The Biden administration will continue to issue “strong” condemnations of Israeli settlements but do nothing to confront Israel because it does not want to make Palestine a political issue in the U.S. and it does not want to bring down Naftali Bennett’s fragile government, says Tal Shalev of Walla News speaking to an Israel lobby organization.

“This is state terrorism at its finest hour,” Ubai Al-Aboudi, head of one of the Palestinian human rights organizations Israel has labeled terrorist groups, tells a Washington, DC, webinar convened by leading American thinktanks to push back against the secret dossiers Israel has circulated. He and other Palestinian execs say they crossed Israel’s red line when they assisted the ICC investigation of Israeli war crimes and assisted Rep. McCollum’s bill to cut off U.S. funds for Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian children.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel called progressive State Rep. Omari Hardy him “the future of the Florida Democratic Party” in endorsing him for Congress. And that terrifies the Democratic Majority for Israel, which is seeking to block his progress because he supports BDS and Palestinian human rights.

“The one thing that is common among these six organizations that have just been declared to be terrorist is that they have all been active, especially Al-Haq, in documenting and presenting dossiers to the International Criminal Court in the Hague regarding Israel’s violations of human rights,” and particularly of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in 2014, led by Gantz, that killed more than 2200 Palestinians, the Palestinian-American lawyer Jonathan Kuttab, who co-founded Al-Haq said yesterday.

Omari Hardy, a 31-year-old state representative and former middle school teacher, has been unapologetic in his support for BDS and Palestinian human rights as he attempts to win the Democratic nomination to represent Florida’s 20th district in congress. The race will be yet another fight between the Democratic Party establishment and the progressive base over Palestinian rights.

There’s a lot of news this week. The new Israeli government is pushing forward on settlement expansion despite surprisingly strong lip service against it from the Biden administration. And the unapologetic support for BDS from Omari Hardy, a progressive candidate for Congress in Florida, has caused a Jewish newspaper to smear him as a reincarnation of Hitler– and the Democratic Majority for Israel has leaped in to smear Hardy as an antisemite.

The new Israeli government this week moved forward on plans to build 3000 more settlement units in the West Bank; and yesterday the State Department issued its strongest opposition to the plans since Joe Biden took office, calling the plans “unacceptable.” The State Department spokesperson said yesterday the U.S. “strongly” opposes the expansion of settlements.

For much of this year, Israel’s defenders have waged a successful battle to keep the word “apartheid” from entering the mainstream discourse. Israel just set that process back by smearing Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations.

Sunrise Movement DC’s decision to withdraw from a voting rights rally because of the participation of three Zionist groups reflects the view of many on the left that you can’t be progressive and be a Zionist. This political future is disturbing to the Jewish establishment and rightwing groups called the decision “antisemitic” while liberal Zionists condemned the decision on cancellation grounds (though they cancel anti-Zionists all the time).

There are more than two settler attacks on Palestinians a day this year on average. According to two Israeli human rights experts, the violent settlers are working with the cooperation of the army and the Israeli government to take over more and more land for Jewish settlement in a policy of pushing Palestinians out of Area C. This is a traditional use by the army of Israeli settlers.