Thomas Nides, Joe Biden’s ambassador to Israel, spoke to Americans for Peace Now last week and made clear his stance with the Israeli government. He won’t buck Israel by pushing to reopen the American consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians. “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel… I’m not going to reverse the clock.” Though Nides did reverse Trump’s policy of U.S. officials visiting illegal West Bank settlements. “I said that and my phone blew up,” Nides related. In the past he never had a twitter account. “Now I’m like a Kardashian with everything I say.”

“Regime change in Iran shouldn’t be a taboo” is an idea that gets traction in the Washington foreign policy establishment. Ukraine’s brave resistance to Russian invasion ought to dispel that idea forever. Even people who don’t like their rules won’t accept foreign control.

Israel’s “untenable occupation just goes on and on” and has “parallels” to apartheid, Rep. Jared Huffman of California reports after a visit to the country. But he says he got in an argument with Rep. Brad Schneider, who said that Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh offended American congresspeople by using the word “apartheid” and said Huffman and others should have taken the prime minister “to task” for using the word. Huffman said almost every Palestinian he met shares Shtayyeh’s view.

When Israel slaughtered hundreds of civilians in Gaza, mainstream journalists and politicians said the situation was too “complicated” to come out against such actions. Now they are cheerleaders for Ukrainian resistance, by any means, to military invasion and missile attacks. And Benny Gantz who bragged about bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age, is a hero to the Democratic Party. Yes there is an official propaganda line in the U.S., and journalists lost their mainstream careers for doing in Palestine what journalists routinely do in the Ukraine now.

“The Zionist left is the real enemy of freedom, of fighting the occupation in Israel, much more than the right wing is,” says Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy. “They are the founding fathers for the settlement project. Who started it? Netanyahu, Begin, Sharon? No no no no no! Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin– Nobel Peace Prize winners, peacemakers– they are responsible. They also enable us Israelis to feel so good about ourselves. Because they were always the laundry of any crime. We have this prestigious, world-famous Supreme Court, this castle of liberalism and freedom, part of the Zionist left, and this Supreme Court enabled any crime of war, from the settlements to the tortures, everything went through the Supreme Court and everything was washed there, and it was accepted. If the Supreme Court says there are no torturing or the settlements are legal– so who are we to say or to think different?”

Florida Congressman Ted Deutch announces that he is stepping through the revolving door from being an advocate for Israel as the chair of the Middle East subcommittee of House Foreign Affairs to being the head of a lead Israel lobby group, the American Jewish Committee, starting in October. The smooth transition makes smart people cynical about the extent to which Democratic politicians are dedicated to supporting Israel.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer tweets about the Ukraine while a photo shows him to be in Israel on the tab of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. Bill Keating is Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, so he’s been tweeting a lot about Ukraine, but not a word about being in Israel on the AIPAC trip. Other Reps also seem bashful about the junket, including Kathleen Rice who gave AIPAC a video testimonial from the occupied Golan Heights.

This week dozens of House members have met with Israeli leaders and tweeted praise for the country as police continued to clash with Palestinian protestors in occupied East Jerusalem, where multiple families face displacement.

Former ambassador David Friedman says that Judaism is Zionism. “So if you do not support the state of Israel you do not support Judaism, therefore you are antisemitic.”
Then Friedman seemed to echo Ben Shapiro’s call for building a synagogue on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in occupied Jerusalem, though he said the last time he did so, he’d “started a riot.” The two extremists spoke at an event kicked off by the Florida governor, who is considered a likely presidential candidate.

The lead Israel lobby group AIPAC brought 40 members of Congress to Israel, including Democrats who met with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, even as he trashed the Iran deal. Some Democrats reportedly met with disgraced rightwing former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries toasted the “land of milk and honey” while Rep. Ritchie Torres celebrated an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied Jerusalem.