The criminalization of political speech and activism against Israel has become one of the gravest threats to free speech in the West. In France, activists have been arrested and prosecuted for wearing T-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel.

While right-wing ties deepen, relations between progressives - against the occupation, for liberal democracy and pluralism in Israel - are fraying. We need a new way to make political change, together.

In April, administrators at California State University at Fresno canceled a search to fill the Edward Said Chair in Middle East Studies after a committee came up with four finalists, all of whom were reported to be of “Middle Eastern background” and to be focused on Palestinian issues.

The Palestinian village of Sarura was destroyed in 1997 and its residents have not returned for fear of settler violence. Dozens of Jewish volunteers from the U.S., Canada and Australia have joined Palestinian activists in renovating it.

In yet another sign that the Democratic left is determined to stand up for Palestinian human rights, 34 congresspeople have signed letters supportive of Issa Amro, the courageous and non-violent leader of protest actions in occupied Hebron who has been accused by Israel of 18 charges...

Since its initial coalescence in 2002, Brand Israel has commissioned a large-scale segmentation study in 2010 and a followup in 2016. For anyone with the slightest Zionist impulse, the downward slope of Israel support is disturbing.

C’est donc en tant que citoyens d’horizons divers mais tous attachés aux valeurs de justice, de paix et d’égalité, que nous demandons que cessent l’occupation, la colonisation et l’impunité israélienne qui durent depuis 50 ans, afin que le peuple palestinien puisse enfin jouir de ses droits les plus fondamentaux et vivre dans la dignité et la liberté.

Palestinian rights supporters steered to passage a groundbreaking resolution that puts California Democrats far ahead of the national and other state parties.

On October 5, 1961, in a letter to his editor, James Baldwin writes from within Israel: “it has become very important for me to assess what Israel makes me feel.”

This is unbelievable. Haaretz is surely one of the greatest newspapers in the world, because it insists on telling Israelis the truth about their society as the country loses the good opinion of the world.

“Back in the day,” which in this case was 8 February 2007, the US State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism adopted a “working definition” of anti-Semitism which included the following point: It is anti-Semitic to “deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour)”.

Entire U.S. Senate sign letter demanding new UN chief 'ensure that Israel is treated neither better nor worse than any other UN member in good standing'.

Instead of responding to it with constructive criticism, you launched defamatory attacks on all involved.

Earlier this week, the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) cancelled an event planned as part of ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’, on the grounds that it “contravenes” a controversial definition of anti-Semitism recently endorsed by the UK government.

The task of Israel’s advocates has become a lot more complicated. At least, that is the argument which one such lobbyist has been making. Alex Benjamin, head of the organization Europe Israel Public Affairs (EIPA), recently lamented that his friends and acquaintances in Brussels weren’t enamored by moves towards annexing most of the West Bank.

Tzipi Livni, ancienne ministre des Affaires étrangères d’Israël, renonce à venir à Bruxelles, attendue par la Justice belge au nom de la compétence universelle. Cette importante personnalité politique israélienne devait assister ce lundi 23 janvier au Parlement européen...

AIPAC is hoping to turn UK politics into a carbon copy of the US Congress, where the powerful lobby group has long quashed virtually all open criticism of Israel’s violent suppression of Palestinian rights.

The U.S. essentially admitted that its unyielding defense of Israel in the diplomatic arena was a disastrous strategy. With Obama bowing out, Europe will need to act on this lesson.

According to the Senate’s new Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, Henrietta Szold, Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber could also be defined as Jew-haters.

Given US President-elect Donald Trump's past declarations regarding the two-state solution, the European Union is now exploring a more independent regional policy as a basis for international consensus.

The shocking Donald Trump victory in the 2016 election has many people wondering what if it had been Bernie Sanders facing off against Donald Trump. How tantalizing does that race seem now? Naturally we hear if Hillary couldn’t beat Trump, how would Sanders?

The US government is being sued for authorizing massive weapons deliveries to Israel. A new lawsuit notes that the State Department approved the export of more than 47 million rounds of ammunition to Israel between 2007 and 2009. That was enough to “injure or kill every Palestinian living under occupation 10 times over,” according to the lawsuit.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016. A very large segment of the American people are shell-shocked. Bitterly critical as we were of Hillary Clinton, and I include myself in that camp, we still somehow expected her to win. We thought she, and “the establishment,” were invincible.

As Western outrage erupts over the relentless destruction of Aleppo and its people, why is there no similar clamour for a halt to the more prolonged pulverising of Gaza and the continuing slaughter of civilians there?

The Obama administration just handed Israel the largest military aid deal in US history. Now it is feigning outrage that Israel keeps colonizing the occupied West Bank, as it has done for decades, in defiance of the White House’s wishes.

It seems our politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic, are under instructions to drop the J-word from their vocabulary. I mean J-for-Justice, conspicuously missing from any discussion about Middle East peace and, more specifically, an end to the hell in the Holy Land.

In the wake of Guantanamo, CIA practice exposed and Trump's waterboarding enthusiasm, America had started a conversation about the moral and political costs of torture. Israel hasn't gotten there yet.

In 2016, ISIS is asking Iraqis the same question (though brutally and violently) as the West’s bureaucrats did in 1925: Who belongs and who does not?

“US should withhold military aid until Israel recognises Palestinian sovereignty.

It's hard to tell what's more offensive about Netanyahu and Bennett's new initiative to 'strengthen' Jewish identity abroad: the idea itself or its ham-handed, arrogant and ultimately counterproductive execution.

The cops flew into Tel Aviv on a Sunday afternoon. Four hours later, they met with an Anti-Defamation League official and an Israeli professor, who gave them an “introduction to Israeli politics and society.”

Saint-Etienne fans flew Palestine flags during their game against Beitar Jerusalem last night just a week after Celtic did the same against Hapoel Be’er Sheva.

Thousands were touched by the Celtic fans’ show of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Large sections of the stadium turned into a sea of green, red, black and white as fans raised the Palestinian flag despite repeated warnings from European football’s governing body (UEFA).

The longing for international pressure is not only pointless, but enfeebling and enervating.”

With the US preoccupied by elections, Egypt not committed, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas politically weak and Israel reluctant, the European Union is about to give up on the two-state solution process.

A group of European parliamentarians and lawyers recently returned from a delegation to Palestine organized by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, working in cooperation with Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Open any British newspaper, from the Guardian to the Mail, and be confronted with anti-Corbyn smears. Attacks that have included criticism of poor local election results, weak media management or “woeful” Prime Minister’s Questions performances are now fixated on linking Corbyn with a supposedly ‘endemic’ anti-semitism in Labour’s rank and file.

Unbelievably, Labour Party chiefs are trying to persuade David Miliband to come back from New York, parachute into a safe seat and snatch the Labour Party leadership from Jeremy Corbyn, according to newspaper reports.

De toute éternité, les humains ont eu besoin de se raconter de belles histoires pour se rassurer. Les contes de fée, le Père Noël, l'amour éternel, le gouvernement du peuple par le peuple, le Tour de France ou les Jeux olympiques sans dopage, ... les libertés académiques face au sionisme.

British Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood condemned on Thursday Israel's decision moving forward with another 323 illegal settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem.

A senior Israeli official will arrive in Washington next week for a final round of negotiations involving the largest military aid package the United States has ever given any country and that will last more than a decade after President Obama leaves office.

The US Department of State released a statement Wednesday slamming Israel’s continued settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, while expressing concern over the recent increase of demolitions on Palestinian homes that have left dozens of Palestinians homeless this week.

Israel has granted only 44 construction permits in response to over 2,000 requests, Lars Faaborg-Andersen tells Knesset meeting. Buildings that were destroyed were 'illegal buildings,' Israeli body says in response.

Many of the Israeli arms technologies being sold to Europe are used in the repression of Palestinians, including in the destructive 2014 war on the besieged and densely-populated Gaza Strip.

Palestinians asked American Jews to join them in a 'Freedom Summer.' The result was extraordinary.

Eight ambassadors to Israel have written to the Israeli military accusing it of breaking international humanitarian law by confiscating shelters for Bedouins in the occupied West Bank that were paid for by European governments.

EU states, in an internal report drafted last year, have said the outbreak of Palestinian knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem is due, in large part, to Israel’s occupation. They said the attacks began after right-wing Israeli politicians and religious groups began to question the status quo on Arab rights at the Temple Mount complex in the Old City.

A lawmaker caused a media firestorm at the launch of an independent UK Labour Party report into anti-Semitism and racism on Thursday. The report failed to back claims that the Labour Party had been overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism.

As European leaders are gathered in Brussels to discuss the future of the EU, they would be well advised to put into effect values of accountability, justice and solidarity - and halt funding for Israel's repressive apparatus against Palestinians.

Op 3 juni 2016 verzamelden buitenlandministers uit 29 landen in Parijs voor een internationale conferentie over het Israëlisch-Palestijnse vredesproces. De slotverklaring raakte niet verder dan de recyclage van elementen waarover al decennia lang een consensus bestaat.

The Resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a fundamental interest of the EU. The EU’s objective is a two-state solution with an independent, democratic, viable and contiguous Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours.

Israeli official details tense and difficult meeting in which the EU expressed opposition to 'home demolition and forced evacuation of populations.'

Sales to Europe grew from $724 million in 2014 to $1.63 billion in 2015, presumably as a consequence of the refugee crisis and the rise in terror attacks on the continent. Sales to North America also climbed, to $1.02 billion.

New concerns arise as activists discovered the EU-Israel partnership through the LAWTRAIN Project in the framework of the EU HORIZON 2020. The project is meant to unify the methodology for interrogation among Israeli and EU police forces and is a de facto normalisation of Israel’s most cruel practices, including physical and psychological torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, threats, racial discrimination.

Motivated by the dual aims of strengthening the Middle East Peace Process and contributing to Palestinian state-building, the European Union and its member states have been the biggest donors of financial assistance to the Palestinians.

The concept of Israel has become a hidden cornerstone within political consensus in Western European states. This is not unrelated to the disappearing differences between the traditional Left and Right. Within the current political climate, not only Germany but also all other western states are ‘friends of Israel’.

Some 90 Palestinian Bedouins, the majority of them children, were left homeless on Monday when Israeli forces disassembled EU-donated mobile homes without giving prior notice in the Jabal al-Baba neighborhood in the outskirts of the village of al-Eizariya east of Jerusalem.

A detailed new report raises troubling questions for all those who retain hope for a transparent and democratic Europe that is supportive of the Palestinian struggle, writes Hilary Aked.

In een rapport beschrijven drie onderzoekers hoe rechtse Amerikaanse organisaties en personen die in de VS islamofobie en steun voor de koloniale nederzettingen van Israël in Palestina promoten ook financieel actief zijn in Brussel om de Europese pro-Israël-lobby te ondersteunen. Hun onderzoek nam twee jaar in beslag.

It was an assessment no one expected from the deputy head of the Israeli military. In his Holocaust Day speech last week, Yair Golan compared current trends in Israel with Germany in the early 1930s, as Nazism took hold.

Slopingen zijn geen nieuw fenomeen in bezet Palestijns gebied, maar een essentieel onderdeel van het wrede leven onder de bijna 50 jaar durende Israëlische bezetting. De schaal van de afgelopen maanden is echter ongezien, schrijft 11.11.11.

Inside the pro-Israel campaign to crush Labour’s left-wing insurgency... Though Labour performed far better in the May 5 local elections than a generally hostile media predicted, Corbyn’s opponents are determined to paint him as unelectable, just as they did during last year’s campaign for leadership.

In practice, the Jewish State in Israel/Palestine has meant an ethnocracy where Jews are given special and exclusive rights over other citizens and non-citizens under the sovereignty of the Israeli government. This is a system that we (Horowitz and Weiss) reject for political, personal and moral reasons that are in no way connected to vilifying or discriminating against Jews, the traditional definition of anti-Semitism.

We are desperately in need of some sanity as the British political and media establishment seek to generate yet another “new anti-semitism” crisis, on this occasion to undermine a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party before the upcoming local elections.

Too often I see those in solidarity with Palestinians lose the plot and allow opponents to grab the agenda and deflect attention from where the suffering really exists. That’s exactly what’s been happening in Britain this week as a row over antisemitism in the Labour Party has dominated the news.

Michael Levy, the Labour Party peer and Tony Blair’s former “Lord Cashpoint” claimed on BBC Newsnight a few days ago that “using the word Zionist” is “another form of anti-Semitism”. Using the word. This is an astonishing new level in the attempt to crush dissent over Israel and designate thought crimes.

When the world’s conduct is understood in terms of guilt, one realizes that it needs to be helped to understand that the best way to see to the wellbeing of Israel is to present it with boundaries.

At first glance, the heated argument two members of the British Labour Party conducted in front of reporters’ iPhones on Thursday, sparked by accusations that one of their colleagues posted anti-Semitic comments on Facebook, seems like a story of interest mainly to political junkies in London.

Last year, socialist stalwart Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK’s Labour Party by a landslide. Since then, there has been a steady flow of claims by Israel’s supporters that Corbyn has not done enough to combat anti-Semitism.

Although Israel is geographically located in Asia, the self-described “Jewish state” has emphasized its Europeanness whenever it has suited it to do so.

In his 2013 book "Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East", Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Rashid Khalidi identified three main patterns that have characterized United States policy towards the conflict since 1948: The complaisance of Arab rulers that need US support against their own peoples; presidential solicitude for domestic constituencies; and US unconcern about the fate of the Palestinians.

Although Europe’s most important leaders are vocally opposed to boycotts of Israel, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels are working to make isolating Israel an official EU policy.

Two-page document includes two chapters of ‘sticks’ to be used against Israel, a chapter of ‘carrots’ for the Palestinians.

Israel’s war crimes sometimes have to be overlooked, according to a senior European Union representative. During 2013, Israel reacted angrily when Brussels officials issued a policy paper stating that the EU would not award funding to firms and institutions based in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Die Linke’s position on Palestine has isolated it from the global solidarity movement.