Thank god for NYT columnist Tom Friedman for blurting out the elites’ real view of the Middle East: the likely murder of his Saudi friend Jamal Khashoggi was worse than the Saudi-perpetrated Yemen genocide. And PS, his newspaper was sponsoring a conference in Saudi Arabia.

A NYT report that an Israeli intelligence firm with government connections reached out to the Trump campaign in 2016 to manipulate the election process is more evidence of rightwing Israeli interference in the 2016 campaign, supported by Sheldon Adelson’s millions. And Israel has reaped huge rewards: the killing of the Iran deal and move of the embassy to Jerusalem.

A month after the Trump administration ordered the Palestinian Mission in Washington DC to end operations, yesterday afternoon consular staff vacated their four-story red brick building in the upscale Georgetown neighborhood.

Spending a week in Ben-Gurion airport under a deportation order has surely been uncomfortable for 22-year-old American student Lara Alqasem, but the detention has done a great deal to advertise the Israeli government’s intolerance of criticism. NYT conservatives Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss plead with Israel to release her lest the case alienate American Jews; while an Israeli government minister says Alqasem can come in if she renounces her earlier ideas.

The president of San Francisco State University recently announced he will be stepping down, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi writes before he leaves office, “there is a real opportunity for President Wong and for SFSU and CSU to stand up for public education, to be accountable to the public, to reject and end complicity with right-wing pressures and donors.”

NY Congressman Eliot Engel told an AIPAC audience last night that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other progressive Democrats who may enter Congress “need to be educated” to support Israel. The event came on the heels of a New York Times article on the new wave of progressive Democrats who have “dared to breach what has been an almost inviolable orthodoxy in both political parties, strong support for Israel.”

Jeffrey Goldberg used to quiz our leaders about Israel as a representative of the Jewish establishment. But he had nearly 40 minutes with Hillary Clinton and never mentioned that parochial subject. The Atlantic editor understands, the brand is toxic.

Nobel laureate biologist George Smith has repeatedly been smeared for his anti-Zionist views, characterized as a bully, a heckler, and a hater akin to David Duke. If we know anything from his considerable efforts to criticize Zionism, Smith will not rest on his laurels.

George Smith, the University of Missouri biologist who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry, said a “web” of scientists deserved credit for his achievement. In his humility and the celebration by Palestinian advocates of his prize, there is a sense that Smith’s laurels were also shared by Palestine.

Floridian Lara Alqasem, 22, has a visa to study for a master’s degree at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem but was detained at the Israeli border Tuesday and Israel seeks to deport her as a BDS activist. She was also “asked about her ethnicity and the names of her father and grandfather,” both of whom are Palestinian. Her congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s first thought is to defend Israel, though she is looking into the case.