Top news stories from Israel/Palestine: April 24, 2018

What We’re Reading

Gaza

Video: Crisis in Gaza,

A video clip from Bernie Sanders features clips from his speech on Gaza at the J Street conference interspersed with commentary from human rights organizations such as Breaking the Silence, Gisha, the New Israel Fund, and others.

Humanitarian snapshot: mass casualties in the context of demonstrations in the Gaza strip ,

The large number of casualties among unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, including a high percentage of demonstrators hit by live ammunition, has raised concerns about excessive use of force.

Behind bloody Gaza clashes, economic misery and piles of debt,

Every Friday for the past month, thousands of Palestinians have surged to Gaza’s border fence with Israel in a show of anger and defiance, some throwing stones and molotov cocktails, others simply wanting to be there.

Blaming a child for the sniper's bullet that killed him,

Education Minister Naftali Bennett claims 15-year-old Mohammed Ayoub wouldn’t have been shot dead by an Israeli sniper if he had been at school. Bennett’s comments reflect a reality in which Israeli soldiers kill with impunity.

Khansaa Gaza: Mother mourns sons killed by Israeli forces,

Nawal Abu Hajeela, 58, is known locally as Khansaa of Gaza after 7th century Arab poet who lost four sons in battle.

Gazans face hunger by June as UN agency funding falls short by $200m,

UN relief and works agency chief says emergency food aid may run out if it cannot fill gap left by America’s decision to cut funding.

Israeli politics

The real danger of Natalie Portman,

Israeli leaders are relentlessly hammering home the idea that the kind of political dissent displayed by Natalie Portman is foreign. And dissenters, by definition, are not real Israelis.

US-Israeli/Palestinian relations

US State Department applies different methodology in its Israel/Palestine human rights report,

The State Department has not explained why it has used different terminology in respect to the Russian occupation of Crimea and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory in circumstances where there is no relevant legal distinction.