Giving Israel $1 billion in fungible money for a weapon system will only encourage further war crimes. The progressive legislators who wanted to remove those billion dollars from the spending bill were doing the right thing.

Stephen R. Shalom dismantles New Jersey Senate bill S1923 which prohibits the investment of state pension and annuity funds in companies that boycott Israel or Israeli businesses, “This bill violates our First Amendment rights. It threatens to exacerbate Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment. And it aligns itself against the cause of human rights in Israel-Palestine.”

New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren writes about a new Israeli film, Censored Voices, directed by Mor Loushy. The film deals with Israeli war crimes committed during the 1967 war which Rudoren describes as one in which Israel “started out fighting … for its very survival,” and Loushy is quoted as saying that “This is the story of men who went out to war feeling like they had to defend their life, and they were right, of course.” But they were not right, and nor are Rudoren or Loushy.

On Tuesday August 26, 2014, more than 50 demonstrators protested outside the Newark, New Jersey, offices of U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker demanding that the legislators stop providing a blank check for Israel’s crimes. Thirteen demonstrators were arrested inside the building as they read out the names of some of the nearly 500 Palestinian children killed in Gaza.