On Wednesday, Israel’s government agency responsible for assigning journalist credentials revoked the press card of a senior correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, citing the reporter as a member of the Palestinian “resistance.”

President Trump’s initial statement on Charlottesville, which blamed violence “on many sides,” has taken on a life of its own. All of this has made various Israeli leaders rather uncomfortable because while Israel is supposedly engaged in combatting anti-Semitism, it is more truly in an international ideological fight against the left. And Trump is making it difficult to make this argument without looking like a Nazi.

Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian poet and citizen of Israel, was arrested in 2015 for posting a poem on Facebook. Tatour was charged with “incitement”, imprisoned for months and then kept under house arrest while awaiting trial. Transcripts from her trial were recently published and reveal the Israeli state’s inquiry into the nature of poetry: What is a poem? And what makes one a poet? Those were some of the questions raised by the state prosecutor in a tribunal that seems somewhere between an academic conference and a Stalinist show trial.

On Sunday Israel’s minister of communication Ayoub Kara said he is banning Al Jazeera from broadcast, shutting its Jerusalem bureau, and revoking press credentials for reporters with the Doha-based network, citing the media outlet as a “tool for the Islamic State” and creating biased content when covering recent demonstrations regarding the al-Aqsa mosque. But, commentators have raised the point that Israel is unable to pass sweeping bans and the network and its journalists will likely continue to work in the country. 

A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute shows that 2 out of 3 Jewish Israelis support the death sentence for Palestinian attackers, considered “terrorists,” even if they attack armed occupation soldiers. Israel has not officially used the death penalty since Adolf Eichmann was executed in 1962. Jonathan Ofir writes, “The potential enactment of the death penalty, especially in the case of Palestinian attackers, would be a grave matter, in view of the Israeli definitions of ‘terror’.”

Israeli authorities on Monday installed extra security cameras around the entrances of the al-Aqsa mosque compound, Member of the Israeli Knesset’s Arab Joint List, Aida Touma-Suleiman, confirmed to Mondoweiss. The newly installed security cameras were added amid growing unrest and daily clashes over security measures instituted ten days ago following a deadly attack near the site.

Likud minister Tzachi Hanegbi says that Palestinian protests may lead to their “third Nakba,” referring to the Israeli displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people which began with the founding of state in 1948. “This is how a Nakba starts,” Hanegbi said. “I pray that they do not bring a third Nakba on themselves.”

Palestinian violence outside Al-Aqsa mosque justifies the Israeli restrictions on the site, in the eyes of Israelis. But Al Aqsa is a Muslim compound, and the greater paradigm is that of Israeli state criminality and occupation, beginning with the ethnic cleansing of the Mughrabi quarter in 1967.

The newly-elected Labor leader in Israel, businessman Avi Gabbay, has inspired comparison to France’s Macron as a change-agent. His refusal to work politically with Arab parties or to commit to withdrawal from settlements shows that he is just the latest variation of Labor support for the Zionist status quo.

Israeli leaders suggest that the UNESCO resolution to include Palestinian sites as world heritage sites is ‘anti-Semitic’ and that it denies Jewish connection. But UNESCO says the cave of the Patriarchs has Jewish significance, just that it’s in Palestine! That’s the problem.