Just when the US is talking to Iran, the Washington Post and a pro-Israel thinktank publish a story saying the US teamed up with Israel to assassinate an Iranian “agent” 7 years ago

Sheldon Adelson called on President Obama to fire a nuclear weapon at Iran. When he gives huge contributions to potential Republican presidential candidates, the media should ask if they share his agenda. But the media don’t.

“We have the problem of assimilation, we have the problem of intermarriage,” says Democratic chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, lamenting that “too many” Jews are marrying outside the faith.

Ma’an reports: “A settler shot and injured a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Monday, witnesses said. Muhammad Yusuf Burqan, 17, was shot while tending to a small herd of sheep in the Wadi Yasul area of the neighborhood, his cousin told Ma‘an. “I came back to check up on Muhammad and found him lying on the ground surrounded by about 15 settlers, one of whom had a gun in his hand. I tried to access Muhammad and give him first aid, but the settler with the gun threatened to shoot me”

The winner of the Super Bowl has many connections to the Jewish state. Owner Robert Kraft loves the country, funds football stadiums there, and brings many players there, including Tom Brady, quarterback

In his latest campaign ad Netanyahu plays the “Bibi-sitter” and says that his opponents cannot be trusted to watch after Israel’s children. He goes after Labor leader Issac Herzog by saying, “By the time we get home we won’t have a house left!” meaning that a centrist government would agree to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and turn over the occupied territories to the Palestinians. In the mindset of the commercial, this is as disastrous and foolish as giving away one’s own house.

Need evidence that BDS is taking hold? Lawrence Summers calls BDS a moral challenge to American institutions and that smears it as anti-Semitic; and has not a word to say about Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians

Nick Kroll and John Mulaney of Oh, Hello! came to 92d Street Y and Kroll savaged Judaism and Israel for “not budging on that nightmare” of unending settlements. Oh and Alan Dershowitz is a nudist

In its winter 2014-15 issue, the education journal Rethinking Schools has taken another courageous stand against liberal Zionism. In Fall 2014, the journal published an editorial (“The Children of Gaza”) expressing outrage about the recent Gaza war. This editorial generated a letter from a liberal Zionist reader criticizing the journal’s stance, and Rethinking Schools has published this letter in its most recent issue. Not to be cowed, the editors responded to this letter, re-emphasizing the “dire situation” in Gaza as well as the “3 billion a year in military assistance” from the US.

Stories of the power of the Israel lobby have long haunted efforts in the U.S. to advocate for a more balanced American policy toward Israel/Palestine. But at a moment when an unprecedented number of members of Congress are up in arms over Netanyahu’s efforts to sabotage the Obama administration’s policy towards Iran, there are other signs that the pro-Israel lobby may not be invincible in Washington. Here are seven pieces of news from the last year that proponents of a less lopsided policy towards Israel/Palestine should find heartening.