Security is one of the few boom industries in these depression times and nowhere is it so booming as in the arms and ‘security’ trade between the EU and Israel – which happily has the oPt to test new products and services. Germany’s Left party MP Annette Groth explores the links.

Power struggles, exile and a weary people – some of the features of Ashtar’s production of Richard ll at the Globe, reviewed by Achbar Ha’ir. Political protest usurps the play, as was inevitable, in the BBC’s account of Habima’s Merchant of Venice on Tuesday, though the anti-protest protests were uglier and more pointless to Shakespeare critic Peter Kirwan.

Republican Senator Mark Kirk is, with other right-wing Americans, an enemy of the UN Relief and Works Agency(responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees). His amendment, passed by the Senate, demands that those in receipt of UNWRA aid be categorised by length of lineage to residence in Palestine. The result is likely to be a rhetoric denying the number of refugees and the size of UNWRA’s budget.

It is against Israel’s law to ‘remember’ the Naqba – but how can it be forgotten when Palestine is the living block to Israel realising its ambition – possession of the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Uri Avnery takes the long view.

The UK has the fourth biggest Jewish diaspora in the world – so not surprisingly, if with great inconvenience to government and conspiracy theorists, British Jews have no single voice, no single view, no single leader. Last week, the New Statesman magazine ran a special issue on Jews in Britain. Here we post articles by Ed Miliband and Keith Kahn-Harris from that issue plus a link to JfJfP’s advert.

Gains of the prisoners’ hunger strike include the release of PFLP leader Saadat and others from solitary confinement – their effort has, he says, brought a new and rare unity. But footballer Mahmoud al-Sarsak is still on hunger strike (2). Richard Falk – keep your eyes on the issue (3)

Arutz Sheva, a right-wing (‘religious zionist’) media outlet popular amongst settlers, about one sixth of whom are the non-infiltrating sort of immigrant, viz American, reports on the latest anti-immigrant outburst; CNN’s Frida Ghitis is taken aback by Israeli racism.

In 2010 false rumours circulated that Israeli doctors had harvested organs for transplant from Haitians after the earthquake. This gave rise to the accusation of blood libel – the mediaeval fantasy that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes. Here we post pieces from Ynet, 2 news items on Kosovo and Israeli organ trafficking now, Haaretz news and an article from Bloomberg magazine which helps explain some of the many stories circulating on the internet.

Veolia is a multinational company providing services to local authorities and others in the UK. It also provides services linking Israel to its illegal settlements. JfJfP got legal advice on why Veolia could and should be excluded from contracts given by local authorities. The briefing is here.

Shavuot, from Saturday evening to Monday evening, May 26-28, celebrates the ‘giving of the Torah’, and readings from the book of Ruth are customary. This is potentially a rich field for thinking about the energy of ‘the stranger’ , of women’s friendship, the duty of the powerful to protect and the value of literacy and fables. Here are some responses.

In the letter here, the London 2012 Olympic committee makes its contribution to Israel/Palestine border negotiations: place them in separate continents! No border, no problem!

Amnesty’s 2012 report on the occupied Palestian territories shows, in flat legal language, that Palestinians lack freedom — of movement, of access to their land, of house ownership, from unfair torture and unfair detention — while Israel enjoys the freedom to break international law.

A racist mob ran amok in Tel Aviv on Thursday. News 1) and comment 2). Report on the revocation of UN resolution on Zionism is given – see online CiF comments 3). 4) a 2010 poll on racism of Israeli teenagers- the proportion of youth embracing a racist culture has grown since.

Most notable about this poll for the BBC World Service is how differently media outlets report it beginning with a crude interpretation from Palestine Chronicle. We produce the original chart from pollster Globescan. The countries with the most positive rating are Japan, Germany,Canada and UK; least positive Israel, N.Korea, Pakistan, Iran.

Fig-leaves for the institutional players, a naked emperor for the wishful thinkers, all metaphors for the ‘peace process’ convey it is not real. The ICG focuses on new forces, like religion, on possible new actors , Palestinian diaspora, settlers, and on agents, like the Quartet, to be discarded.

The dead-locked status quo in Israel/Palestine relations is forcing new tactics. 1) Some Palestinians have opted for a stategy of separatism (though no national liberation movement has succeeded without allies). 2) The ICG suggests new partners including settlers and Palestinian diaspora while Blue White Future advocates “constructive unilateralism”

The American Anti-Defamation League has carried out one of its regular polls to discover anti-semitic attitudes in Europe. Hungary, Poland, Spain top most of their measures but sharp differences are blurred. There is no question on Palestinians (see discussion below). Plus Haaretz +972 on anti-semitism in 2012.

This post contains news and comments from 2003 about anti-semitism in Europe, prompted by an EU poll on threats to peace and a speech by Ariel Sharon. The suspicion of resurgent European anti-semitism began to be voiced as the EU became more powerful, Israel occupied Palestinian territory in 1967 and a new generation entered political life.

This is less a review than a push by David Shulman for what Peter Beinart ignores: that the Israeli state is wholly geared to getting all the land, Jewish-settled. As a generous Arab resister says: “The Jews are not my enemy; their fear is my enemy…but I refuse to be a victim of Jewish fear anymore.”

Regular readers may remember the times Netanyahu has warned, many years apart, of an ‘imminent’ danger of attack from Iran. Here he, and ministers, are at it again, over black immigrants. In Bibi-speak an ‘existential threat’ to Israel means anything from nuclear annihilation through ‘delegitimisation’ to too many of the wrong people having babies in The Only Democracy in the Middle East™. Reports from Mondoweiss, Times of Israel, Guardian, Haaretz 2010.