Given recent history, it is surprising Israel has not invaded Gaza again. Previous massive Israeli ground attacks, in 2008, 2012 and 2014, required fewer pretexts than we see today with the success of the Great March of Return. But Israel’s ground forces stay put. Two respected analysts of Israel’s military explain why: the Hamas resistance movement has prepared strong defenses inside Gaza that have raised the costs of an invasion above an acceptable level.

Your country for a country club! Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant inaugurated a swimming pool and country club in the Bedouin town of Rahat and made clear that the gift has a political price, accepting the Jewish nation state law and the higher value it gives to Jewish settlement of the land.

Uri Davis writes Israel’s Nation State Law is exactly in tune with the values outlined during Israel’s founding. In fact the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel passed in 1948 never established a principle of equality or respect of national or ethnic origin.

Two seemingly unconnected events in Israel in the last week reveal a nose dive to the right: passing the Nation-State Law and Hungary’s anti-Semitic Prime Minister Viktor Orban making a two-day visit. Israel is now both a far right country and allied with the far right in Europe.

At an Israeli Ministry of Education conference, Moshe Zar, a former Jewish terrorist, brags, “I am known for saying ‘Build a house, it’s like you wiped out a hundred Arabs. Build a settlement, it’s like you wiped out tens of thousands of goyim. That’s the truth.” The ministry does damage control, but Zar’s ideology is widely held.

A Dutch song focusing on Israel’s human rights violations parodies “Toy,” the song by Israeli Netta Barzilai that won the 2018 Eurovision contest. The parody says that Israel is in it for the money; and the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands has said that it crosses a line, in anti-semitic stereotype.

It took a visiting New York Times reporter from Cairo to finally tell some truths about Israel’s ongoing massacre of Palestinian demonstrators inside Gaza. Meanwhile, the paper’s Israel correspondents continue to distort and whitewash.

Hours after announcing a watershed deal with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to relocate African asylum seekers in Israel to Western Europe and Canada, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reneged, saying he is “suspending implementation of the agreement,” throwing the fate of tens of thousands into uncertainty. Some Israeli supporters of Netanyahu were angry the multi-lateral resettlement program would send asylum seekers to Western nations instead of deporting them to harsh conditions in third-party African nations.

Many of the Eda Haredit, an ultra-Orthodox group in Jerusalem, are descendants of the Old Yishuv, Jews who resided in historic Palestine under Ottoman and then British rule. The group opposes the Israeli state and any attempts at assimilating them into the larger Israeli society. The cloistered neighborhood of Mea Shearim has become a symbol for the group and outside many Eda Haredit homes hangs a sign that reads: “Here lives a non-Zionist Jew.”

The Israeli Knesset ethics committee has suspended Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi for a week for having used the word ‘murder’ to describe actions of Israeli soldiers against Palestinians. She says that she cannot comfort an “insulated” Israeli society by allowing it to regard its oppressive actions as “just.”