Top news stories from Israel/Palestine: October 3, 2018

What We’re Reading

BDS and Settlement boycotts

Israel Defends Interrogations Of Left-Wing Activists At Airport,

Dan Yakir, chief counsel for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, who petitioned justice officials to investigate the interrogation practice, protested the government’s explanations.

REVEALED: Canary Mission Blacklist Is Secretly Bankrolled By Major Jewish Federation,

For the first time, the Forward has definitively identified a major donor to Canary Mission. It is a foundation controlled by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an annual budget of over $100 million.

Occupation/Human rights

Israel Denies Entry to American Student Even Though She Had a Visa,

Israel prevented on Tuesday the entry of Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old American student whose grandparents are Palestinian, despite her having recently been granted an A/2 Student Visa for her masters’ degree in the Hebrew University.

West Bank olive trees found chopped down in apparent hate crime,

Palestinian farmers from the central West Bank town of Turmusaya say they woke up this morning to find 40 of their olive trees chopped down outside their village, the B’Tselem rights group says.

Fists, Chairs and Tasers: Jerusalem Sees Three Attacks on Arabs by Jews in One Week,

Several Palestinians were lightly injured Sunday when they were attacked by a large group of Orthodox Jews near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, Palestinians said – one of a spate of such assaults on Arabs by Jews in the city in recent days.

US-Israeli/Palestinian relations

Majority of Democratic Congress members plea to restore UNWRA aid,

Almost two-thirds of Democratic Congress members, 112 members of the House of Representatives and 34 senators, sent a letter in appeal to US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to reverse the decision to “end vital United States contributions to the United National Relief [and] Works Agency (UNRWA).”

Palestinian politics

Former PLO envoy in US takes over as top Palestinian diplomat in UK,

Husam Zomlot, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s former top diplomat in Washington, DC, has taken on the role of head of the PLO’s mission in the United Kingdom.

Blocked in a car by a mob, kept from their HQ: Why UNRWA staff had to flee Gaza,

The emergency evacuation of nine foreign employees of UNRWA from Gaza to Israel on Monday was necessitated after Palestinian protesters surrounded and blocked a car containing UNRWA officials for an hour that day in a “threatening” and “dangerous” confrontation, the head of the agency’s operations in the coastal enclave told The Times of Israel.

What We're Watching

The Nation-State Law with Mossawa,

FMEP hosted a discussion with Jafar Farah and Nabila Espinoly of Mossawa. The panel was facilitated by Debra Shushan of Americans for Peace Now.