In a letter to UN Human Rights Council President Nazhat Khan, UN official Navi Pillay defends her colleague Miloon Kothari against accusations of antisemitism from pro-Israel groups, Israeli lawmakers, and U.S. officials following his interview with Mondoweiss, saying his comments “seem to have deliberately been taken out of context.”

The attacks on Kothari appear to be part of a concerted effort to undermine the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which the United States and Israel have opposed since it was created in 2021.

Mondoweiss staff debrief and analyze Joe Biden’s whirlwind trip to Palestine.

A joint strategic partnership signed by Joe Biden and Yair Lapid promises to combat the BDS movement.

Expect Biden to parrot conservative pro-Israel writers in the New York Times who hail the lately-fallen Israeli government as a model for the United States in its inclusion of an Arab party. Shmuel Rosner calls it “thrilling.” Too bad that NPR also salutes the “hell of an experiment.” All these positive reviews leave out Israeli apartheid.

The Biden administration’s effort to sweep Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing under the rug shows its keenness to extend Trump’s “Abraham Accords” in the Mideast. Those deals make war with Iran more likely, and promote Israeli arm sales and impunity for human rights violations. And as for the Palestinians, they will be completely buried by the Gulf Arab leadership in the rush to please Washington.

I am such an optimist: for the last year I have been saying that Unilever won’t dare overrule the decision by its subsidiary, Ben & Jerry’s, to stop selling ice cream in the occupied territories. No, progressives are winning this debate. And boy was I wrong!

NYT columnist Tom Friedman painted the past year in Israel—the first Netanyahu-free year since 2008—as an icon of democracy, where Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel danced together under the blue and white flag, in harmony and happiness. That is a contemptible piece of fiction which erases apartheid, blames Palestinians for their own ongoing oppression, and praises those who would abandon their cousins under occupation.

The successful effort by the Israeli government and its American friends to overturn the Ben & Jerry’s boycott of the settlements as a supposed “antisemitic” action shows that it is pointless for activists to selectively boycott the illegal settlements. No– boycotts should be aimed at Israel. There is no such thing as a good Israel on one side of the Green Line and a bad one in the occupation. It is all one apartheid state.

Support for apartheid is the one thing that unifies Israeli Jewish parties. The prime minister likens the separate-and-unequal law in the West Bank to Solomon’s baby, while the leader of the left Zionist Meretz Party says that a Palestinian colleague who voted against extending the law “was malicious and unfair… despicable.”

The Bennett/Lapid “government of change” has collapsed under pressure from Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party. New elections are set for October, but there is no alternative to apartheid on the Israeli horizon.