Portside

Barghouti’s statement, posted to social media around noon EST in Arabic. The letter lauds gains from the strike, including increased family visits, more clothing, special unnamed services for female and child prisoners, expedited transfers and, most importantly, the establishment of a collective bargaining committee where Israeli prison authorities will 'dialogue with the prisoners’ representatives in the forthcoming few days to discuss all issues without exception.'*

In many ways the Security Council vote is Obama’s last hurrah, the swan song not only of his presidency but of unequivocal American support for a two-state solution and opposition to Jewish settlements.

An amazing turn for a major leader of the American Jewish mainstream - David Gordis rethinking view of Israel. He writes: Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal and the visionary. These values have been subordinated to a cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism, severe inequalities...and distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.

The idea of Israel has long been an integral part of Jewish-American identity. But with a generational change among American Jews and increasingly stark political differences with Israel's leadership, could this be the dawn of a new era?

Seldom, if ever, have Israel's decision-makers been so sharply at odds with their professional watchdogs on so many critical issues. Netanyahu has staked out a position on the nature of Islamist terrorism that's fundamentally at odds with his own intelligence community. Other questions include the causes of the current violence and strategies for containing it, the advisability of goodwill gestures toward the Palestinians, and the feasibility of resuming peace talks.

Scores of Palestinians were injured in clashes across the West Bank and more than 200 were arrested in Jerusalem, after Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday he is running an all-out war against Palestinian terrorism. Palestinians protested Tuesday in a day of rage, Reports from Palestine, statement by Palestinian Red Crescent Society and Jewish Voice for Peace. Protest vigil in Tel Aviv against the occupation and escalation Oct. 9.

Many Israeili security insiders say the deal signed in Vienna isn't as bad as Netanyahu claims. Some call it good for Israel. They include former chief of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin; former chief of arms technology, Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, who now chairs The Israel Space Agency; former chief of military operations, Israel Ziv; the architect of Israeli military intelligence, Dov Tamari; former director of Shin Bet domestic security service, Ami Ayalon; and others.

While Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party retains control of the Prime Minister's office, various parties even further to the right grabbed other key positions, guaranteeing that the country at least continues if not escalates its rejectionism with the Palestinians and the Iranian nuclear deal. Oppostion leader Isaac Herzog Labor Party leader denies that he will join coalition government.

Palestinian citizens of Israel - and their political parties - agreed on a most basic principle: there should be equality under law and in practice between them and Israeli-Jews. Everything else, the peace process, the two state solution, could fall to the side. Netanyahu's demographic fear-mongering is rooted in the foundation of the Zionist project in Palestine and demographic engineering to ensure political power remains in the hands of one ethno-religious group.

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