Netanyahu’s hasbara minister says there is no occupied land in Palestine and peddles Zionist mythology. “We haven’t stolen anything…. This house is ours by deed.”

If the Nakba was the catastrophe that laid the foundation for Israel’s settler colonial state, the Naksa was the defeat that finished the job, setting off a chain of events that has come to define the reality on the ground in occupied Palestine over the past 56 years. 

References to ‘cycles of violence’ dominate the mainstream media’s coverage of Palestine, but this ignores the violence of Palestinians’ daily reality living under Israeli colonialism.

Many in Israel approved of the settler “pogrom” against Huwwara because they regard Palestinians as “animals,” a leading Israeli reporter explained to American Jews last week.

An Israeli government body that represents 72,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank has published a map of its jurisdiction that shows only Jewish settlements– simply removing scores of Palestinian villages and the cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh. The map was published by the Binyamin Regional Council on a webpage titled “Build Your Future With Us” that is designed to attract American Jews to move to “northern Jerusalem suburbs.”

Last week the State Department refused to admit that Israel is occupying the West Bank or that the country has nuclear weapons.

Yesterday in a shocking exchange at the State Department, the spokesman for Biden’s foreign policy team refused to describe Palestinians in Jenin and other areas of the West Bank as living under military occupation by Israel.

Last week the U.S. State Department called for an investigation into the death of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy after an Israeli raid in his village. This week State walked the demand back, in its effort to demand zero accountability from Israel for the deaths of dozens of Palestinian children in the occupied territories this year.

FIFA says it wants to make football “accessible and inclusive.” But Israel is criminally denying Palestine access to the sport. FIFA should follow the anti-Israel-apartheid petition launched by the Canadian group Just Peace Advocates and affirm: Countries that systemically violate human rights are not allowed to play in FIFA matches. Respecting that means honoring Palestinians’ right to live, play and enjoy soccer free from Israeli oppression.

Even liberal Zionists maintain a red line against Americans calling Israel an apartheid state. Jeremy Ben-Ami says the apartheid “label” will “distract” Israelis and keep them from doing the right thing. But Haaretz writers, desperate about the racism that prevails in their society, refer to apartheid in article after article.