During Israel’s invasion of Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956-1957, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower did not hesitate to defy domestic political pressures and censure Israel at the United Nations, withdraw agricultural aid, and threaten financial sanctions that put “Israel’s life… at stake.” Those measures worked to end an Israeli occupation and restrain Israeli attacks on civilians, and gave Washington prestige across the global south. The U.S. political mood changed swiftly after the ’67 war. But it could change back again in the wake of apartheid reports.

The US press is finally making room for Palestinian voices, with a stunning op-ed by Refaat Alareer in the NYT about how it feels to be pounded by missiles in Gaza. And Rula Jebreal tells MSNBC that Palestinians inside Israel experience “Trumpism on steroids.” But Israel supporters fight back, with Bari Weiss saying that killing innocent children is the price of having a state.

“We pretended to my shame at times in the Obama administration that Netanyahu was interested in the two-state solution. When I dont think he was, ever,” Ben Rhodes says. And Rhodes is just as cynical about Palestinian opportunities for sovereignty under the Obama administration. “I can tell you we didn’t really give them one when I was there. Not a real one.”

Netanyahu’s reported historic meeting with the Saudi crown prince this morning in Saudi Arabia at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a power move. The Saudi monarchy gets Israel lobby on its side to counter Biden’s human rights objections. Israel gets Saudi ally to help tie Biden’s hands against reentering Iran deal as posing a threat to peace in the Middle East.

Former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren says Joe Biden “deeply supports Israel,”
but he warns US Jews of “major policy differences” between Biden and Israel, on Palestine and Iran, and Iran threatens Israel’s children’s future. If Biden gets in, Israel is prepared to deal with him as it did with Obama.

It’s been 53 years since Israel won 1967 war, and David Harris of the AJC expresses the mythic views of that war he held at 18, when it happened: that Israel faced a second Holocaust and annihilation, and acted in self-defense. Historians have thoroughly revised these distortions.

Watching the election results on Israeli TV this week was to see Zionism in all its racist glory. The Palestinian parties were big winners Tuesday, finishing third with 13 seats, and the experts all declare, No governing coalition can include Arabs!

‘The Atlantic’ hiring Michael Oren to explain Israeli racism as understandable and justifiable is farcical, like having a former Trump official write about immigration policy. But readers should prepare themselves: the MSM is going this way. Yes it’s Jim Crow, but Israel has no choice.

Michael Oren hangs up on the New Yorker and accuses it of “delegitimization” when reporter Isaac Chotiner asks why he has a right as a Jew born in New York to move to the occupied West Bank. The New Yorker inches closer to the awareness that today’s Zionism is settler-colonialism. 

The essential dynamic at the core of the Israel lobby’s activities is American Jews’ belief that they are lesser than Israelis because they have easy lives and their kids don’t serve in the army in a tough neighborhood. So they must buy US political support for Israel no matter what it does. That guilt trip is finally coming to an end.