The name of ActiveStills, a group of photographers, will be well-known to to readers of factual pieces about Palestine/Israel. That’s not so much because of their obvious technical proficiency, more because they go to the right places and photo what’s actually happening thus bringing truths alive.

Hanan Zoabi is the first Palestinian woman to be elected to the Knesset, in 2009 for Balad, later the Joint List. She is seen as exceptional. But that’s because the west holds to fixed images of Arab women – passive, absorbed in family life, down-trodden. No, she tells Harriet Sherwood, her independence and political courage are not unusual – she’s part of the consensus.

This week, January 23rd-29th 2017, still has Trump stamped all over it. But let’s begin the postings which have escaped that, although as several of these feature lively forms of resistance the impact of Trump politics can be seen even here. The resisters have more creative energy than all the hordes of Trump supporters. The […]

The American Jewish network, IfNotNow, is just one of the many groups to organise against Pres. Trump. It has fewer allies in its determined resistance to the establishment bodies who purport to lead American Jews. They say Jewish values must mean you oppose the Occupation.

The crimes committed by the Israeli state against Palestinians cannot be finessed into the necessary actions of a democratic regime. Barnaby Raine, JfJfP signatory, here upbraids those Liberal Zionists who cling to Israel despite the evidence.

This is a charming but very serious article by American doctor Alice Rothchild centred on the Stop the Wall movement – which is commitedly nonviolent as opposed to the casual violence of the wall builders.

Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has only one rule: don’t get caught in flagrante. Otherwise they can kidnap, bomb and blast enemies of Israel whenever and wherever they like. Asa Winstanley looks at their murderous trail.

Trump has identified the set of old white military men he wants as his executive arm. He imagines that, as they are not inhibited by ‘political correctness’, they will deliver the goods – demonstrating that America is great again and destroying the enemy without and within, viz Muslims. Will they encourage Israel to follow their manly lead?

The close identity between Israel and being Jewish is breaking down. Now strong support is more likely to come from Republican Christians than Democrat Jews – especially the young for whom Israeli policy on Palestinians and against reform Judaism is abhorrent.

The real danger posed by Trump’s choice of National Security Adviser, retired general Michael Flynn, is that as well as seeing all Muslims as enemies and those enemies as all around him he believes that only the bold use of the military to destroy them will make America great again.

It couldn’t have been clearer. Trump told the AIPAC conference last March that ‘we will move the embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem’. That promise is now frayed by uncertainty.

Report from a march that far outnumbered Trump’s inauguration crowd. Many Jewish groups were involved in getting women out and asserting this resistance better expresses Jewish values than does any establishment group. ‘We need to leave our place of privilege and join the liberation movement’ said Rabbi Jacobs.

The Netanyahu-Trump love-in may be short-lived. Before, the Israeli PM defended himself against US pressure by saying he had to hold off the right wing. That Right has responded gleefully to Trump’s election by asserting there is nothing now to stop Israel expanding its power and territory.

Avigdor Lieberman has proposed Palestinian villages in Israel should become part of Palestine. But polls of Israeli Arabs (who don’t want to be called Palestinian) show that most do not want to live in Palestine under any land-swap deal. They regard Palestine as a poor, violent, corrupt, police state. Is Fatah listening?

Torture was banned in Israel in 1999 but permitted under certain conditions fairly soon after. As a means of getting useable information it’s a waste of time. As a means of breaking the spirit of a prisoner and establishing the authority of Shin Bet officials it’s effective and common.

In the expectation that Israel can now do whatever it wants without being chided by the US, Netanyahu has announced that building Jewish houses on Palestinian land will resume [NY Times] though Arab Digest thinks Trump’s MidEast intentions are far less clear.

‘In the Jewish, democratic state’ writes Emily Hilton ‘technological innovation and communal identity are threaded through the fabric of society. So is state violence and displacement’. And the state policy of displacing all Bedouin betrays any notion of the equality of citizens ‘regardless of race, gender or religion’.

Israeli police are acting as an imperious occupier; armed, masked men force Bedouin to leave their homes, demolish the homes, fire randomly at a driver, leave the wounded man to bleed to death and then claim he was a terrorist. This crude violence is uniting Bedouin in angry resistance.

Material has been pouring in this week, January 16th-22nd, 2017 not the unstoppable flow of Trump Tweets but reactions to his actually being called President Trump and what he might do with the power invested in him. For those who can’t bear to read another thing about him and lest they get lost in the […]

People who know Israel and Jerusalem are wary of the uproar that will result if the US does move its embassy to Jerusalem. Those who deal only with mythology and gesture politics, like the US Congress, can’t see the problem.