Mainstream Democrats were shocked by the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, but their calls for an investigation were vague, even suggesting that Israel could investigate itself– a recipe for “whitewashing,” says a human rights group. No mainstream leader approached the position of progressive Congresspeople, that the U.S. must investigate Israel, or the view of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, that Israeli “apartheid” is the context of the killing.

Palestinian human rights activist Fadi Quran describes his detention by Homeland Security at the Dallas airport in October at the behest of the Israeli government as a supposed terrorist– a US lieutenant told Quran his hands were tied to interrogate Quran after an ally filed the claim. While Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace says the Biden administration will spend no energy on Palestinian rights.

European opposition to Israeli annexation plans mean nothing to Trump or Israel because Europe hasn’t articulated “a single concrete sanction,” says Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. And Democratic opposition to annexation is just as “soft,” she says, and therefore if you hope that annexation can be turned back, “hope would be deeply, deeply misplaced.”