Peter Beinart shows how Zionism puts Jews in a double bind: raised to oppose injustice but required to support Israel.

Sandy Tolan analyses the remaining Republican presidential candidate’s views on Israel/Palestine. Donald Trump, despite his wish to be “sort of a neutral guy” on the issue, has adopted the standard Likudnik call to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. John Kasich, for all his “likeable guy” rhetoric, offers up a standard blame-the-victim narrative driven largely by hard right Reagan-era advisers and neocon engineers of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. While Ted Cruz, as virulently pro-Israel as any candidate, it is not about the traditional AIPAC alliance. Of course, he loves AIPAC, but for Cruz, Christian Zionism is the key.

Why is the New York Times touting Matti Friedman, who has said critics of Israel are anti-Semitic, as “temperate and careful” while ignoring authors such as Max Blumenthal, Ilan Pappe, and Anna Baltzer?

American forces have adopted Israeli military tactics employed in Gaza of dropping cautionary leaflets and knocker bombs intended to warn civilians of incoming attacks. The method was used outside of Mosul in a recent operation, yet a woman and a child were killed upon re-entering a building shortly after it was targeted by a hellfire missile. The deaths were disclosed by a Department of Defense official in a briefing yesterday on expanding U.S. forces in Iraq as it battles fighters with the Islamic State.

Ma‘an reports, “Israeli authorities closed the Kerem Shalom crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel from Thursday for the end of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Head of the PA’s Crossings and Border Department, Nathmi Mhanna, told Ma‘an the crossing would be sealed until Sunday with the exception of fuel entering the besieged enclave.”

Pulitzer Prize laureate Michael Chabon’s recent interview in which he describes the horrors he witnessed while on a tour of Hebron has been circulated amongst Palestinian-rights activists like brush fire, often prefaced with an explanation that he is a “Jewish-American writer.” Nada Elia says, “Israel does not now, and indeed never did, speak for all Jews. It is time we put an end to that myth by putting an end to the celebration of Jewish voices denouncing Zionism as ‘exceptional,’ or ‘heroic.’ They belong with all other such voices, and must magnify, rather than occupy, the Palestinian narrative.”

MD Rep. Chris Van Hollen got into office opposing the Iraq war and in 2006 said Israel’s disproportionate response in Lebanon was hurting the United States. Then AIPAC got him over its knee! And today Van Hollen is the Democratic Senate nominee for Maryland, with the Israel lobby’s support.

Hamas scored another victory on Wednesday at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank, winning 25 seats in the university’s student elections. The university, considered the most liberal of all campuses in the West Bank, is seen as an indicator for the political climate across the West Bank.

In a wide-ranging interview, Norman Finkelstein says the Palestinians are, at this moment, a defeated people, they should recall the success of the first intifada, and “I used to live for my teaching” but has not had a job in ten years.

In Tuesday’s Maryland primary, out-going U.S. Representative Donna Edwards lost her insurgent bid against establishment Democrat Christopher Van Hollen for the party’s nomination for senate. Edwards has been one of the few lawmakers to take a stand for Palestinian rights, and would have been only the second African-American woman to serve in the senate. In her concession speech Tuesday night Edwards slammed economic inequality, racial inequality and pay disparities for women. “It is time for us to have our seat the table as women and workers, as black and brown people, as communities of color. We are no longer content to have you make the decisions for us,” she said, after announcing it was time for Democrats to ask where marginalized communities fit in its “big tent.”