Sandy Tolan analyses the remaining Republican presidential candidate’s views on Israel/Palestine. Donald Trump, despite his wish to be “sort of a neutral guy” on the issue, has adopted the standard Likudnik call to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. John Kasich, for all his “likeable guy” rhetoric, offers up a standard blame-the-victim narrative driven largely by hard right Reagan-era advisers and neocon engineers of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. While Ted Cruz, as virulently pro-Israel as any candidate, it is not about the traditional AIPAC alliance. Of course, he loves AIPAC, but for Cruz, Christian Zionism is the key.

MD Rep. Chris Van Hollen got into office opposing the Iraq war and in 2006 said Israel’s disproportionate response in Lebanon was hurting the United States. Then AIPAC got him over its knee! And today Van Hollen is the Democratic Senate nominee for Maryland, with the Israel lobby’s support.

In Tuesday’s Maryland primary, out-going U.S. Representative Donna Edwards lost her insurgent bid against establishment Democrat Christopher Van Hollen for the party’s nomination for senate. Edwards has been one of the few lawmakers to take a stand for Palestinian rights, and would have been only the second African-American woman to serve in the senate. In her concession speech Tuesday night Edwards slammed economic inequality, racial inequality and pay disparities for women. “It is time for us to have our seat the table as women and workers, as black and brown people, as communities of color. We are no longer content to have you make the decisions for us,” she said, after announcing it was time for Democrats to ask where marginalized communities fit in its “big tent.”

Hillary Clinton’s views of Israel are dictated by AIPAC and have nothing to do with the “mythology” of shared values, says Miko Peled; but a grassroots movement of Palestinian solidarity and BDS activists is changing the US conversation and in the end will force politicians to adopt more evenhanded views.

Liberals are snickering over the explosion of the Republican Party, but why they think the Democratic Party is so stable? It’s not. Everyone in the establishment is worrying what Bernie Sanders is going to do now. His populist base is bound to become more and more voluble in months to come, amplified by social media. And of course Palestine is helping to destabilize the Democratic power structure. These tensions are evident in the electrifying, seesaw race between two Democratic Maryland congresspeople, Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards, to win the Democratic nomination this Tuesday to the Senate to replace Barbara Mikulski.

In Bay Ridge Brooklyn, both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump found supporters who justly regard the political parties with the same feeling they have about organized crime syndicates. And a lot of Arab Americans backed Sanders, fear Islamophobia, and mistrust Hillary Clinton

How utterly cynical of the New York Times to reveal the fact that Hillary Clinton has a “greater appetite for military engagement” than any other candidate after she has the Democratic nomination virtually sewn up. Shouldn’t voters have been told this much sooner?

As she wooed the New York vote, Hillary Clinton chose to pen a Passover address to Jewish communities globally. In her piece Clinton claims to impart wisdom drawn from parallels she sees between the lessons from the Book of Exodus with current challenges being faced by Israel, and yet for all her worldly wisdom, it is the Former Secretary of State’s willful ignorance of the realities of life for Palestinians and the direct implications of Israeli policies fostering this reality, that shines through strongest.

Bernie Sanders’s stand in favor of Palestinian human rights appears to have hurt him slightly in NY city Tuesday as he lost NY state primary. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has gotten huge new donations from Katzenberg, Spielberg and Saban, all Israel supporters.

The dream of liberal Zionists at J Street is that in the lame duck period of his presidency, President Obama will bring resolutions to the UN Security Council to condemn Israeli settlements and set out the parameters of a two-state solution. Do you believe it?