The ADL has smeared lefties Max Blumenthal, Jefferson Morley and Phil Weiss as serving rightwing antisemites because they said that Trump killed Qasem Soleimani out of concern for Israel’s interest, Weiss writes. “To do so it lies about what I wrote about the number of Zionist Jews in the Trump administration.”

Hubert Murray reports from Cambridge, Massachusetts where Scientists for Palestine held their third international conference, this year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Another conclusion from witnessing this sophisticated and productive exchange of ideas is that despite the politically-imposed privations endured by Palestinian scientists (and of course the population as a whole) there is a corresponding ingenuity at prevailing against the odds,” Murray writes.

In an interview with the New York Times editorial board Amy Klobuchar also cited her strong record of pro-Israel votes in the Senate. “I still think that they are in a really tough neighborhood in a really dangerous position,” she explained, “And made worse by what Trump just did with Syria because now Iran has a foothold there.”

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett pretends to be a liberal by refusing to run with the “Jewish Power” party despite pressure from Netanyahu to do so. But the collection of rightwingers Bennett is aligned with have made many racist comments of their own.

On January 14, South Dakota’s Republican Governor Kristi Noem signed an executive order that prohibits state offices from doing business with companies that boycott Israel. South Dakota becomes the 28th state to pass legislation that targets the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Last week, Jewish and Palestinian student activists with the group Jewish Voice for Peace were in Iowa to demand that Democratic candidates stop funding Israel’s occupation and embrace Palestinian rights.

The U.S. mainstream media’s shoddy, dishonest reporting about the Iran Crisis continues. The media refuses to closely examine the Trump administration’s latest justification for killing Qasem Soleimani — that the Iranian general was responsible for the deaths of “thousands of U.S. troops.”

The foreign policy talking point for mainstream Democratic presidential candidates is fighting “terrorism.” Amy Klobuchar went so far as to call Iran a “terrorist regime.” Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren did not use that word, while offering eloquent statements about the failures of U.S. foreign policy.

The Israeli Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that it had approved the creation of seven new Israeli nature reserves in Area C of the occupied West Bank. This follows Naftali Bennett telling a forum of right-wing activists and academics in Jerusalem last week that Area C “belongs to Israel.”

The myth that the Palestinians keep “missing opportunities” for peace is being revived from Jared Kushner, to Tony Blair, to Mohammed bin Salman.