There is an interesting problem with selling the “Iran as Nazi Germany” line. If President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel’s Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews? EI contributor Jonathan Cook asks, what is the basis for Israel’s dire forecasts — the ideological scaffolding being erected, presumably, to justify an attack on Iran? Read more about Israel's Jewish problem in Tehran 

Agrexco has become a target in international campaigns for a boycott of Israeli goods. Fruit and vegetable exporter Agrexco is fifty-percent owned by the Israeli state, and is responsible for the export of 60-70 percent of all settlement produce, including that from the Jordan Valley. The report “To exist is to Resist, Eye on the Jordan Valley” was recently published by MA’AN Development Center and the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and offers detailed information on the ongoing Israeli colonization of the highly fertile lands of the Jordan Valley. Read more about Report: Israel plundering the Jordan Valley 

Seven weeks into their displacement from Gaza, up to 700 of 6,000 stranded Palestinians returned home this week via the border crossing at al-Oja, north Sinai, controlled by Egypt and Israel. Their return via this terminal, traditionally used for the transportation of goods into Israel, is described as a one-time-only solution designed to solve the immediate crisis. The plan was forged by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with the approval of the Egyptian government. Serene Assir investigates from Egypt. Read more about Political obfuscation and stranded Palestinians in Egypt 

Despite the media’s fixation on Hamas and Bush’s renewed interest in “peace,” the truth of the matter is that nothing has changed on the ground for the Palestinians. Each week Israel rolls its tanks into the West Bank and fires its missiles on Gaza. These are specific attacks on people that will be recorded as statistics; the stories of those affected will never be told. Sonja Karkar writes for EI. Read more about One week in July 

The contents of school textbooks in Palestine/Israel have often been the cause of controversy, normally when a report is published purporting to reveal “shocking revelations” about the alleged indoctrination of Palestinian schoolchildren. Last week, however, it was Israeli textbooks in the spotlight, as the Ministry of Education approved a new textbook with a difference. EI contributor Ben White finds that the inclusion of the term “Nakba” in Israeli textbooks is a perfect opportunity to see how the event is viewed in “official” discourse in the West and within Israel itself. Read more about The Nakba in Israeli textbooks and official discourse 

QALQILYA, 26 July 2007 (IRIN) - Three years ago, in July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague issued an advisory opinion, which, by a vote of 14 to one, declared the barrier illegal, and expressed particular concern that parts of it were being built within the occupied Palestinian territory. In the Qalqilya district of the northern West Bank, many Palestinians were separated from their agricultural land and livelihood, because the barrier did not always follow the internationally recognized “green line” between Israel and the Palestinian area. Read more about Three years after ICJ wall ruling, access to land still denied 

The following is a speech delivered by activist Smadar Lavie at a rally against the demolition of 30 families’ homes in Kfar Shalem, Israel, 7 July 2007: No one has ever forced the kibbutzniks or the residents of the spiffy neighborhoods erected on the ruins of Palestine’s Nakba villages to keep on living in the precarious indeterminacy typical of Kfar Shalem. Mizrahim were forced to make Kfar Shalem their home from 1948 on, so that the Palestinians would have no place to return to, and for 60 years. Now the Mizrahim too are forced to vacate this land, their homes, in favor of the Ashkenazi real estate barons. Read more about Dry twigs 

Today, Palestine and the Palestinians are divided as never before. The West Bank and Gaza are geographically and politically separated, divisions which are exacerbated by the political rift between Fatah and Hamas and the specter of civil war. Meanwhile, stateless Palestinian refugees are largely disconnected from their brethren in Palestine and the Diaspora, as well as from any semblance of a representative national movement. EI contributor Osamah Khalil argues that the time is ripe for Palestinians to reclaim their national movement by demanding the dissolving of the PA and the reviving of the PLO. Read more about Reclaiming Palestine