On Monday, Donald Trump and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio hailed counter-terrorism tactics that civil rights advocates found alarming, especially as Islamophobic attacks are on the rise amid rancorous campaign rhetoric. Their comments came after a Saturday night bombing in Manhattan injured 29 people. An Afghan-born suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, is now in police custody.

Bassem Abu Rahma was killed by Israelis during a protest in occupied Bil’in in 2009. His sister Jawaher was killed three years later. Last night 8 helmeted Israeli soldiers raided the family’s home.

Vermont Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Kentucky’s Rand Paul were among the dozen holdouts from a letter the Israel lobby group AIPAC circulated seeking to limit President Obama’s actions to oppose Israeli settlements in his last months in office. Still, many progressive US senators as well as vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine signed on to an Israel lobby letter designed to limit President Obama’s actions against the Israeli occupation, now nearly 50 years old.

NYU Law Students for Israel say their mission is to have “open” discussion of Israeli policy, but yesterday they closed a talk by an IDF captain about combating terrorism in the occupied territories at the last minute.

After an abrupt suspension last Tuesday, a college course about the decolonization of Palestine has earned a reprieve from the University of California on Monday. The campaign against the class was lead by the AMCHA Initiative, a pro-Israel advocacy group which has a long history of attempting to stifle discussion of the Israeli occupation on University of California campuses.

Ha’aretz reports: “The key to Israeli defense firms not losing business under the new U.S. military aid deal will be to follow Elbit Systems and set up subsidiaries in the United States to bid for defense orders, industry officials said over the weekend. They were speaking days after the United States and Israel signed a 10-year memorandum of understanding that will provide Israel with $3.8 billion in annual grants. In the deal, Israel will no longer be entitled to spend 26.3% of the money – equal to around $815 million annually in recent years – in Israel.”

Most Democrats think the $38 billion dollar aid package the U.S. signed with Israel last week—the highest in U.S. history—is “too much or way too much” money, while Republicans are split on the amount, according to a survey conducted by the Brookings Institute.

The clearest message from Israel’s new $38 billion aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash with Israel and its loyalists in Congress over Palestinian statehood.

Colin Powell privately said that Israel’s 200 nukes are the strongest argument in favor of the Iran deal, but when he went on Meet the Press, he didn’t say a word about it. And neither did Obama or the MSM. This self-censorship reflects obeisance to the Israel lobby.

The new head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, seized the opportunity to throw Netanyahu under the bus for his “Ethnic cleansing” video, in an effort to reach out to young American progressives. It won’t work. Young progressives don’t like Israel, and the ADL does.