The key development this week has been the intensification of McCarthyite repression in Israel, with its increasing focus on ‘the enemy within’. The New Israel Fund has been in the centre of the storm as various postings below testify. (You can email email your displeasure to PM Netanyahu by going to the NIF website at http://nif.org/bibi). But also: the assault on internationals working for Palestinian NGOs has intensified; Richard Goldstone has been on the receiving end of increasingly poisonous venom [...]

97 signatories are objecting to a Zionist Federation event in London on Tuesday 9th February, celebrating the ‘advances Israel has made to helping the planet’. They chronicle some of the environmental disasters Israeli policies are responsible for and call on David Bellamy to cancel his guest appearance at the event…

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) based in Gaza City, dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law and upholding democratic principles in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). It has just revamped its website and carries a range of useful materials [...]

The IDf has raided Ramallah to arrest international activists in violation of Oslo Accords [...]

Bitterlemons.org is a well-known website that presents Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints on prominent issues of concern. It focuses on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and peace process. It is produced, edited and partially written by Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian, and Yossi Alpher, an Israeli. Less well known is its counterpart Bitter Lemons International, equally committed to carrying a range of views on the topics it discusses. Of immediate interest to readers of this website will be the 14 January 2010 edition on Egypt’s Gaza wall [...]

Jerry Haber has commented recently on Alan Dershowitz’s character assassination of Richard Goldstone. In this post he looks in detail at Dershowitz’ extended critique of Goldstone and finds it sorely wanting: “Prof. Dershowitz had not written about the Goldstone Report at all. Rather he had fashioned in his mind another report – let’s call it the “Goldberg” Report – and having shaped this straw man, picked it apart [...]

In a series of disturbing developments Israeli society is closing in on itself, with toleration of dissent at a low ebb. The website Coteret is keeping a watching brief on these developments and here we provide links to a series of articles on the topic [...]

Dr Yeela Raanan, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, writes: On Tuesday this week the Government of Israel destroyed crops in the Bedouin village of Al-Mazraa. “Crops” hardly defines the one inch high wheat that the community has managed to grow in the desert land. The Bedouin farmers do not have water allocations like their Jewish counterparts, and are dependent on rain. The annual average is 2 inches of rain [...]

We wanted to quickly update you on the prominent ad (attached) we published this morning on the front page of Ha’aretz, calling for a credible and independent Israeli investigation of operation Cast Lead. Today (Feb. 4) is the final day allotted for Israel (and Hamas) to respond to the Goldstone report [...]

Didi Remez writes on Coteret: Maariv, Israel’s third-largest newspaper, has been a primary instrument for the dissemination of the recently launched anti-NIF smear campaign. To its credit, however, the newspaper has hosted dissenting opinion on a daily basis… Merav David and… Maya Bengal (two senior reporters on the paper) published a particularly incisive criticism of the campaign and related Israeli policies in the paper yesterday [...]