“Israel is a Jewish state and it must forever exist as a Jewish state,” Donald Trump says in pandering to AIPAC and Netanyahu; while Bernie Sanders says the US should be evenhanded in the conflict, and he never mentions Jewish at all.

Yesterday the Bernie Sanders campaign released the speech Sanders would have given to AIPAC had the presidential hopeful been allowed to show a pre-recorded message at the pro-Israel lobby’s annual policy conference. The speech includes harsh words for Israel on settlements, Gaza and occupation.

On the occasion of World Poetry Day, Gaza-based human rights activists released an amateur video in support of the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh, who has been detained in a Saudi prison since January 1, 2014. In the video Palestinian activist Haidar Eid performs “Thirsty for Freedom,” adapted from a poem by the late legendary Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach patronizes his former friend Senator Cory Booker as his “student” in morality; but Boteach also pressured Booker in unseemly ways to support Israel; and it is little wonder that Booker does not reference Boteach in his memoir.

Writing in 1967 on resistance to the Vietnam War, Noam Chomsky said, “It is axiomatic that no army ever loses a war, its brave soldiers and all-knowing generals are stabbed in the back by treacherous civilians. American withdrawal is likely, then, to bring to the surface the worst features of American culture.” Chomsky’s prognosis has relevance today as we confront the causes and meaning of the Donald Trump phenomenon. Trump’s popularity is commonly understood with reference to domestic factors, but the candidate himself tells a slightly different story, and close attention to his rhetoric and positions suggests that Trump’s appeal has a significant foreign policy component. Specifically, he has found a way to resolve the failure of the Iraq War.

An Illinois state agency named 11 companies barred from doing business with the state for boycotting Israel or its settlements, the first such designation by an official US body.

America can’t have a president “who is neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything is negotiable,” Hillary Clinton said at AIPAC this morning, in a clear sign that she is running to the right of Donald Trump on Israel.

Over the weekend arsonists set ablaze the home of a high-profile Palestinian witness scheduled to testify against Israeli settlers charged with firebombing the home of his relatives in the West Bank village of Duma last summer.

NY Times runs a full-page ad smearing Max Blumenthal as an anti-Semite because he is critical of Israel; and the ad is the paper’s first mention of his important 2013 book, Goliath.

Why is AIPAC giving a national stage before 20,000 people to Donald Trump after he openly promotes violence and bigotry?