From July 13 to 16, President Joe Biden will visit the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, deepening his complicity in their human rights abuses. As Black and Palestinian organizers in the U.S. who visited Palestine last week, we see President Biden’s widely criticized trip for what it is: a war crimes tour. If Biden cares about human rights at all, he should #CancelTheTrip—as thousands of grassroots activists have demanded—and stop funding the weapons behind their war crimes.

Mainstream pro-Israel groups and politicians have made the Boston Mapping Project into a punching bag. Many are using the Mapping Project to bash the campaign targeting Israel with boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and to affirm the center-right pro-Israel line that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. A group of Congress members even stated that the project was likely to result in “violent attacks by supporters of the BDS movement” against Jews and Jewish organizations. The FBI has met with Jewish groups in Boston and said it is “tracking” the project over these concerns.

Mondoweiss talks to Nooran Alhamdan, a recent Masters graduate of Georgetown University about the action she and other graduates took to confront Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, over U.S. support for Israel.

H.R. 2748 is the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021. It just passed the House of Representatives and the Senate last week. It expands the Abraham Accords, Trump-era weapons and business deals between apartheid Israel and other authoritarian regimes. These deals bribe Arab countries in the region to both ignore Israel’s settler colonialism and constant human rights violations. When we hear the phrases Normalizing and Israel, we should always read Normalizing Israel’s impunity and violence.

We need Congress to embrace policies that uphold the basic rights of all people. Every progressive should join Rep. Jamaal Bowman in voting “no” on the Israel Relations Normalization Act.

Michael Arria speaks with JVP Action’s Beth Miller about the impact of the Abraham Accords, and recent congressional efforts to enhance them.

Michael Arria speaks to Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American peace activist, human rights lawyer, and now candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Michigan.

Huwaida Arraf is a civil rights attorney and activist running for congress in Michigan’s newly drawn tenth district. Michael Arria spoke with the Democratic candidate about growing up Palestinian-American, her human rights work, and why she has decided to get involved in electoral politics.

Mainstream media tends to focus on politicians, but the contours of what’s possible are determined outside of Washington. Despite the tragedies of 2021, the movement for Palestinian rights continued to grow in surprising and profound ways.

I was a sophomore in high school in 2020 when I helped build a youth movement and online cult of personality around Senator Ed Markey that helped him get elected. Now, his lack of accountability on Palestine has shown me the limitations of electoral politics.