This week’s postings at JfJfP.com

August 10th-16th  has been a quiet week really, as the logic of trends and events already in train continue to play themselves out. The murder, by arson, of 18-month old Ali Dawabshe continues to provoke reflection – bemused and horrified in turn – on what has become of the Zionist project, with Robert Cohen engaged in Hard talk about Zionism. Was the murder simply a random act of Jewish terror, or the direct result of a nearly 50-year occupation, or can its roots be found in the nature of Zionism itself? Explaining why he no longer calls himself a Zionist of any kind, he nonetheless refuses easy answers to the issues raised. And we at Jews for Justice for Palestinians in A letter to the Chief Rabbi have called on him to stand up for decency, humanity and Jewish values by acknowledging that the attack on the Dawabshe family is a direct result of the privileged position granted by successive Israeli governments to the settler communities.

While on the subject of Zionism, we’ve revisited two older pieces dealing with two of the foundational myths. Diane Mason’s entertaining piece from 2010, Tell Me Again, Who made the desert bloom? And the Magnes Zionist on The myth of exile.

Nearer to home as it were, there are, for a change, two quite celebratory pieces – Gideon Levy with the most unlikely praise for the head of the Israel Medical Association, Dr Leonid Eidelman The doctor who dared to come out against a torturous law – who appeared, says Levy “like a beam of light in the darkness”, highlighting the everyday collaboration with the occupation and the settlers of the entire swathes of Israeli society. And Lynne Segal reflects on how people in Israel/Palestine find ways of continuing to survive, endure and resist in the face of overwhelming odds in her Homage to Eyad El-Sarraj.

We celebrate the English edition of Noga Kadman’s landmark book, Erased from Space and Consciousness (2011), in The nakba revisited . And Return, but to what? is a sympathetic review by Avi Shlaim of Ghada Karmi’s extraordinary new account of exile and the impossibility of finding home, Return: A Palestinian Memoir.

In Be careful what you wish for Palestinian commentator Daoud Kuttab looks at recent developments in Israel/Palestine and the growing support for annexing the West Bank among the Israeli right. A one-state solution to be sure, but not, of course, a secular-democratic annexation…

In what might be seen as a two-finger gesture to Obama, Netanyahu sends a message… by appointing one of Likud’s far right leading officials to be ambassador to the UN. There, if Henry Siegman’s advice is heeded – “Give Up on Netanyahu, Go to the United Nations” – he will encounter a determined effort to enforce a peaceful solution to the conflict. (Siegman is former executive director of the American Jewish Congress, one of the nation’s “big three” US Jewish organizations). Of course, the editors of Tablet magazine have Obama accused of antisemitism in selling the Iran deal , an absurd charge refuted by Matthew Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Todd Gitlin, Prof of Journalism at Columbia, in an icily cutting rebuttal.

And finally, if we sometimes wonder why opposition within Israel isn’t stronger than it is, the answer, sometimes, is that we simply aren’t hearing about what is going on. Here we took a look at the scope, diversity and courage of the activities and interventions of former Israeli soldiers in Our month at Breaking the Silence.