Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and People for the American Way all blast a Republican trip to Israel and occupied Palestine because of the US Christian sponsor, not Palestinian conditions. SPLC praises Israel as a refuge for Jews from anti-Semitism.

What are the odds that Netanyahu backs out of the invitation to speak to Congress? Neocon Robert Kagan and liberal Zionist Martin Indyk both want the speech not to happen, lest it politicize Congress’s blind deference to Israel supporters

In a suit filed today in federal court against the administration of the University of Illinois seeking his reinstatement as a professor at the school, scholar Steven Salaita also sued unnamed “John Doe donors” of the university for “injecting” themselves into the university hiring process and threatening “future donations” unless he was fired last summer because of the outspoken tweets he published during the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Salaita was fired a week before classes were to begin.

“The gentile does not want anything, he waits to see what the Jew wants,” says a religious bus ad in Jerusalem. You might say that’s anti-Semitic!

Supporters of Israel from the White House to Foxman to J Street to Chris Matthews agree that the invitation to Netanyahu to speak to Congress and rebut Obama on Iran is damaging the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. Look for the speech to be cancelled.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to both Houses of Congress to rebut President Obama’s Iran policy is a full-on fiasco. It keeps stirring things up and getting attention. Opposition to the speech is mounting on Capitol Hill, say both the US Campaign to End the Occupation and Jeffrey Goldberg. And any reasonable person has to wonder, Wait, why are the warmongering Israelis messing in our negotiations? Where did a rightwing foreign prime minister derive the power to take on the president on equal terms?

The emperor doesn’t wear many clothes in KY congressman John Yarmuth’s comments that AIPAC demands that Congress defers to Israel over the US and John Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu to speak to both houses was “close to subversion”

Dennis Ross used to lead Middle East policy for Obama. Now his Jerusalem-based Zionist thinktank calls for 120,000 French Jews to leave France for Israel in the next four years.

If it was outrageous and inappropriate and unprecedented for the Republicans to ask Netanyahu to speak to Congress, thereby undermining Obama’s Iran policy, those who oppose war should take action, and give Netanyahu the cold shoulder when he comes to Congress

Israel supporters call on Congress to delay Netanyahu’s speech lest it divide the Israel lobby publicly. But the real fear is that it could lead the US to war. Chris Matthews says the US will have no choice but to “blow up” Iran if it acquires a nuclear weapon.