Israel has larger war aims than Hamas, and is deliberately provoking a regional war to draw the U.S. into the fray. Biden has made halfhearted efforts to cool the situation, but he needs to be bolder in reining Israel in before it’s too late.

Tom Friedman created minor shockwaves when he wrote the Biden administration is “reassessing” the U.S.-Israeli relationship, but actual U.S. policy remains committed to Israel and the “shared fiction” that the occupation is temporary .

Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza have lodged a complaint to the International Criminal Court protesting Israeli crimes against humanity resulting from the 17-year-long Gaza siege.

Biden officials have been unequivocal in their support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, barely paying lip service to a ceasefire. More concerning is their refusal to acknowledge Israel initiated and provoked this escalation. 

The United States bears a responsibility to rein in Israeli violence against Palestinians. The only real question is whether the Biden administration will use the leverage it has.

There is no middle ground; you’re either with Israel or against it these days, as J Street, the liberal Zionist group, found out yesterday. Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street says it was shocking when the Jewish establishment allowed a speaker to call his group “anti-Semitic” at a UN summit against BDS. But the same event smeared Bassem Tamimi, the leader of nonviolent resistance in Nabi Saleh in occupied Palestine, without protest from J Street.

US politicians swearing fealty to Israel at AIPAC know there are cracks in US support. “When people sometimes say to me, the United States is so overwhelmingly partial to Israel in this discussion, I say Yes of course. We have been friends for a long time,” Nancy Pelosi admits.

VP Mike Pence was introduced at AIPAC as an enemy of BDS and told the group that Trump is seriously considering moving embassy to Jerusalem. Meanwhile,, young Jewish protesters outside call the occupation a moral crisis in the Jewish community.

Donald Trump’s draft of a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians sets the peace process back 20 years by talking about a “provisional entity,” not a Palestinian state and by allowing settlement construction in Jerusalem, Khalil Jahshan of the Arab Center reports. It also assures the parties that Trump will be “personally involved in the process,” and that’s the “scariest part of the plan.”

“Senator Hatfield said– and I will never forget these words as long as I live– ‘In this great distinguished institution of the United States Senate, when the Israel lobby says jump, 90 plus of my colleagues say how high. They never ask why.'” Khalil Jahshan at the annual Israel lobby conference in Washington, D.C.