulsions in Jerusalem.

Liberal Zionist Rabbi Jill Jacobs says that American Jews who give up on the two-state solution have abdicated a “moral and spiritual imperative.” The journey to the two-state solution is like the journey from Egypt to the promised land in the bible, with lots of setbacks and no shortcuts. “Instead of sinking into despair let’s reconnect with the moral and spiritual imperative before us.”

The Israeli government defused a political problem today by reaching a deal to evacuate illegal settlers from the outpost called “Evyatar.” The government wants no sources of tension with the Biden administration as the two governments commence a lovefest. But Palestinians cannot be happy with the deal, which allows a yeshiva to remain in the illegal colony.

Israeli leftist David Grossman laments that Israel is not “home” for Jews. “It was meant to be the place in which you felt secure, in which your standing and your relations with your neighbors was never in doubt, in which there was no disagreement with anyone about whose home it was. It’s painful for me that still, after almost 73 years of sovereignty, and of war, we still haven’t arrived at a place in which we feel that real sense of comfort, that real sense of serenity and ease you’re meant to feel at home.”

Divisions over Israel will bring “disaster and disunity” for Jews in the U.S., Abraham Riesman writes in New York magazine in an article about his grandfather, an Israel lobbyist who helped cover up war crimes. Young Riesman says the massacres and imprisonment of Palestinians today makes Jews unsafe.

Religious zealots have established an “outpost” settlement in West Bank lately and Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians protesting the landgrab. The story is getting wide coverage in Palestine but not in the United States, though these lands are the supposed basis of a “Palestinian state.”

Randi Weingarten, labor leader and liberal Zionist, is not condemning some locals’ backing for BDS. This is yet another sign that support for Israel is cracking among U.S. progressives. Joe Biden and Naftali Bennett want to keep Israel a bipartisan cause, but political forces here are against them.

Several articles by Israel supporters bewail a “surge in anti-Zionism” among Jews because of the latest Gaza attack. They want to remind American Jews of their Jewish identity: that Being Jewish means supporting Israel. That’s an important argument to have.

“Palestinians, under occupation for decades, are fighting for their homes and demanding freedom,” Kelly Cobiella says on NBC, in a sign that Israel’s new government will not be able to reverse the disaffection for its practices in the U.S. “New government — same apartheid,” says the young Jewish group IfNotNow.