Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich dismissed the existence of a Palestinian people in a speech he delivered in Paris on Sunday.

“There is no such thing as Palestinians because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” said Smotrich who heads the Religious Zionist Party.

“Who are the [real] Palestinians? I am Palestinian,” he said.

He recalled his family’s 13 generations in the Land of Israel, mentioning his grandmother who had been born in the northern border town of Metula over a hundred years ago before the creation of the state.

'The American Jewish community and our American political leaders need to recognize and acknowledge this is a different day and it can't be the same old responses' a protest organizer said

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Israeli regime’s murder of Rachel Corrie, an American pro-Palestine activist, in the Gaza Strip, but her parents are still battling for accountability and justice. 

Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was crushed to death by a 60-tonne Israeli armored bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while acting as a human shield to stop a Palestinian home from demolition in the Rafah refugee camp.

A Gallup poll published on Thursday shows an increasing trend of American Democrats sympathizing with Palestinians.

According to the poll, 49% of their sympathy now lies with the Palestinians, as opposed to 38% with Israelis.

On March 16, four Palestinians, including a teenager, were killed by undercover Israeli officers during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service and police said in a joint statement that members of the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit “neutralized” two wanted Palestinian gunmen inside Jenin after receiving intelligence about their whereabouts.

Twenty years ago on March 16, the world got a tragic glimpse into what the state of Israel was going to become. Given the green light in the Oval Office by President George W. Bush, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – “a man of peace," Bush said at the time – started the now-inevitable march to apartheid and the murderous treatment of the Palestinians against whom the main battle would be waged.

Last month, a Palestinian rights group filed a federal complaint against George Washington University (GW), alleging the institution allows discrimination against Palestinians to persist unabated on campus.

Palestine Legal filed a federal complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, demanding it investigates what the organization describes as a “years-long, hostile environment of anti-Palestinian racism.”

B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end. That is the future we are working towards.