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.

Pressure mounts on Joe Biden to stand up for Shireen Abu Akleh 6 weeks after Israeli forces killed the Palestinian-American journalist. A letter from 24 senators demands that the FBI and State Department undertake an investigation of the killing and rejects Israeli claims that it can do so. Six weeks have passed and there has been “no significant progress” toward establishing a transparent investigation. The “only way” for there to be a “credible” investigation is for the U.S. to undertake it, the senators say. AIPAC, Israel’s U.S. mouthpiece, urged senators not to sign the letter.

Irwin Cotler, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, has long been an aggressive proponent of Israeli apartheid. But an upcoming speech at Ariel University is igniting controversy and calls for him to withdraw.

Israel has shown contempt for the idea of accountability in the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, refusing to share its information with the many press investigations that have found that an Israeli soldier killed Abu Akleh. And yet the U.S. State Department goes along with this farce, saying Israel is capable of a “transparent” and “thorough” inquiry that culminates in accountability. At least one reporter mocks the idea.

Liberal Zionist author Eric Alterman tells the Israeli left he’s cutting it out of his will. “I’m sorry, I’m abandoning you and your colleagues. I used to have in my will Israeli peace groups, I’m changing my will and I’m funding American Jewish scholarly and charitable institutions.” Why? “I feel like Israel has said to American Jews, we’re going on our way, and you can take it or leave it.”

The PBS News Hour host rightly grilled Antony Blinken about why Joe Biden is meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince next month despite the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But Woodruff cannot bring herself to mention Biden’s visit to Israel weeks after its killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which it has yet to account for.