An Israeli settler opened fire on Sunday outside two schools in the West Bank, as other settlers rampaged through the street under the protection of Israeli forces, reports Wafa News Agency. The schools are at the entrance to the village of al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, to the south of Nablus in the West Bank.

The shooting terrified the students and teachers of the two schools, and were forced to leave the schools to a safe haven.

Ibrahim Emran, the principal at one of the schools, told Wafa that settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of Yitzhar attacked the school under the protection of the Israeli military, and that one of the settlers shot a bullet in the air to terrify the students. Emran said the school was forced to evacuate its students to keep them safe.

London has played host to the biggest Palestine festival of 2018 with over 3,000 guests attending and a variety of shows, exhibitions and stalls showcasing Palestinian art, culture and history.

The event, hosted by The Biggest Palestine Festival group, is held over a period of two days every year in an exhibition centre that holds up to 30 stalls as well as hosting musical performances, conferences, lectures and an array of art exhibitions.

“Palestine has become synonymous with politics and conflict and whenever you see Palestine being mentioned on the news, it is solely about its conflict with Israel and the illegal occupation taking place on its lands” said Sasha, a 23-year-old postgraduate student who is half Palestinian.

All the signs suggest that the terrorist Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing the Middle East towards instability and the brink of an all-out war. They also suggest that the coming days and weeks may witness serious developments that no one can foresee or predict accurately.

There are many Israeli analysts and writers who believe that the Israeli Prime Minister’s remarks and plans are designed to eliminate or rather alleviate the enormous internal pressures to which he is being subjected, especially the bribery accusations against him and his wife and the police recommendation that he be investigated by the attorney general. This is not the first time that the police have made such a recommendation, and it seems like it won’t be the last.

Abu Hmeid has not been found guilty or even tried yet.

But before dawn today, November 15th, a harsh sentence was carried out, not on the alleged perpetrator, but on his family and neighborhood.

About 500 heavily armed Israeli soldiers invaded the refugee camp where Islam Abu Hmeid’s family lives, stormed their home, and began preparing to demolish the 4-story building.

Israel routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinians who resist the occupation, claiming demolition is a deterrent to other would-be resisters; however human rights groups persistently call for the practice to be stopped because it is a form of collective punishment – illegal according to international law.

The ripple effects of Thursday’s outburst of violence in the occupied West Bank continued to be felt on Friday, as Palestinians woke up to news of more arrests, clashes, and plans of collective punishment by the Israeli government.

Between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, Israeli forces had shot and killed four Palestinians in separate incidents, while two Israeli soldiers were killed by a still unidentified Palestinian shooter, all in and around the central West Bank district of Ramallah.

By Thursday afternoon, Israeli forces had enforced vast closures across the central and northern West Bank, heavily deploying troops at checkpoints, major highways, and inside Palestinian towns and cities.

Israeli forces deployed along the volatile border with the Gaza Strip have fired live rounds at rock-throwing Palestinian protesters ever since demonstrations against Israel’s long-running blockade of Gaza began in March. And for eight months, Israeli snipers have targeted one part of the body more than any other — the legs. The Israeli army says it is responding to weekly assaults on its frontier by Palestinians armed with stones, grenades and firebombs. The military says it opens fire only as a last resort, and considers firing at the lower limbs an act of restraint. Still, 175 Palestinians have been shot to death, according to an Associated Press count. And the number of wounded has reached colossal proportions. Of the 10,511 protesters treated at hospitals and field clinics in Gaza so far, at least 6,392, or roughly 60 percent, have been struck in the lower limbs, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

France has honored Al-Haq and B’Tselem with the prestigious Human Rights Prize of the French Republic.

This came despite heavy pressure from Israel on the French government to pull the award from the two groups which document Israeli war crimes and abuses against Palestinians.

French justice minister Nicole Belloubet did however give in to the pressure and refused to attend the award ceremony in Paris last Monday.

Israeli forces shot and killed a teenager in Jalazone refugee camp as the military cracked down on the Ramallah area of the occupied West Bank after 24 hours of violence in which two soldiers and four Palestinians were killed.

The slain teen was identified as Mahmoud Yousif Nakhla. The health ministry in the West Bank gave his age as 16 but some media reported that he was 18 years old.

Ma’an News Agency, a Palestinian outlet, said that the teen was shot from less than 10 meters away and that soldiers attempted to withhold his body. Palestinian paramedics were only able to recover Nakhla’s body after arguing with soldiers for more than 30 minutes, according to Ma’an.

Turkish president on Friday accused Israel of trying to deliberately wipe out traces of Islamic heritage in Jerusalem over the last 50 years, Anadolu Agency reports.

“You [Israel] will not be able to wipe out,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at an Inter-parliamentary platform on Jerusalem in Istanbul.

You are deceiving yourself if you think you can destroy Jerusalem’s spiritual identity by moving a few embassies and consulates there, Erdogan said.

Tension has been running high in the occupied Palestinian territories since last year when U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Jerusalem remains at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Palestinians hoping that East Jerusalem — now occupied by Israel — might eventually serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

In an all-night massive Israeli military offensive into Ramallah, centered on the al-Am’ari refugee camp, to demolish the family home of Islam Abu Hmeid, Israeli soldiers forcibly removed more than 500 Palestinians from their homes in the dead of night.

The families were forced out of their homes at gunpoint with no food or blankets, and held for hours, as hundreds of Israeli soldiers surrounded their property, and held them at a local school until dawn, when most of the women and children were, hours later, allowed to leave and be sheltered at a Red Crescent facility.

At around 10 am , the military began to withdraw from the area, apparently satisfied that they had sufficiently destabilized the structure of the four-story building to prevent any of the Palestinian families who lived there from being able to continue living there.

A Canadian Court has ruled that Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) activists were denied free speech and campaigning rights when the city of Montreal tore down their posters highlighting an Israeli atrocity, during an election campaign in Canada.

Israel is to authorize thousands of the settler homes built illegally in the occupied West Bank, some of them decades ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

Weapons paid for by the United States appear to have been used in the killings of at least 272 Palestinians since 2009.

There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. Global companies such as Airbnb have recognized that their business practices must reflect international condemnation of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Natalie Portman, Lorde, and other celebrities have declined appearances in Israel, acknowledging the call to boycott the Israeli government on account of its human rights violations.

Extremist Israeli settlers on Thursday evening rampaged through the village of Ein Yabroud, to the northeast of Ramallah in the West Bank, and opened gunfire at homes, witnesses said.

A large number of Jewish settlers -- some of them armed and accompanied by Israeli army -- from the nearby illegal Ofra settlement raided the village and opened gunfire at Palestinians' homes, provoking clashes with citizens.

The settlers remained in the village for some time before local citizens were able to fend them off and push them back.

Meanwhile, settlers from Yitzar settlement, south of Nablus city in the northern West Bank, attacked a home in the village of Burin and a car that was parked outside.

Israeli occupation forces shot and killed 60-year-old Palestinian business-owner Hamdan Al-Arda yesterday, during a raid of Al-Bireh, in the central West Bank.

Al-Arda was driving in his car when soldiers opened fire, killing him.

The Israeli army stated that “a terrorist attempted to use his car to run over IDF soldiers who were conducting operations. An IDF soldier was lightly wounded. Security forces at the scene responded with gunfire and neutralised the terrorist.”

However, eyewitnesses, the man’s relatives, and even Israeli sources cast doubt on these claims.

Contrary to what it has done since 1967, the Israeli government has, for the first time, resorted to the use of a “carrot” instead of the usual stick as it pushes ahead with its Judaisation of occupied Jerusalem. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are being offered economic incentives, with the government approving a plan which it claims is aimed at reducing economic and social differences between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the rest of the occupied city.

The plan mentions projects to improve the economic situation in East Jerusalem and ease the housing problem, which is actually caused by the occupation authorities’ refusal to issue permits for Palestinians to build houses or improve the infrastructure. It is also expected to work on integrating Jerusalemites within the Israeli labour market.

Last week, the United States submitted a resolution to the UN General Assembly condemning Hamas for attacking Israel. The resolution was supported by 87 countries but opposed by 57, with more than 30 abstentions, and so was not adopted because it did not get the two-thirds majority required.

“The United Nations has never once passed a resolution condemning Hamas,” complained the outgoing US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. “Never. Over 700 resolutions condemning Israel and not one single resolution condemning Hamas. That, more than anything else, is a condemnation of the United Nations itself.”

The failure of the US resolution against Hamas happened on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November. This is an annual commemoration based on UN Resolution 188 adopted by the General Assembly in 1977.

Last month, Airbnb, an American company that allows homeowners to list their properties for rental to visiting tourists, announced that it will prohibit listings of properties in Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The company’s decision was morally and legally correct, not least because of the illegal nature of the settlements and the racism that underpins them.

That the Israeli settlements are built for “Jews only” isn’t the real problem, though. The real problem is that they are built on land and property stolen by Israel’s government from Palestinian Christians and Muslims in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to use lethal force against the participants in the peaceful protests organized along the Gaza Strip borders, which witnessed the peaceful protests for the 35th week along the eastern and northern border area of the Gaza Strip. They also continued to use armed force as well during the incursions into the West Bank. In the West Bank, the Israeli forces killed a Palestinian civilian in southern Hebron and wounded 29 others, including 4 children, in separate shooting incidents. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces wounded 93 civilians, including 23 children, 2 women, 2 journalists, and 2 paramedics. The injury of 3 of those wounded was reported serious.

Israeli occupation forces raided, on Thursday evening, the headquarters of the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC), in the occupied West Bank city of al-Bireh, according to Palestinian security sources.

Israeli soldiers raided the headquarters in an attempt to retrieve the tapes of the surveillance cameras. The soldiers forced the Committee’s employees into a single room and physically assaulted some of them, according to a statement by the Committee.

However, POC officials said, , according to WAFA correspondence, that they refused to hand over the tapes to the Israeli army, by order of POC chief Jibril Rajoub.

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi, on Thursday, denounced the series of war crimes committed by Israel against defenseless Palestinian people, the latest of which being the killing of three West Bank citizens in cold blood.

“This persistence in field executions, intentional killings, collective punishment and the continuation of organized Israeli terrorism reflects a clear disregard by the Israeli extremist government for the entire world and its institutions and international bodies,” she said in a statement issued by her office on behalf of the Executive Committee, on Thursday.

Israel was created through violence and terror, which it continues to heap on Palestinians to this day, as it works to fulfill the dream of Zionism - a Jewish state from the river to the sea.

How, then, does it continue to portray itself as the victim, while painting the actual victims - Palestinians - as the aggressors?

It has become a tired and broken record, one that Israel and its ardent supporters play, regardless of the rationality of their arguments. Any criticism of Israel, or any peaceful act to put pressure on the state, draws the same outrage, expressed through carefully thought out, yet irrational, talking points.

WASHINGTON – As a result of the midterm election, four recently elected women affiliated with the democratic-socialist PAC Justice Democrats will soon be striding through Capitol Hill as full-fledged members of Congress. These four women – Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley – have all been touted as “progressive” game-changers for having avoided corporate money during their primaries and for supporting policies like Medicare-for-all and abolishing ICE, among others.

Yet, while these soon-to-be congresswomen support many of the same policies, they exhibit considerable differences when it comes to Palestine, ranging from deepening their pro-Palestine stances, to flip-flopping on it, to remaining largely silent on an issue of great importance to many Americans and others the world over.

Just imagine if this was your son ...

For four years, police infiltrated the London chapter of the International Solidarity Movement, an activist group focused on Palestine.

Using the cover name Rob Harrison, one ISM activist was actually a member of the Special Demonstration Squad, information released by a UK government inquiry this week shows.

ISM volunteers, mostly from European and North American countries, join non-violent solidarity activities in Palestine, such as protests, accompaniment and olive picking.

ISM volunteers Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall were both killed after being fatally wounded by Israeli occupation forces in 2003.

ISM London ran sessions around the UK training volunteers on what to expect in Palestine and how to join the group there.

When the Portland Trail Blazers play at home, the basketball team regularly holds a halftime ceremony to honor local military veterans. The ceremony has proven controversial in recent months as its sponsor – the weapons firm Leupold & Stevens – is accused of supplying equipment used to kill civilians in Gaza.

During 2017, the Israeli military bought a consignment of telescopes from Leupold for sniper rifles. The deal was worth more than $2 million, Israel Defense, a publication specializing in the weapons industry, reported.

Under it, a Leupold product line known as Mark 6 would become “the telescopic sight of choice” for Israel’s ground force snipers, according to the publication.

It is almost certain, then, that the firm’s equipment has helped Israel’s snipers to kill and maim unarmed protesters taking part in Gaza’s Great March of Return this year.

In a landslide vote, students at New York University have demanded divestment from corporations that profit from Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.

But NYU’s administration has expressed a determination to keep investing in firms that supply Israel with weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened a series of violations of international law after 24 hours of deadly attacks and raids across the West Bank that left four Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers dead.

Those pledges include collective punishment measures such as the punitive demolition of homes belonging to the families of suspected Palestinian assailants as well as accelerated settlement building.

Such moves will entrench Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, now in its 51st year, and its settler colony project which it enforces with routine and frequently deadly violence against Palestinians.

Nov. 1 Israeli Settlers Dump Sewage into Qalqilia-district Schoolyard
“Israeli settlers from the illegal Sha’are Tikva settlement dumped their sewage onto school property in the northern West Bank village of Azzun Atma…Sewage flooded the school courtyard and playground, resulting in a repulsive smell inside the school…this is the second time in two months settlers dump their sewage on the village school…it usually takes over 10 days for sewage water to dry, causing health hazards for students and the community at large.”

Nov. 5 Hebron: Demolition Notices Served to School, 3 Structures
“Israeli authorities delivered demolition notices to one school and three housing structures [in the occupied West Bank]…Israeli forces stormed the Khillet al-Dabe school…and forced the school’s staff and its 12 students to evacuate…Israeli forces then handed the school staff a demolition notice for the school…the Palestinian Ministry of Education had just opened the school last month.

Israeli soldiers and border police take Zeid Taha (6 years old) to a checkpoint in Hebron. November 25, 2018

Via B’tselem (trim from longer video which included the detainment of an older child of 15 who was arrested)

How does one explain Canada’s contradictory foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel?

Trudeau’s ‘human face of neoliberalism’ is nothing but a carefully-constructed mask meant to hide the hypocritical and militant policies that Canada continues to lead.

Israeli soldiers, accompanied Jewish settlers, broke into the northern West Bank village and archaeological site of Sebastia on Wednesday, upon which confrontations with the village’s Palestinian residents ensued, according to mayor of Sebastia Mohammad Azzam.

Azzam told WAFA correspondence that the soldiers accompanied a busload of fanatic settlers in a provocative visit to the site and, while they were there, the soldiers fired teargas and stun grenades into the village, causing suffocation, especially among the elderly and children.

Young residents of the village pelted the soldiers with stones while the soldiers shot back more teargas, causing more suffocation cases, said the mayor, who added that the provocations by the settlers and army, under the pretext of visiting the archaeological site, has become an almost daily occurrence.

The Israeli parliament has rejected a draft bill affirming citizens’ right to equality. According to a report by Israeli activist Yossi Gurvitz for Mondoweiss, the Knesset voted down the bill by 71-38.

‘Basic Law’: Equality’, drafted by Meretz MK Mossi Raz, stated: “The State of Israel shall maintain equal political rights amongst all its citizens, without any difference between religions, race and sex.”

In the vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition – which has only 61 seats in the Knesset – “enjoyed the support” of opposition party Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid.

In addition, Gurvitz reported, “many members” of the Labor Party-dominated Zionist Camp faction “fled the hall before the vote”.

Israeli occupation forces seized a six-year-old Palestinian child in Hebron, the occupied West Bank, and detained him without family members for an hour, reported B’Tselem.

The incident took place on 25 November, at around 2pm, when Israeli forces seized 15-year-old ‘Abd a-Rahman Abu Daoud, and six-year-old Zeid Taha.

Both children were then taken to so-called “Pharmacy Checkpoint” in the segregated city. Abu Daoud was then transferred to Ofer Prison and ultimately sentenced to three months in prison.

The small town of Abassan in the Gaza Strip is a tough place to infiltrate — everyone knows everyone else and outsiders passing through quickly attract attention. So when strangers drove through town, suspicious Hamas security men stopped the van and questioned those inside.

The answers didn’t add up.

With their covers about to be blown, the Israeli undercover forces inside the vehicle opened fire, setting off a fierce battle that left eight people dead and triggered a brief but intense round of cross-border fighting.

A month after the exchange, the raid remains clouded in mystery. The Israeli army has kept mum, while Hamas officials have declined to comment publicly as they investigate the incident. With each side protective of its secrets, and possibly keen to spread disinformation, the full story may never be known.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson talked about the hypocrisy of Democrats who support Israel’s border wall and not the U.S.-Mexico border wall President Donald Trump wants to build during “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wednesday.

Prior to his interview with David Rubin, a former Israeli mayor, Carlson went after Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi for labeling Trump’s plan to build a wall along the country’s southern border as “immoral.”

Chair of the Defence Committee at the Israeli Parliament Avi Dichter has called for killing all the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

As he was commenting on the peaceful protests of the Great March of Return taking place along the eastern fence of the Gaza Strip, he said:

“The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”

Dichter is a senior member of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, which is a right wing one.

Former director of Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security Dichter said that the Israeli army is prepared to use all means, including lethal force to deter the Palestinians protesters.

This morning CNN executives woke up to an ad chastising the network in the popular Sunday edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reaches over 900,000 people.

In the paper of record, in CNN’s hometown, activists sent a powerful message in support of Professor Hill and in protest of his firing.

Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN after he spoke at the United Nations in defense of Palestinian rights as part of the UN-organized International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

The Jewish Voice for Peace advertisement is part of a larger support campaign for Marc Lamont Hill, and was paid for by over 1,000 individual donations, with an average gift of $28.

IDF soldiers terrorize the Palestinian civilians during the night, especially children.

Shocking video

Since the exposure of Israeli undercover forces by Hamas fighters in the occupied Gaza Strip on November 11, an incident that triggered the most intense round of escalation since 2014, a number of reports have emerged about the circumstances surrounding Israel's thwarted raid.

On November 22, Hamas published photos of individuals it said were involved, images that Israel's military censor immediately subjected to a publication ban.

Since then, a number of articles in Israeli and international media have claimed the Israeli forces impersonated humanitarian workers, used fake ID cards of real Palestinian residents, and operated inside Gaza for weeks with a cover story of distributing medical equipment and wheelchairs.

A four-year-old Palestinian boy has died after being injured during clashes between the Israeli army and protesters along the Gaza border, the health ministry in Gaza said.

"Ahmed Abu Abed, aged four years and eight months, died as a result of the wounds he received last Friday east of Khan Yunis," health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement late Tuesday.

Protected by the Israeli occupation forces, a group of Israeli Jewish settlers yesterday stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque and performed religious rituals in its courtyards, Ma’an News Agency reported.

Firas Al-Debbis, the coordinator of public relations at Al-Aqsa Mosque, said that 45 settlers stormed the Mosque through Al-Mughrabi Gate.

He said that the settlers were escorted by a large number of the Israeli occupation forces.

Meanwhile, another group of settlers organised a night demonstration in Jerusalem’s Old City to mark the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

The settlers chanted anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian slogans and called for the demolition of Al-Aqsa Mosque and for more settlers to be allowed in to Islam’s third holiest site.

Five Palestinians were wounded yesterday morning after Israeli occupation forces stormed Al-Bireh and confiscated surveillance cameras in the area, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

More than 40 armoured military vehicles stormed the occupied West Bank cities of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, raiding a number of shops around the headquarters of the Palestinian financial ministry and confiscating CCTV footage from the area.

Local sources said that the Israeli occupation forces set up flying checkpoints in Al-Masayif neighbourhood and checked the IDs of Palestinian passersby.

The commander of the Israeli forces told journalists that they had not planned to storm the financial ministry but wanted to confiscate CCTV recordings from the area.

Israeli minister Ophir Akunis toured Israeli settlements yesterday and “declared his support” for the annexation of the so-called Gush Etzion settlement “bloc” and “Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] in general”, reported right-wing news outlet Arutz Sheva.

The Minister of Science and Technology, part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, visited the Gush Etzion settlements with local settler council leader Shlomo Ne’eman.

Akunis described the Gush Etzion settlement bloc as “one of the foundations of our people dating back thousands of years, and anyone who disputes this right is wrong”.

As we have been forced to leave here in the past, we are here to win, and here thousands of families will raise their children for generations to come

he declared.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday promised that he would never evict illegal settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories as long as he is in office, local media reported.

Speaking at an inaugural ceremony for an interchange outside the illegal settlement of Adam, which is located in the centre of the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu said: “Our enemies want to uproot us from here, but… as long as I am the prime minister of Israel, not a single Jew will be uprooted from his home.”

He pledged to build more and more settlements and settlement units. “Not only will Jews not be uprooted from their homes, but we will build and add to them,” he said.

Netanyahu said that Israel would prove that the desire of anyone to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories “will be met by an impenetrable wall. That is why we are here today.”

While Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into Israeli influence in the United States, “The Lobby – USA,” was completed in October 2017, it never aired. Though the network’s director-general attributed the problem to outstanding legal issues, many, including journalists involved in the making of the documentary, suggested Qatari censorship of the film – likely resulting from US pressure and Qatar’s desire to curry favor with Washington. (Another Al Jazeera film on Israeli influence in the UK – “The Lobby” – aired in January 2017.)

Now, the US version is no longer under wraps: Last month, the Electronic Intifada, in tandem with France’s Orient XXI and Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar, which provided subtitles in French and Arabic, respectively, released the leaked film. (Click to access.)

Marc Lamont Hill, Tim Anderson, Steven Salaita, Rabab Abdulhadi, Hatem Bazian, Ahlam Muhtasib, Norman Finkelstein and other academics have all been targets of the movement to silence their criticisms of Israel and their defense of Palestinians. This includes threats and legal actions to try to deny them employment, in violation of their free speech rights, one of the most hallowed and ancient principles of academia. Salaita and Finkelstein were, in fact, denied employment, to the great detriment of their entire career. Hill and Anderson are currently defending themselves from this threat.

Israel is facing a fierce campaign over existing settlements because of efforts against it at the International Criminal Court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Likud politicians on Monday, in response to criticism for not doing enough to advance settler activity in the West Bank.

Following a Board of Trustees meeting this afternoon, Temple University President Richard Englert released a statement on behalf of the board, announcing that professor Marc Lamont Hill will not be punished or investigated for his Nov. 28 speech during an event organized with the United Nations. In that speech, Hill called for “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Englert, in delivering the statement, affirmed that Hill “spoke as a private citizen and his right to do so is protected by the constitution.”

The announcement finds Temple returning to its initial statement, which recognized that Hill’s speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Poor Jeremy Corbyn. He’s in hot water again. His latest offense? Ignoring an invitation from the leader of the Israeli Labor Party to journey to Israel to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.

And the Israeli Laborites are incensed at the absence of a reply, while the Blairite centrists in Corbyn’s own party are reportedly in “shock” at the news.

“You’re a lying racist,” shouted Labour MP John Mann at former London Mayor Ken Livingstone last month after the latter pointed out–accurately, by the way–that Hitler had supported Zionist goals of having Jews immigrate to Palestine. But it seems the philo-semitic witch hunters out for Corbyn’s blood can’t be bothered with historical facts.

Having fought to get a deal between the IRA and Britain for over a decade before that was achieved, I can’t see any difference with the current situation in between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.

Israel is just under a year away from its next election. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came close to being forced out of office last month when his coalition partner, the defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, resigned his position. Lieberman’s resignation was triggered by Netanyahu’s refusal to launch a more brutal attack against the Palestinians following their alleged rocket attacks against Israel.

Radical Jewish groups today called for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be killed.

Posters placed by the groups at the entrance of the illegal Jewish settlement of Yitzhar near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus were inscribed with a phrase reading “supporter of terrorists” – in reference to Abbas and called for his death.

US-sponsored peace talks between the PA and Israel collapsed in 2014 over Israel’s refusal to halt settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

On Monday, Israeli forces raided Ramallah and the main office of the official Wafa news agency allegedly to find footage of a shooting which injured seven illegal settlers in a nearby settlement on Sunday.

The 6 December was the first anniversary of US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and that he would move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. The announcement was cheered by Israel and its supporters for whom international laws and conventions are at best meaningless and at worst an irritant. Trump suggested that this move would help bring peace to the Holy Land. How wrong he was. Anyone but a diehard Zionist would have told him that he was deluded to think this, but nobody in his administration would have done so, because those tasked with developing a peace deal fall into this category.

A Qatari envoy overseeing the Gulf state's humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip said on Monday that he had proposed building an airport in the blockaded Palestinian enclave but had received no response from Israel.

In coordination with Israel and the United Nations, Qatar has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to various Gaza projects that the partners say are designed to stave off Palestinian poverty and prevent escalations in violence.

"They [Israel] said it would be discussed and they procrastinated... We will renew our request," Qatari Ambassador Mohammed al-Emadi told the Gaza-based news agency SAWA.

"The Israeli side had security concerns and we told them we can resolve them by having the planes fly to Doha and return to Gaza from there and under Qatari security supervision."

For 30 years, the United Nations has held an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29 November. The event rarely merited even a passing nod in the mainstream media. Until last week.

Marc Lamont Hill, a prominent US academic and political commentator for CNN, found himself deluged by a tsunami of outrage over a speech he had made at the UN headquarters in New York. He called for an end to Oslo's discredited model of interminable and futile negotiations over Palestinian statehood – a strategy that is already officially two decades past its sell-by date.

In its place, he proposed developing a new model of regional peace based on a single state offering equal rights to Israelis and Palestinians. Under a barrage of criticism that his speech had been anti-semitic, CNN summarily fired him.

Of all the anniversaries that punctuate Palestine’s tragic modern history, the one on 11 December may be the most important.

On that day 70 years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 by a majority of 35 out of 58 members. It has since been reaffirmed more than 135 times, remaining the bedrock of the Palestinian cause and the earliest legal underpinning of the right of return.

Resolution 194 called on the newly formed Israeli state to allow "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours … to do so at the earliest practicable date", and to compensate them for their losses. It arose from an international consensus that people forcibly displaced from their homes had a right to return in customary and humanitarian law.

With Israel focusing on decreasing Iran’s presence in Syria and neutralizing Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles and terrorism tunnels from Lebanon, it has no interest in an escalation now with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

At the same time, Netanyahu said at the regular meeting of Likud minister that precedes the weekly cabinet meeting, “If there is no choice, we are today in a situation to do much more in a military campaign in Gaza if needed, because we are taking advantage of the time to prepare. The security cabinet has already received an initial briefing.”

The 14-member Hashimeh family has become homeless after the demolition.
The family had attempted to issue licenses for their homes for the past twenty years.

Jawhar told Ma'an that the family had paid a total of 61,000 shekels of fines as they attempted to issue licenses, however, the municipality always rejected their applications before ordering the demolition of the homes last June.

The UN General Assembly has apparently rejected any connection between Judaism and the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa. In a vote held on Friday, the General Assembly passed six resolutions condemning Israeli violations against Palestinians. Among them was Resolution A/73/L.29 entitled “Jerusalem” which called for “respect for the historic status quo at the holy places of Jerusalem, including the Haram Al-Sharif.”

The use of the Arabic name for the sanctuary has been interpreted as a not-so-subtle rejection of the site’s alleged connection with Judaism. The Jewish name for the Noble Sanctuary, the Temple Mount, is not mentioned anywhere in the UN document.

The resolution received 148 votes in favour and just 11 against. It also stressed that the UN General Assembly,

Evangelical Christian groups have invested up to $65 million in projects in the “Biblical Heartland” over the past decade, however, that doesn’t include services they provide free of charge, such as volunteer laborers, according to a Haaretz investigation, Maan News Agency reports.

Haaretz news outlet reported that about 1,700 volunteers were sent by Christian Evangelical groups to the illegal Israeli settlement of Har Brakha, south of the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus.

Israel has arrested 337,000 Palestinians since the start of the First Intifada in 8 December 1987, the Palestine Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said yesterday.

In spite of the arrests, the centre’s spokesperson Riyadh Al-Ashqar said, the occupation has failed to achieve its goals of suppressing the Palestinian resistance and its efforts to liberate Palestine.

Israel has arrests Palestinians on an almost daily basis, he added.

According to the report, occupation forces arrested 210,000 Palestinians between 1987 and 1994, when the Palestinian Authority was established.

A new poll published yesterday has provided fresh evidence of anti-Arab racism amongst Israeli Jews.

Conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute for Channel 10, the poll was conceived of “as a follow-up to a CNN poll last month that revealed high levels of anti-Semitism in Europe”.

One conclusion of the poll was that “the more religious the respondent, the more likely they were to reject the non-Jewish minority”.

According to reports, 52 per cent of respondents “said they agreed to some extent with the statement: ‘Most Jews are better than most non-Jews because they were born Jews’”.

The World Zionist Organisation (WZO) used Israeli public funds to finance construction in an unauthorised settler outpost in the occupied West Bank, an investigation by Haaretz has revealed.

According to the report, the WZO’s Settlement Division “transferred public funds as loans to at least two settlers from the West Bank settlement of Itamar”, in exchange for which “the settlers mortgaged plots that had been allocated to them”.

Official maps, however, “show that the ostensibly mortgaged plots simply don’t exist”.

The legislation committee at the Israeli Knesset yesterday approved 200 extra communities where non-Jewish inhabitants can be banned, Arab48 reported.

MK Bezalel Smotrich, from the Jewish Home party, initiated the bill to add the new communities to the list of areas which enjoy power to choose the families and persons who are planning to move in to them.

The majority of the 700 communities which enjoy this right are based in the Galilee. Critics have said this racist policy is another means through which Israel plans to Judaise the areas and wipe away their Palestinian history by banning Arabs from living in them.

The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has granted loans for setting up illegal outposts in the West Bank ? Public funds were given to settlers in exchange for mortgaging of non-existent plots

In the wake of the UN General Assembly rejection of the US-drafted resolution condemning the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement and some of the other Palestinian factions, the Israeli Ambassador to the UN resorted to the usual lies and propaganda about Hamas and resistance to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

“There is no difference between Hamas, Al-Qaida and Boko Haram,” claimed Danny Danon as he described acts of legitimate resistance to Israel’s military occupation as “acts of evil”. He even sought the moral high ground by claiming that Israel is always thinking of the Palestinians and the better life that they deserve. Of course, Danon and other Israeli officials know very well that there is a vast difference between Hamas and the groups he cited; and a huge difference between legitimate Palestinian resistance and “acts of evil”.

Israeli authorities are guilty of “persistent unwillingness to conduct genuine investigations into grave incidents of suspected war crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians” in the Gaza Strip, a leading Israeli human rights organisation has told a United Nations (UN) inquiry.

In a report submitted to the UN’s Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (COI), legal rights centre Adalah documented “the lack of Israeli domestic accountability mechanisms” in the context of both the 2014 war and the 2018 protests.

According to Adalah, Israel’s unwillingness to “conduct genuine investigations or to initiate prosecutions relating to the 2014 Gaza war stresses the need for international intervention to provide remedies and accountability for Palestinian victims of the 2018 protests.”

Israeli settlers stormed the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning, accompanied by military reinforcement security from the Israeli occupation army.

According to the sources of the Islamic Endowments Department, Israeli Minister of Agriculture, Uri Ariel, was leading a group of Israeli extremist settlers who entered through the Mugrabi Gate in the western wall of the mosque.

Last month, the City Council in Ghent, Belgium voted to ban companies involved in human rights violations from doing business with the the city.

Palestinian solidarity activists with the group Ghent Action Platform Palestine (GAPP) were the driving force behind this vote.

Similar votes have also been passed in response to Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights in dozens of cities, including Barcelona, Valencia, Dublin and Trondheim.

Chairman for the Defense Committee of the Israeli Parliament of the Knesset, Avi Dichter, recently made an underhanded remark expressing favor for killing all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

As he was commenting on the protests of the Great March of Return, taking place along the eastern fence of the Gaza Strip, he said: “The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”

Dichter is a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling right-wing Likud Party.

A former director of Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security, Dichter said that the Israeli army is prepared to use all means, including lethal force to deter the Palestinians protesters.

In one of Ghost Hunting's most harrowing scenes, a Palestinian prisoner urinates on himself as he stares in contempt at his Israeli captor.

"God damn you!" the infuriated prison guard screams. "We have no one to clean this up - whoever makes the mess must clean it up himself!"

He gestures at another guard in the room to force the prisoner onto the floor. The two men then mop up the urine with the body of the prisoner, who bursts into paradoxical laughter and is then left in handcuffs on the ground of the cell when they're done. The scene abruptly cuts, but the cameras continue to roll.

Academics and scholars, from Lucy Peterson, University of Michigan, and Steven Salaita to Thomas Abowd, Tufts University, and Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University, have faced numerous attacks from Zionists in the US.

But the recent firing of CNN analyst Marc Lamont Hill is clear recognition that #BlackPalestinianSolidarity is the strongest threat to Israel’s attempts to maintain its hegemony over Palestine liberation discourse in this country.

All those who watched Hill’s speech at the United Nations – which was delivered on 28 November, the eve of the UN-recognized International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People – understood clearly what the Temple University professor meant with his conclusion.

“We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires,” he said. “And that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

A spokesperson for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to share the incoming congresswoman’s stance on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement when asked on Friday.

The official BDS website describes the movement as one trying to uphold “the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”

Conversely, many Jewish organizations view the movement through a lens of anti-Semitism. The Anti-Defamation League says that the BDS movement “rejects Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” and “is the most prominent effort to undermine Israel’s existence.”

Though Wiesel offers himself as a paragon of moral virtue, the truth is somewhat seamier. As detailed in this myth-shattering piece by Alexander Cockburn from the February 2006 print edition of CounterPunch, Wiesel assiduously campaigned for the Nobel Prize and has for decades tried to pass off his short book “Night” as a true account–a “testimony” in his words– of his experiences at Auschwitz, even though key scenes in the book have been exposed as fiction.

Israeli forces deployed along the volatile border with the Gaza Strip have fired live rounds at rock-throwing Palestinian protesters ever since demonstrations against Israel’s long-running blockade of Gaza began in March.

And for eight months, Israeli snipers have targeted one part of the body more than any other — the legs.

The Israeli army says it is responding to weekly assaults on its frontier by Palestinians armed with stones, grenades and firebombs. The military says it opens fire only as a last resort, and considers firing at the lower limbs an act of restraint.

Still, 175 Palestinians have been shot to death, according to an Associated Press count. And the number of wounded has reached colossal proportions.

A coalition of 50 feminist and women's organizations joined forces to bring thousands of Israeli women - Jews and Arabs alike - into the streets to protest government inaction.

On Friday evening, 07 December 2018, Israeli forces wounded 72 Palestinian civilians, including 11 children, 1 woman and 2 paramedics in the peaceful demonstrations in the eastern Gaza Strip despite the decreasing intensity of the demonstrations there for the sixth week consecutively and absence of most means usually used during the demonstrations since the beginning of the Return and Breaking the Siege March 7 months ago.

According to observations by PCHR’s fieldworkers, for the fifth week since the beginning of the Return March on 30 March 2018, the demonstrators abstained from burning tires while the attempts to cross the border fence and throw stones and incendiary balloons were completely absent.

At least 33 Palestinian protesters were shot and injured by Israeli soldiers Friday, at the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip, medical sources said.

Protesters were shot at with live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets as they approached the barbed-wire perimeter fence.

Of the 33 shot, one protester was critically injured, while many others suffered the suffocating effects of tear gas, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has confirmed.

Civil rights groups are warning that moves to discipline or fire Marc Lamont Hill from his teaching position at Philadelphia’s Temple University would violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution that guarantees free speech.

Hill gave a 28 November speech at the United Nations to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

Since then he has been the target of a campaign of lies by pro-Israel groups falsely characterizing the speech as anti-Semitic and calling for genocide against Jews.

In fact, Hill presented a vision rooted in universal human rights of Palestinians gaining freedom, just as other peoples have. He made particular reference to the history of Black struggle against American state racism, Jim Crow and apartheid.

A large number of Batan al-Hawa residents have been there for over 70 years, many after being expelled from their ancestral homes as Israel proper was being established.

Residents now face another expulsion with a Jewish settler organisation, Ateret Cohanim, trying to wage what Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO, calls the single-largest takeover of a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem since Israel occupied it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution calling to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, current President of the UN General Assembly Maria Espinosa said in a statement.

"The result of the vote is as follows: 156 in favor, six against, 12 abstentions," Espinosa said on Thursday. "The draft resolution is adopted."

The New York University (NYU) Student Government Assembly passed a divestment resolution inspired by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) last night, in what campaigners hailed as “the first resolution of this nature ever to be presented at NYU”.

According to a press release by NYU Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the vote was carried by 35 votes in favour, and 14 against, with 14 abstentions, thus meeting the two-thirds threshold required.

The resolution, backed by 61 student groups and 34 faculty members, calls for “divesting from corporations that violate Palestinian human rights and calls on NYU to adopt a socially responsible investment policy that upholds human rights for all”.

Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups B’Tselem and Al-Haq have both received a prestigious French award, prompting a furious response from Israeli officials.

The five laureates of the 2018 Human Rights Prize of the French Republic were announced on Wednesday, an award which honours individuals or organisations that promote human rights.

The award ceremony will take place at the Ministry of Justice in Paris on 10 December, on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Attendees will include French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet.

Assault on free speech has been a common feature of Israeli governments. This week another example of its efforts to silence critical voices was revealed by the +972 magazine, which reported details of a campaign by the right-wing Netanyahu government to de-fund independent publications and human rights organisations.

In an effort to dry up the funding of the magazine and number of human rights organisations including Breaking the Silence, and B’Tselem, Israel asked the German government to pressure two left-leaning political foundations that provide funding to these organisations.

A US-drafted resolution condemning the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and other Palestinian factions has failed to get the required majority for adoption by the UN General Assembly. This was despite the US “warning” countries which planned to vote against the proposal.

The US and Israel exerted a lot of effort in trying to ensure that the resolution was passed, because while General Assembly resolutions are non-binding on member states, they are considered to be a barometer of world opinion. Introducing the resolution, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, appealed for countries to put to one side their different views of the Israel-Palestine conflict and vote for the resolution. At one stage, Haley seemed to be begging member states not to oppose the US text.

An Israeli soldier was filmed shooting tear gas into a Palestinian school in Hebron during school hours, despite military denials. A military source later said the soldier apparently shot in response to rocks thrown by students.

Palestinians have reported that soldiers have been shooting tear gas and stun grenades into schools, but the Israel Defense Forces has denied such incidents. Haaretz obtained a video documenting at least one such incident.

Last week, Palestinians reported to Israeli veterans’ anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence an increase in the scope of tear gas launched at Hebron schools located in an area of Hebron where many schools can be found, including primary schools.

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to use lethal force against the participants in the peaceful protests organized along the Gaza Strip borders, which witnessed the peaceful protests for the 35th week along the eastern and northern border area of the Gaza Strip. They also continued to use armed force as well during the incursions into the West Bank. In the West Bank, the Israeli forces on the international Day of Persons with Disabilities killed a Palestinian civilian with a disability in Tulkarm and wounded 5 others. In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces wounded 98 civilians, including 28 children, 4 women, 2 journalists, and a female paramedic. The injury of four of those wounded was reported serious.

The Irish Senate voted, on Wednesday, to pass a bill to boycott the trade and importing of goods originating from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The bill was submitted to the Senate by independent Senator Francis Black who hopes that, with support, the vital bill will become law. Palestinian ambassador Ahmed Abdelrazek, along with lawyers who worked on drafting the bill and the legislation’s sponsoring organisations Trócaire, Christian Aid and Ictu (Irish Congress of Trade Unions) all applauded the passing of the bill.

The controversy that has resulted from Marc Lamont Hill’s speech is just the latest iteration of a larger effort to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights in the United States, at a time when the Trump administration is set to reveal its Israel-centric “peace plan” that is set to be a disaster for Palestinians.