Last night’s midterm elections saw a historic opening for critics of Israel. Three women stars of the Democratic Party who have openly criticized Israel’s human rights record were elected to Congress. But the new Democratic faces include many big backers of US Israel special relationship: Max Rose in Staten Island, Mikie Sherrill in northern New Jersey, both in the Congress, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Jair Bolsonaro’s victory in Brazil’s presidential election last week has won Israel a passionate new friend on the international stage. Benjamin Netanyahu immediately called to congratulate the former army officer who many describe as a neo-fascist. One might imagine that Netanyahu is simply being pragmatic in cosying up to Bolsonaro, given Brazil’s importance. But that would be to ignore an unmistakable trend: Israel has relished the recent emergence of far-right leaders across the Americas and Europe, often to the horror of local Jewish communities.

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, will renew its debate next week over a bill that would seek the death penalty for Palestinians accused of “terrorism,” after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced their support to advance the bill earlier this week.

Yesterday Israeli forces shot Aed Abu Amro in the leg, the Palestinian protester from the Gaza Strip who reached internet infamy after photographer for Anadolu Agency Mustafa Hassouna captured a shirtless Abu Amro gripping a Palestinian flag firmly in one hand and a slingshot in the other during a protest at the fence that divides the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Micah Goodman’s book Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War has been celebrated for its “pragmatism” and “realism” and topped the Israeli nonfiction best seller list for weeks while being read by Benjamin Netanyahu and many top officials involved in administering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Joel Doerfler says, “the most striking thing about Goodman’s argument is the utterly conventional and largely unexamined set of historical and moral assumptions on which it is founded.”

The day before the midterms Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran and Israeli PM Netanyahu lavished praise on him as “courageous, determined” in an embrace that is sure to aggravate American Jews growing distance from the Jewish state.

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Senator Cory Booker’s endorsement of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act following the massacre in Pittsburgh can only be described as a cynical use of real antisemitism as an excuse to dismiss Palestinian rights so as to further his political career.

Maen Abu Hafez, 24, was born in Brazil to a Palestinian father from the Jenin Refugee Camp, and he has lived in the camp since he was 3 years old. However, Israel never issued his family an ID card establishing their residency in the West Bank and Abu Hafez is now facing deportation to Brazil after a routine traffic stop. Despite being Palestinians and living in an area under the control of the Palestinian Authority, the lives of the Abu Hafez family, and hundreds of families like them — a Palestinian married to a foreign spouse and their children — are in the hands of the Israeli government, who has control over the Palestinian population registry.

“I slept on the porch of the Swarthmore College president’s house so we would divest from South Africa,” ardent Zionist and Israeli business leader Danna Azrieli brags in a speech to American Jews. But her ethnocentric appeal to stick with Israel never mentions Palestinians or the occupation or Gaza, and just once uses the word “settlements” to signal the divide between American and Israeli Jews.