Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom does the right thing for J Street at Passover by admitting that the Tantura massacre of Palestinians took place in the early days of Israel’s existence. But he cannot acknowledge that Israel was then and is now an apartheid state that continues to push Palestinians out of their homes. The rabbi’s view that “Israel’s challenge is to reclaim the ‘child we prayed for'” is simply a delusion, especially in light of rightwing governments that are all committed to maintaining military occupation.

The Nation runs a righwing religious endorsement of Zionism in an apparent sop to its New York base. The article opposes BDS, citing Jewish fears stemming from Nazis and “centuries of forced exile from a historic homeland.” And leaves out the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their land. And anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that Jewish connection is “goysplaining” to Jews, Alexis Grenell writes.

Videos and photos of Israeli police violently suppressing Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab have been flooding social media, as the campaign to #savethenaqab gained momentum amidst growing Israeli efforts to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands. 

Israeli settler violence in the West Bank isn’t an isolated incident. Rather, nearly every week settlers from nearby agricultural outposts terrorize the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta as they take over their land. “Settler violence is only part of Israeli colonist goals,” Ali Awad, a Palestinian activist, tells Mondoweiss. “These people are used as tools — justified by racist laws — for committing ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.”

This week, Yitzhak Rabin will be remembered in Israel as a peacemaker on the anniversary of his assassination. One fact that will be ignored however is that Rabin was one of the key perpetrators of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policy.

Liz Rose reflects on Rosh Hashanah: “We made the desert bloom,” my mother said when I was ten years old. “How did we do this,” I asked, “from the other side of the world?” My mother pointed to the blue JNF box full of loose change. “That’s how.” And then I felt a selflessness in me, learning to give to others who required help, like Israel, who I believed–because my mother believed–needed money to help make the empty forest grow.

In a far-ranging interview, Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh relates how annoyed he is when American media read from the Zionist script and demand that he defend Hamas. He also talks about how difficult it is to maintain human relationships with Israelis when Israelis cannot confront the past of ethnic cleansing. And how the late Amos Oz patronized him…

Google Maps has turned Palestinian towns and cities into ghosts. They appear, yet according to the technology Goliath they do not exist as places one can actually get to. If you want to go between major West Bank cities such as Jericho, Bethlehem, or Hebron, Google will reply Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions… But if West Bank settlers want to visit other West Bank settlements, Google is at their service.

Israeli historian Benny Morris tells Gideon Levy that one state means a future of genocide and ethnic cleansing for Israeli Jews, thereby dehumanizing Palestinians as murderous, wild animals, when history tells us Palestinians are angry over ethnic cleansing and discrimination and when those conditions end, we can struggle toward one state with equality.

The BDS campaign doesn’t want to destroy Israel but to end its Zionist regime, Yossi Gurvitz explains. No people have the right to self-determination in another people’s homeland. Yet this is precisely what happened in Israel, and this is precisely what Zionists are defending: a country based on denial of the rights of others.