Democrats can’t oppose occupation and settlements in the Democratic platform “because Sheldon Adelson will come out against us,” Clintonites told Sanders rep James Zogby, Zogby related in Philadelphia today. He also said that Democrats support the use of boycott against Israel to end settlements overwhelmingly, by 47-14.

The Democratic Party begins its national presidential convention in Philadelphia on Monday, under circumstances that political scientists refer to with the technical term “shitshow.” Wilson Dizard reports from the scene.

Something really is breaking loose with the Donald Trump nomination. He has so frightened the establishment with his refusal to hire the usual experts and his trashing of the “media elites” and his comments against NATO that in the last week a whole crowd of neocons and liberal internationalists has made the assertion that Trump is acting in Russia’s interest. And not only that but the Russians hacked the Democratic Party emails and gave them to Wikileaks to help Trump.

Further evidence of role of Israel lobby in Democratic Party: DNC chair Wasserman Schultz found Bernie Sanders’s criticisms of Israel “disturbing,” while Hillary Clinton campaign sought to use his stance to “marginalize” him, according to DNC emails published by Wikileaks.

Donald Trump has taken heretical positions on countless issues, from a border wall to John McCain’s heroism to barring Muslim immigrants, and not backed down. Except for Israel. He said he’d be neutral on the conflict in February, but dropped that stance entirely. Such is the power of the Israel lobby.

A specter is haunting Cleveland, the specter of the Alt Right. The Alt Right in the United States is a small but growing intellectual movement that seeks to resist the dilution of “White” people, both as a matter of biology and imagined culture. Wilson Dizard talks to Alt Right leader Richard Spencer, one of the people lending intellectual legitimacy to the Donald Trump campaign. Among other things they discuss Spencer’s view of Israel, “I respect Israel as a homogenous ethno-state, but I hate the meddling of the Israel lobby in American politics,” he says.

Hillary Clinton has gained the support of major neoconservative donor Seth Klarman. Klarman’s family foundation supports rightwing Zionist groups, including the David Project and the Israel Project, and has supported several Islamophobic groups, including one that “applauded” an Oklahoma law later struck down as unconstitutional, that would have discriminated against Muslim religious practices. A Democratic Party think tank has said that the organizations Klarman supports have put out “anti-Islam messages polluting our national discourse.”

The grubby underside of US electoral politics is on show once again as the Democratic and Republican candidates prepare to fight it out for the presidency. And it doesn’t get seamier than the battle to prove how loyal each candidate is to Israel. New depths are likely to be plumbed this week at the Republican convention in Cleveland, as Donald Trump is crowned the party’s nominee. His platform breaks with decades of United States policy to effectively deny the Palestinians any hope of statehood. The question now is whether the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, who positions herself as Israel’s greatest ally, will try to outbid Trump in cravenly submitting to the Israeli right.

When asked outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland what message he has for the West Bank, Cornel West tells a Lebanese news channel: “I think our young our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters need to know that there are voices here in the United States of all colors, white and black and red and yellow and brown, some of them are young Jewish voices who are concerned not just about the plight of Palestinians, but know that the day will come when the vicious Israeli occupation will be lifted. Palestinians will be able to live lives of decency and dignity and live lives of self determination.”

Wilson Dizard reports from Day One of the Republican convention which has already featured new heights of bizarre offensiveness. He meets activists from the American southwest who came to Cleveland to protest Trump’s proposal for a wall, which sounds very similar to Israeli separation wall in the West Bank. Rebekah Hinojosa, 25, who lives in the Rio Grande valley in Texas , calls the current wall between the US and Mexico a “monument to racism.”