The Second US Court of Appeals in New York issued a ruling Wednesday overturning a judgement by a lower court from February 2015 which ordered the Palestinian Authority to pay $655.5 million to the families of 33 US citizens killed in terrorist attacks by Palestinian terror militias during the Second Intifada. The Court ruled that US courts have no jurisdiction over the PA or the PLO, adding that the lower court’s ruling was void because the trial which resulted in it never should have taken place.

A group of Jewish worshippers praying at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus were harassed by Palestinian residents of the city overnight Wednesday in a string of violent incidents which culminated in an IDF soldier guarding the group being shot and moderately wounded. The incident came hours after a White House statement condemning Israel for plans to build a handful of new housing units in Jewish communities in the West Bank.

Thursday was the first day of school for around 2.2 million Israeli children and over 180,000 educators. Education Minister Naftali Bennet welcomed them back to their classrooms by declaring that they will receive a “more personal and more professional education system instilled with more values.” The ICEJ is also going back-to-school with a renewed appeal to support our Learning For All program.

International tech giant Intel chose it’s R&D center in Haifa to unveil its new 7th generation core processor chip Tuesday, promising that the Israeli-developed chip will give personal computing devices much faster and more efficient performance. “The Israeli team did it again,” said Intel Israel’s head of R&D Ran Senderovitz.

Reports out of Syria this week indicate that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) lost a brigadier general along with several lower-ranking troops in fierce fighting in Aleppo. He was the 6th general Iran has lost in Syria since 2012, and was reported killed hours before a statement was issued by Iran’s government urging Turkey to cease its military operations in Syria as they represented an “unacceptable” violation of Syrian sovereignty.

There are ideological, structural, and social obstacles preventing more widespread acceptance of human rights in the Arab world. This is clear in light of worsening sociopolitical problems and the explosion of religiously tinted social and political violence, which advance concepts and perceptions that, according to human rights advocates, are in direct opposition to the international humanitarian movement.