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A major theme has emerged at this year’s annual J Street conference: conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel. This lines up with a wider shift that seems to be happening throughout the country. An October 25 report from the centrist Center for American Progress shows 56% of voters say they’d condition aid if the Israeli government continues to expand settlements or ends up annexing the West Bank. That number goes up to 71% when applied only to Democratic voters.

Rep. Michael McCaul

Democrats are pushing to pass a watered-down and toothless version of a resolution supporting a negotiated two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the coming weeks, and yet Republicans say even this contradicts the Trump Administration’s peace plan. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the resolution is designed to “score points against the President” and “cut the Administration’s peace process off at the knees, ensuring that any political proposal released by the Administration already has the black mark of a rebuke by the House of Representatives.”

In Gaza on Friday, 95 Palestinian civilians, including 43 children, a woman, 2 paramedics and a journalist, were shot and injured by Israeli forces, who fired live rounds against peaceful Palestinian protesters at the 80th Great March of Return.

“We oppose Zionism. We oppose the role that Zionists play in the diaspora,” historian Jack Jacobs explains Bundism at the Yivo Institute in New York, on a breakthrough panel that included Molly Crabapple calling for one democratic state to whoops and applause and Jacob Plitman saying his Zionism was “shattered” after one encounter with Palestinians and learning their story.

YDSA GT members tabling. (Photo: Twitter/YDSAGT)

The Young Democratic Socialists of America at Georgia Tech have been found guilty of discrimination and sanctioned by the school’s Office of Student Integrity for barring a pro-Israel individual from attending one of their meetings over concerns that they would potentially be disruptive. The decision comes after a 6-month long disciplinary process from the OSI, which YDSA referred to as “open-ended, opaque, politically-motivated, and ultimately unlawful.”