In Hebron, Palestinians are prevented from entering the Ibrahimi Mosque for two days over the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

The Ken Burns Vietnam documentary on PBS left out what the U.S. did during the Cold War era in numerous other places including Iran, Guatemala, Latin America in general, Indonesia, and sub-Saharan Africa, both during and after the Vietnam War.  It is not a pretty story. 

Zohra Drif’s Algeria memoir has hard lessons for Israel/Palestine — the colonized will resist violent occupation by any means necessary.

No one is forced to observe Jewish holidays like the Palestinians. The Times of Israel reports that Israel plans to shut down the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip for 11 full days during the Sukkot holiday.

The left is trashing the Vietnam documentary by Ken Burns on PBS. Though it is didactic and middle-brow and America-centric, the documentary is majestic in its depiction of murderous arrogance, and should educate millions to the horrors of occupation and the ferocity of a subjugated people’s resistance.

Yossi Gurvitz recounts how he went from growing up in a national-religious family in Petah Tikva to rejecting Judaism. For him, it all started in yeshiva: “On October 28th, 1984, I had my first crisis of faith. That evening, David Ben Shimol – an IDF soldier – fired a stolen anti-tank rocket into a Palestinian bus as vengeance for an earlier Palestinian terror attack. Every evening we had a seder erev, which began punctually and without fail at 19:10. That evening, for the first and only time I was in Nechalim, it was postponed. So that people could have time enough to dance.”

Yoav Litvin reviews Moshe Menuhin’s “Not by Might, nor by Power”: The Zionist betrayal of Judaism” a ground-breaking critique of Zionism first published in 1965. Litvin writes, “In ‘Not by Might, nor by Power,’ Menuhin dissects the crimes and fallacies inherent within Zionism and obliterates its propagandized selling points, while maintaining his love for his version of Jewish identity.”

Anyone who believes that Israel’s occupation of Palestine can last forever must read Zohra Drif’s memoir of the Algerian war for independence. Drif was a 22-year-old law student in 1956, when she left a bomb in a milk bar. Her account is a vital addition to a sparse literature: the Algerian side of the 1954-62 war for independence, in which up to one million Algerians died before France was forced to leave its colony.

The New Arab reports, “Reem, considered the first full-time music therapist working in Gaza, is busy with therapy programs and training courses – some she runs herself, others run by non-governmental organisations – across the densely packed coastal territory under siege by Israel.”

Al Jazeera reports on the increase in Palestinian injuries in one West Bank refugee camp: Most of the gunshot wounds were directed at the lower limbs of the youth in the camps, now commonly referred to as “kneecapping.” Residents of the Dheisheh camp say that an Israeli army commander, who the youth in Dheisheh refer to as “Captain Nidal”, has been threatening to intentionally disable Palestinians in the camp