[Note: Please see the page “Other Sources” for a list of the sources used that are not specifically “news” sites, the location of many of the opinion pieces here.] 

SELECTED  NEWS  OF  THE  DAY 

ISRAEL  REJECTS  UN  PROPOSALS  TO  PROTECT  PALESTINIANS   Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, condemned the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ report on improving Palestinian protection in the occupied territories.   ___Danny Danon spoke on behalf of Israel and announced Israel’s rejection of the report presented by Guterres on Friday.   More.
ISRAELI  NAVY  OPENS  FIRE  AT  GAZA  FLOTILLA     Israeli naval forces opened fire at dozens of Gaza flotilla boats that set sail on Saturday from the besieged Gaza Strip port in attempt to break the maritime blockade imposed by Israel.   ___According to local sources, Israeli naval forces opened fire a while after five boats of the Gaza flotilla set sail towards the northern borders of Gaza to break the nearly 12-year siege.   More.
ISRAEL  ARRESTS  PALESTINIAN  JOURNALIST  FOR  FILMING  ISRAELI  SOLDIERS     A Palestinian journalist has been arrested by Israeli authorities for filming soldiers operating in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Facebook Live. They claim he was inciting violence against Israel and the army.   ___Ali Dar Ali live-streamed two videos on Facebook on Tuesday morning, which showed Israeli soldiers . . . drawing up a plan of a Palestinian home, a procedure typically done before demolishing a building, according to Gaza-based journalist Hind Khoudary.   More.
IRISH  TOWN  TO  TWIN  WITH  BEIT  SAHOUR  A town in Ireland has completed the first step towards twinning with Beit Sahour in the occupied West Bank.   ___Kerry County Council has passed unopposed a motion to link Tralee, in County Kerry, with the Palestinian municipality.   ___Councilor Pa Daly of the Sinn Fein political party, who proposed the motion, said that he had the idea of twinning with a Palestinian town after the killing of more than 60 Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces on Nakba Day.  More.

COMMENTARY  AND  OPINION

‘FARMER  TERRORISM’  IS  THE  NEW  SLOGAN  FOR  JEWISH  SETTLERS
Ramona Wadi
In less than three months, Jewish settlers have destroyed over 2,000 trees and grapevines in the occupied West Bank. Rights group B’Tselem has issued a detailed report on this destruction, including testimony from Palestinian farmers. Bales of hay and barley fields were also destroyed. The destruction wrought by Israel’s settler-colonists equates Palestinian agriculture to terrorism; slogans sprayed on Palestinian property following the destruction included “No to farmer terrorism”.   ___The personal testimonies show that Israel has once again refused to act in order to deter settler violence against Palestinians and their land.  More.

JEWISH  NATION-STATE  LAW:  WHY  ISRAEL  WAS  NEVER  A  DEMOCRACY
Ramzy Baroud 
The head of the Arab Joint List Alliance at the Israeli Knesset, Aymen Odeh, described the passing of the racist Jewish Nation-state Law as “the death of our democracy.”    ___Did Odeh truly believe that, prior to this law, he had lived in a true democracy? 70 years of Israeli Jewish supremacy, genocide, ethnic cleansing, wars, sieges, mass incarceration, numerous discriminatory laws, all aimed at the very destruction of the Palestinian people should have given enough clues that Israel was never a democracy, to begin with.   ___The Jewish Nation-state Law is merely the icing on the cake. It simply gave those who argued, all along, that Israel’s attempt at combining democracy with ethnic supremacy was racism masquerading as democracy, the munition they needed to further illustrate the point.   More.

WHY  WE  CONTINUE  TO  MARCH  IN  GAZA
Abdalrahim Alfarra
I was sitting behind my desk in my family’s supermarket in Khan Younis on 14 May when my cousin Ali approached.     ___There was going to be another gathering in al-Faraheen for that day’s Great March of Return protest, he said. Would I join him?  [Abdalrahim continues with an account of his cousin’s shooting by Israeli soldiers.]
___For Ali and myself, the Great March of Return was a dream. Here we were, Palestinians, together, all calling for the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands from where they were expelled by Zionist forces in 1948. All of us, together, were demanding the lifting of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, now in its 11th year. We were united against the US embassy move to Jerusalem.   ___I was most motivated by the need for the rest of the world to see the protests from a Gazan perspective. There aren’t enough activists here who can tell our story in English to people abroad and reveal how Israel’s terror and inhumanity impact our lives.  More.

“SAND  AND  TEARS,”  by  Ramzy  Baroud
No water here, no humanity either;
only footprints our mothers made
crossing the Sahel into Gaza where
men are pained by long memories,
and women plot their return to die.

Wind, weeping all night, made my
eyes dry, yet when I saw yours
I remembered my name, and I was
determined to reach out for
the moon and ride her back to the

Beginning of our dreams, my hand
trembling in your firm grasp,
above the last dune where my
desert abruptly ends
and yours maps out a continent.
— For a refugee from Mali

—From I Remember My Name, Novum Pro Books, 2016.