Jimmy Carter said he’d ‘commit suicide’ before he abandoned Israel, but American Jewish leaders did not trust him because of his parallel commitment to a “Palestinian homeland” and opposition to Israeli settlements, Stuart Eizenstat writes in a detailed memoir. Carter always underestimated the power of the Israel lobby. He came to believe that it helped cost him a second term, a lesson politicians have heeded ever since.

Three leaders of a new group aimed at preventing the Democratic Party from splitting over Israel–Jennifer Granholm, Peter Villegas, and Ann Lewis –are affiliated with the Israel lobby group AIPAC, which has been panicked by the possible splintering of political support for the Jewish state.

BDS shakes up the House! Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s support for BDS “is inconsistent with our national values,” says a Republican congressman, while the Dems’ appointment of BDS-supporter Ilhan Omar to House Foreign Affairs shows “the days of the Democrats’ support-Israel-at-all-costs stance are numbered,” as the young Jewish group IfNotNow proclaims.

The Senate bill punishing support for BDS against Israel failed again yesterday. Israel has never been so openly politicized before, and many Democratic supporters are expressing the fear that the issue is going to divide the party leading up to the 2020 election.

Bay Area activist Alice Diane Kisch pans Senator Kamala Harris over her AIPAC speech: “Your support for Israel is the diametric opposite of a path to peace in the Middle East.  I am so sorry that you are not the politician that I was hoping you’d be.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was about ‘the good, the bad and the beautiful’. All about equality and justice – but not for Palestinians.

At the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington DC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a bleak image of expanding Iranian influence in the Middle East set against a thriving Israel united with the United States. In true Netanyahu fashion the speech was more upbeat than stern, and of course it included props.

Palestinian activist Yazan Khader writes, “IfNotNow is a very effective group. It has managed to ignite a stagnant conversation within the American Jewish community. For myself and many other Palestinians, their work is a cause for refreshing optimism. But it would be wrong to assume that they are without blemish. To succeed, and to succeed well, IfNotNow should begin talking to Palestinians, not in a way that takes away from their potency as an anti-occupation group working within the Jewish community, but in a manner that guides it.”

A 55-year old Palestinian-American instructor at a community college in North Carolina was brutally beaten by members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) while walking by the AIPAC conference in Washington DC on Sunday, according to a video and statement released by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU). The man was identified as Kamal Nayfeh. The JDL affiliates “punched and kicked him and hit him in the face with flag poles, leaving him with cuts and bruises all over his face and body,” said the IMEU statement. Photos were taken of Nayfeh after the and beatings show his face bloodied and bruised.

Here is the transcript of the speech Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave this morning at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington DC, including the videos he presented.