For the best of this item, click on the link in the posting to see the marvellour photos taken by writer Eve Bartlett of the beautiful mosaics, buildings and artefacts in Gaza which have survived Israel’s bombing and blockade and UNESCO’s indifference. The Pharaohs, Canaanites, Philistines, Crusaders, Mamluks, Romans and Greeks have all left their mark – despite Israeli attempts to wipe this from history

Jerry Haber takes issue wth Dov Hoch’s blanket opposition to BDS and asks who is prepared to sacrifice what in order to end the occupation

Uri Avnery has been awarded the Leibowitz prize for his life’s work for peace. He recalls the life’s work of distinguished scientist and religious believeer Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-94) who prophesied that Israel would become a nation of work-gang supervisors and secret agents if it maintained the Occupation.

Three of Israel’s most right-wing organisations, Im Tirtzu, Academic Monitor and Isracampus, have named over 1000 of Israel’s most distinguished thinkers, writers and campaigners as being enemies of Israel and exploiting their positions to defame the country. This carries little weight in Israel – it is primarily for the diaspora in which some depend on believing only their support saves the country from extinction.

A film that won the best documentary prize at the 2011 Jerusalem film festival — shown last week at the Sundance film festival — tracks the laws and precedents discovered which turned temporary settlement into permanent colonisation. If Israel does live under the rule of law, it is either military or apartheid law as far as Palestinians in the OPT are concerned

On the last stage of his European tour, in which he is seeking to increase diplomatic presure on Israel to stop settlement building, the PA President tells Russia’s RT that Israel might withdraw from a few settlements and try to persuade the world that this has changed the status quo of occupier and occupied. Which it won’t. But he remains willing to negotiate on the two things that matter – borders and security.

Holocaust memorial day – 27th January – received little attention in Britain – the Holocaust Memorial Trust ran a Speak Up Speak Out campaign against injustice. In Israel it prompted serious comment on how the state uses or abuses the holocaust as the uniting factor in the country, its only raison d’etre and justification for a state of existential anxiety. It does not prompt concern for others. Articles from Ha’aretz and 972.

28 January is the first annivaersary of the murder of 17 year old Yousef Ikhlayl who was farming family land when a group of ‘touring’ settlers shot him for no reason other than that he was in their sights Despite witness and photographic evidence no-one has been arrested. Bekah Wolf, founder of the PSP, which accompaies Palestinians to their farms, says this type of assault and judicial indifference is the norm.

Laws that were originally (1954) intended as an emergency measure to prevent Palestinians returning have been made permanent to keep out North Africans – and anyone else who might spoil Israeli ‘purity’. The other side of locking Palestinians and Africans out, or up in the world’s largest detention centre, is that Israelis are immuring themselves in the cleansed space inside massive walls and barricades.

Peter Jenkins, Britain’s former representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency, says that the West should grant what Iran wants – to be treated as an equal partner in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – in exchange for accepting IAEA safeguards over its nuclear enrichment programme. Last November, Palestinians at Gaza’s CPDS discussed the implications for them of the Israel/Iran conflict, 2nd

Despite a history of (selective) immigration, Israeli state and people are baulking at having to deal with an influx of refugees, mostly from Eritrea. They are not considered asylum seekers, nor given work permits, but end up sleeping rough or huddled into the poorest parts of cities, whose residents respond with racist hostility. Two reports from 972 plus a 2009 Guardian article explaining why so many flee Eritrea

This is a long, thoughtful interview with Balad MK Haneen Zoabi by Jonathan Cook and IOA. Amongst much else she explains why she is more hostile to leftwing than rightwing Zionists, why Palestinians must look to the new tools demonstrated by the Arab revolutions and the effect of Israel redefining itself as a Jewish rather than democratic state

In the week of the UK’s Holocaust memorial day (Friday January 27th) Robert Cohen writes a letter to Anne Frank’s spirit, wondering what she would make of a cruel legacy in which ‘The Holocaust has been used to explain and justify every aggression’, Palestinians have been dispossessed and every criticism of these acts has been called antisemitic.

EU diplomats in Ramallah and Jerusalem have recommended that the European Commission make it illegal for member states to support Israeli settlements and that the EU should adopt a more “active and visible” implementation of its policy. 2) Such positions help explain the scorn and antipathy being shown by Israeli rightists and US Republicans to their ancestral European homeland.

In her account of one Christian family trying to reach Nazareth for Christmas, even Amira Hass admits defeat in trying to understand the rules which direct Palestinians, with the right permits, to spend the day driving in circles, never to arrive, on ‘general’s orders’

Guardian readers write in about anti-semitism versus criticism of Israeli policies, Palestine and the right to protest. Who keeps confusing these distinct positions? Not the LPO4, one of whom is defending her right to her beliefs at an employment tribunal (3rd letter plus last item)

All the candidates to be Republican candidate in the next US presidential election have referred to the Palestinians, with varying degrees of inaccuracy and invention. Such (well-financed) disinformation becomes part of popular political beliefs. Hasan Abu Nimah sommons the historical imperative on the Palestinians’ side.

A right-wing judge who lives in an illegal West Bank settlement has been appointed to Israel’s Supreme Court, despite 2) a formal objection from Yesh Gvul, the group of ‘selective refuseniks’. 3, Satirist B. Michael describes his role in getting this judge elevated to his Supreme position and calls on Brecht to make the case. Reports from +972 and Ha’aretz

Following PM Netanyahu’s successful mission to eastern Europe to get support against the Palestinian bid at the UN, thousands of work permits have been issued to Romanian and Bulgarian men to work on Israel’s building sites. Mutual satisfaction – except for Palestinian and Chinese labourers, and those who have accidents. Roy Arad blogs, readers comment.

Being ‘pro-Israel’ means, for many, seeing the rest of the world as, at best, alien and at worst as consisting of ’100s of millions’ who want to destroy the country. The views of 24 people, almost all Israeli or Jewish American men (what, no Christian evangelists?) were solicited by Moment magazine. They include critical and analytic, paranoid and racist and the view that ‘Jews who are anti-Israel’ have a genetic sickness