Hamas attack will likely set back Israel-Saudi normalization plan, which was hateful to Palestinians, but could also reduce sympathy for Palestinians and BDS among Democratic voters in the U.S.

Ilhan Omar is leading a boycott of Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s speech to Congress this week, saying a country that banned her and Rashida Tlaib, both Muslims, from visiting should not get an audience from a joint session of Congress.

Roger Waters’s advocacy for Palestine shook the State Department briefing room, as a reporter questioned why a Biden aide has echoed the smear that Waters’s performance of “The Wall” is an example of Jew hatred, failing to see that it is in fact a denunciation of fascism akin to Charlie Chaplin’s portrayal of “the great dictator.”

State Dept spokesperson Ned Price is stepping down. He often struggled to show concern for Palestinians while making clear the U.S. would do nothing to hold Israel accountable. Here are a few of his highlights.

Yesterday in a shocking exchange at the State Department, the spokesman for Biden’s foreign policy team refused to describe Palestinians in Jenin and other areas of the West Bank as living under military occupation by Israel.

It was big news when Elon Musk suspended the Twitter accounts of at least nine tech journalists last week (over alleged dox-ing) and then reinstated them this week after Twitter users demanded their reinstatement. But in yet another demonstration of anti-Palestinianism in the U.S. mainstream, there has been scarcely any attention given to the arbitrary suspension of Said Arikat, a fixture at the State Department briefings as the longtime Washington correspondent for Al-Quds newspaper, a Palestinian publication.

The U.S. State Department welcomed Israel’s statement on the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and Rep. Marie Newman and reporters Said Arikat and Matt Lee promptly rejected the American stance. “That’s not what accountability is, unless you guys have a different definition of it than the dictionary does,” Matt Lee mocked.

In response to an Israeli raid on Palestinian organizations, the Biden administration has finally said it doesn’t share the Israeli position that the organizations are “terrorist” groups, but it also won’t question or criticize Israeli actions.

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.

“Is it time for this occupation to end? Morally speaking, how much should this military occupation go on, generation after generation?” Said Arikat asks the State Department after another humiliating incident: Israeli soldiers forced a Palestinian woman at a cagelike checkpoint to strip her three-year-old’s tshirt because it pictured a rifle.