Why is Biden is telling Israeli leaders that the relationship with the U.S. is “bone-deep”? To please the Israel lobby back home, which has flexed its muscles in Michigan and Maryland, pouring millions into two Democratic primaries. Biden doesn’t want to alienate those donors. Even if Democratic voters don’t care. Ads in those primaries don’t even mention Israel!

Even as several U.S. senators press Joe Biden to address Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May on his trip to Israel, experts at an Israel lobby organization say the matter is a “domestic issue” in the United States and not an issue for Israel. While Neri Zilber, an Israeli journalist, laments that Palestinians will hold up photos of Abu Akleh in demonstrations– “not a terribly helpful visual.”

Expect Biden to parrot conservative pro-Israel writers in the New York Times who hail the lately-fallen Israeli government as a model for the United States in its inclusion of an Arab party. Shmuel Rosner calls it “thrilling.” Too bad that NPR also salutes the “hell of an experiment.” All these positive reviews leave out Israeli apartheid.

Polling by Huwaida Arraf, a Democratic House candidate in Michigan, shows that her position of cutting off aid to Israel is not unpopular. “Palestine is a political positive…Attitudes toward military aid to Israel undermine claims by AIPAC that strong support for Israel is ‘good politics… [S]ix in ten (60%) voters under 45 want aid to Israel reduced or ended,” a memo to donors asserts.

After the State Department tries to sweep journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing under the rug ahead of Biden’s visit to Israel by saying it can tell nothing from the bullet, her family dismisses the statement as “CSI-style forensics” designed to reach the “political” conclusion that an Israeli soldier did not intentionally target her, but was going after terrorists. Meanwhile the Israelis refuse to release evidence and demand a complete whitewash.

The successful effort by the Israeli government and its American friends to overturn the Ben & Jerry’s boycott of the settlements as a supposed “antisemitic” action shows that it is pointless for activists to selectively boycott the illegal settlements. No– boycotts should be aimed at Israel. There is no such thing as a good Israel on one side of the Green Line and a bad one in the occupation. It is all one apartheid state.

The ADC tells Joe Biden, The United States has an obligation to Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist killed by an Israeli sniper May 11, to find out what happened to her. “If this happened in any other country, the US would have at a minimum called for an independent investigation. It is not lost on ADC that Israel has been excused in similar past incidents, such as the murder of Palestinian-American Omar Assad in February 2022, and the brutal beating of fifteen-year-old Palestinian-American Tarik Abukhdeir in 2015.”

Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey says attacks by progressives like IfNotNow on politicians for supporting Israel are causing those colleagues to “lay low” rather than speak up for Israel’s actions. “The issue I worry about more than anything is that some of my colleagues when I call them now to join on something, they’ll say, Listen Josh, You know I’m with you, you know I’m going to vote with you. I always stand by Israel. But you know I just don’t feel like getting beaten up. I get beaten up so much when I come out in support. So I’m just going to lay low, if you don’t mind. I’ll be there for the vote, but I don’t want to sign the letter. I don’t want to speak out publicly.”

Rep. Marie Newman was ousted by moderate Rep. Sean Casten in Illinois’ 6th district. Democratic Majority For Israel spent $450,000 on the race because Newman has voted with the Squad on Israel issues. But Casten has said that the U.S. has a “blind spot” when it comes to Israel’s human rights abuses.

Mainstream pro-Israel groups and politicians have made the Boston Mapping Project into a punching bag. Many are using the Mapping Project to bash the campaign targeting Israel with boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and to affirm the center-right pro-Israel line that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. A group of Congress members even stated that the project was likely to result in “violent attacks by supporters of the BDS movement” against Jews and Jewish organizations. The FBI has met with Jewish groups in Boston and said it is “tracking” the project over these concerns.