Advocates for the rights of Palestinians will join Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in Philadelphia this July for the Democratic National convention, part of his five selections for the fifteen member Executive Committee drafting the Democrats’ 2016 platform. Three of the five selected have expressed skepticism about Israel. According to The Washington Post, they are James Zogby, the head of the Arab American Institute; Cornel West, a social justice activist and author critical of Israel, and Minn. Rep. Keith Ellison, one of only two Muslims in congress. “Our lives depend on the outcome of this election. The stakes are much higher for us,” said Linda Sarsour, co-founder of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, a Palestinian-American born in Brooklyn who has been a vocal surrogate for Sanders during his campaign.

Unfair blame has come down on the heads of American soldiers and allied Afghan forces over an attack on a civilian hospital in Kunduz last year, while the general in charge of the mission, Major General Sean P. Swindell, faced no consequences, according to an Army officer who spoke exclusively to Mondoweiss, “I wish the general in charge was prosecuted for this, but that’s my personal opinion. He should be taking ultimate responsibility for it, since he set up the conditions that something like this would happen.”

The Freedom of Religion Act introduced Wednesday in the House of Representatives tries to stop Donald Trump’s “temporary’” ban on Muslims entering the country. The act expands the age-old prohibition on religious tests on public office, a previously uncontroversial part of the Constitution, to prohibit religious tests that would bar entry into the country based on a person’s faith. “It is unthinkable that in the 21st century a religion bar would be considered. Virtually every American believes there can be no religious test or exclusion of an immigrant to our country. That was the very first principle and it’s time we put that very first principle into law.” said D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, one of the co-sponsors of the bill.

What seems to unite all Trump supporters, terrifyingly enough, is their shared fear of Muslim infiltration into American life. Trump has proposed measures that include the tracking and surveillance of American Muslims, and has received standing ovations for it. In the coming weeks Trump will attempt to suture together his party with Islamophobia and Wilson Dizard says we should expect Trump to push anti-Muslim rhetoric very hard, knowing that it is central to uniting disparate communities in his campaign.

Wilson Dizard reports from Washington DC where Donald Trump gave a speech this week outlining his foreign policy: “The nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony,” Trump said. That was kind of the scariest thing he said, and also the most indicative of his white, christian-ness trumping the constitution, a document designed in a secular spirit to defuse the deep religious rivalries between Europeans in the New World. It specifically prohibits religious tests, but one of Trump’s main platforms is the banning of Muslims from entering the country. Trump embraces Western values, but all the worst ones. The ones that put Westerners first and everyone else second.”

In Tuesday’s Maryland primary, out-going U.S. Representative Donna Edwards lost her insurgent bid against establishment Democrat Christopher Van Hollen for the party’s nomination for senate. Edwards has been one of the few lawmakers to take a stand for Palestinian rights, and would have been only the second African-American woman to serve in the senate. In her concession speech Tuesday night Edwards slammed economic inequality, racial inequality and pay disparities for women. “It is time for us to have our seat the table as women and workers, as black and brown people, as communities of color. We are no longer content to have you make the decisions for us,” she said, after announcing it was time for Democrats to ask where marginalized communities fit in its “big tent.”

In Bay Ridge Brooklyn, both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump found supporters who justly regard the political parties with the same feeling they have about organized crime syndicates. And a lot of Arab Americans backed Sanders, fear Islamophobia, and mistrust Hillary Clinton

Birthright got what it wanted — American Jews who care about Israel. Encouraging young American Jews to take an interest in the affairs of the Jewish state brought 17 of them on Tuesday to walk into the lobby of the Anti-Defamation League’s offices in New York City, prepare a seder on the marble floor, start dancing and singing Hebrew songs of resistance and solidarity and then calmly, still singing, feel a police officer cinch flex cuffs around their wrists and lead them back outside, take down their names — a permanent arrest record for criminal trespass — and take them to jail.

Wilson Dizard reports from Brooklyn ahead of the NY Democratic primary today. He finds young voters are attracted to Bernie Sanders for his principled criticism of Israel, even in the wake of the controversial suspension of Jewish outreach aide Simone Zimmerman. Dizard writes, “If Sanders had been at the Highbury Pub in Ditmas Park in Brooklyn on Thursday night to watch him debate campaign rival Hillary Clinton, he might have decided against suspending Zimmerman. There were no cheers louder or longer there in the packed bar than when the Vermont senator (in an act of political courage) stood up for Palestinians”

At a Trump rally in Bethpage, Long Island last week, about 10,000 people from across the tri-state came to hear the Donald speak on a windy, grey Wednesday evening. Wilson Dizard asked attendees if they would support reinstituting the draft to take on ISIS. Diane Ammar, 62, from Long Island, offered an alternative, “I’d bomb the whole place. Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran and ISIS”.