Last week the U.S. State Department called for an investigation into the death of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy after an Israeli raid in his village. This week State walked the demand back, in its effort to demand zero accountability from Israel for the deaths of dozens of Palestinian children in the occupied territories this year.

In Arizona, a controversy has been ignited over legislators being invited to watch a movie about BDS legislation.

“My north star is maintaining a democratic Jewish state. That is the single most important thing I believe that I can do as American ambassador” –US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides on his job description. And that means praising the Israeli military repeatedly despite the fact that it killed a Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. Nides justified the killing by saying Abu Akleh had gone into a “dangerous place.”

For Democrats in the United States and the political “centrists” in Israel—represented by Joe Biden and Yair Lapid, respectively—the loss of credibility for the two-state solution has meant losing more and more support for Israeli policies. This helps explain the theater we have witnessed in recent days at the United Nations General Assembly and in the American media scene, where the lone Palestinian woman ever elected to Congress has come under unrelenting attack from her own party as well as the opposition. 

On September 18 the New York Times published an article by Ellen Barry titled How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step.

Israel may have revised its West Bank entry rules in hopes of obtaining a U.S. visa waiver, but they’re still designed to isolate Palestinian society. “Allowing Israel into the U.S. Visa Waiver program in spite of this mistreatment would amount to an endorsement by the Biden administration of this discrimination,” says Americans for Justice in Palestine Action Advocacy Director Ayah Ziyadeh.

An Israeli official admits that designating six Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist groups” has hurt the country’s standing in the United States, particularly within the Democratic party as multiple lawmakers have condemned the move. So it seems like Israel is now scrambling to do some more damage control.

An Israeli delegation recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to pressure the Biden administration into accepting its terror designation for six Palestinian human rights groups.

Yair Lapid’s brazen demand for Israeli impunity for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is a disturbing demonstration of the relationship between Israel and its US benefactor.

According to the Biden administration we can rely on Israel to determine what accountability looks like in the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. But they can never actually explain what this means.