Israel

The Netherlands has rejected calls by Israel to declare the international campaign calling for the boycott of Israeli products, illegal. On Thursday the Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said that the Dutch government had told Tel Aviv that joining the campaign was an issue of free speech, to which the Dutch people are entitled. Press TV reports: Netherlands is the second country in the European Union to have announced its support for people’s right to join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Israeli warplanes launched two airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip on Thursday morning following reports that a rocket had landed in southern Israel late on Wednesday night. The airstrikes hit an area west of Rafah and the Nuseirat refugee camp located in the southern and central Gaza Strip according to Palestinian media reports. According to Press TV: No casualties have yet been reported in the Thursday morning attacks that followed alleged reports of a rocket fired at an open area in the western part of the occupied Palestinian territories on Wednesday night.

Top Israeli General Speaks Out Against Israel’s Crimes Against Palestinians

General Golan, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, on Holocaust Memorial Day, said:

“If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016.”

Former Israeli Prime minister Ehud Barak has said that Israel is drifting toward fascism under Benjamin Netanyahu. He also said that the current government “needs to be brought down.” RT reports: Barak, who led the country for over a decade in the 1990s and later served as defense minister under Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, was commenting on the latest government reshuffle made this week by his former boss.

I have to admit, I found David Samuels’s defense of his now-infamous New York Times Magazine article to be delightfully amusing. From my perspective, the important paragraph of his defense is this one: