Amnesty International USA Executive Director Paul O’Brien is being attacked by lawmakers for saying Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state.” 25 Jewish Congressmen put out a statement condemning the remarks as allegedly antisemitic. O’Brien “has added his name to the list of those who, across centuries, have tried to deny and usurp the Jewish people’s independent agency, the statement reads.

H.R. 2748 is the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021. It just passed the House of Representatives and the Senate last week. It expands the Abraham Accords, Trump-era weapons and business deals between apartheid Israel and other authoritarian regimes. These deals bribe Arab countries in the region to both ignore Israel’s settler colonialism and constant human rights violations. When we hear the phrases Normalizing and Israel, we should always read Normalizing Israel’s impunity and violence.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz is trying to ban leading Palestinian human rights groups as alleged “terrorist” groups and has bragged of bombing Gaza to “the stone age.” So why are Democrats Chris Coons and Steve Cohen meeting with him and standing for photo opps? They don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Israel lobby.

Dave Reed spoke to Beth Miller, Senior Government Affairs Manager at JVP Action, about the political maneuvering that brought the Iron Dome funding expansion bill to its ultimate passage.

In an unprecedented show of strength by House progressives, Democratic leadership was forced to strip $1 billion in funding for an Israeli arms system from a government spending bill. House Majority leader Steny Hoyer rushed to assure Israeli Foreign Minister that the money would go through next week.

Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer’s statements celebrating Israel’s creation as a Jewish state in the ancient Jewish “homeland” are appalling in their anti-Palestinianism. They fail to say a word about the fact that 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled in Israel’s creation and not allowed to return to their homes.

In the latest installment of The Shift, Michael Arria talks with Mckayla Wilkes, who is mounting a primary challenge against one of the most pro-Israel Democrats in the House of Representatives – Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

“As surely as Israel relies on the extraordinary young people in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces], it relies on you for steadfast support and success,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer tells thousands of American college students at the AIPAC policy conference, describing their “mission” to fight BDS on campuses.

Republicans are trying to paint Democrats as the anti-Israel party. Not to worry. Rep. Jan Schakowsky sounded a lot like an old segregationist when she said that equal rights for Palestinians is a bad thing. In one state, “equal rights and equal votes for all” would mean that “in short order the Jewish population would be in the minority, and Israel as a Jewish state would cease to exist.”

Mckayla Wilkes and Briana Urbina, the two progressives hoping to unseat Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, have criticized the Maryland Representative for leading a congressional delegation on a trip to Israel while Americans mourn the victims of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.