US Ambassador Kenneth Ward told the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Thursday that Iran has failed to declare all the capabilities it has to produce and deploy weaponized compounds and their delivery systems. “The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical-weapons program that it failed to declare to the OPCW,” Ward said. “The United States is also concerned that Iran is pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes.”

Four Israeli attorney’s filed a class action suit against hospitality website Airbnb in Jerusalem District Court on Thursday over its decision earlier in the week to de-list rental properties in the West Bank. “The law in Israel forbids discrimination based on the place where you live, and what Airbnb has done is by all means discrimination based on the place where you live,” said attorney Aviel Flint, a partner in the law firm Yossi Levy & Co.

Thousands of Israelis with familial ties to the United States celebrated the secular holiday of Thanksgiving on Thursday, with several different organizations offering organized events and many families holding private meals. The holiday was also celebrated by a growing number of non-Americans in Israel who have found the unique foods and customs of the holiday appealing.

The movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Israel suffered another defeat this week when Danish Higher Education and Science Minister Tommy Ahlers visited the Jewish State on a friendly tour of its academic institutions. He had warm praise for his hosts, saying “Israel is further ahead than Denmark in making sure that research carried out at universities actually serves as a foundation for start-ups being built. That is one dimension we’d love to learn from Israel.”

More important than achieving international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the necessity of ensuring Israeli sovereignty over the city itself. This means prohibiting Palestinian Authority officials from residing in Jerusalem, especially those involved in surveillance and intimidation of Arab residents and the organization of protest and incitement against Jewish residents. Establishing a liaison office at the Israeli police department in Jerusalem would allow Arab Jerusalemites to report harassment.

The Six Day War, which broke out on the morning of June 5, 1967, was a formative event that changed the face of the State of Israel and, to a large extent, the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, Israel had been under existential threat and in six days, the Israel Defense Forces succeeded in removing the threat by achieving a decisive military victory and positioning Israel as a significant force in the region. This victory was accompanied by new complexities, and fifty years after the war, some of its implications still remain as heavy dilemmas, which the Israeli public and the state institutions must address.

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