Phil Weiss interviews Susan Abulhawa about her new novel Against the Loveless World. “My exile and the destruction of my family and the destruction of everything, of our whole world, has defined my whole life in so many ways and in very personal ways,” says Abulhawa.

Biden’s nomination to OMB of Neera Tanden, a political operator who fawned over Netanyahu in the weeks after he tried to destroy the Iran deal in 2015, and censored Israel critics after they were smeared as antisemitic in 2012, shows how ensconced the Israel lobby is in the Democratic Party.

Ronen Bergman’s book on Israeli killings delights in security sources’ calling Palestinian targets “bugs” and “sewage.” And he travels the US for the Israel lobby group AIPAC. Maybe he shouldn’t report on the assassination in Iran for New York Times?

Israel has a hidden motive to kill Iranian nuclear scientist: to destroy any possibility of Joe Biden renewing the Iran deal, and “cripple” his ability to make policy. But you can’t say this inside the Beltway.

Mike Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about US foreign policymaking, when Russia and Israel sought to interfere. Press accounts of his pardon only mention the Russian interference. Though Israel has had far more influence over US policymaking.

Construction bids for a new Israeli settlement cutting off Palestinian access to their supposed capital of Jerusalem will come in days after Biden takes office. The EU and Palestine have decried Givat Hamatos as the death of the two state solution. Experts say Biden will likely do nothing to prevent construction in February.

Tony Blinken reflects Joe Biden in spinning highly scripted and cagey responses that steer a delicate path around Israel’s clout in Washington while doing nothing to offend the so-called Jewish state. He says, We need to reenter the Iran deal if Iran reenters it, because trashing the deal has made Israel unsafer; We need to leave troops in Syria and check with Israel on all our actions in the Middle East because it’s the anchor of democracy; and we need to call out Israel’s settlement activity as unhelpful but then not do anything about it.

Netanyahu’s reported historic meeting with the Saudi crown prince this morning in Saudi Arabia at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a power move. The Saudi monarchy gets Israel lobby on its side to counter Biden’s human rights objections. Israel gets Saudi ally to help tie Biden’s hands against reentering Iran deal as posing a threat to peace in the Middle East.

Pompeo’s gifts to Netanyahu in occupied territory yesterday were all about getting the Israel lobby on Pompeo’s side for 2024. The one headwind Pompeo has it in his power to possibly create against Biden/Harris in 2024 is to get Biden fighting with Netanyahu over settlements and get the Democratic Party fighting over Israel.

“My pro-Palestinian stance began to chafe,” Lysander Ohrstrom writes of her former friendship with Ivanka Trump. “Since 2007, I’ve worn a necklace with my name written in Arabic, and Ivanka grew increasingly irritated by it. Sometimes, she would randomly say, “I hate that thing… It just screams ‘terrorist.'”