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hree quarters of highly educated, high income, publicly active US Democrats — the so-called “opinion elites” — believe Israel has too much influence on US foreign policy, almost half of them consider Israel to be a racist country, and fewer than half of them believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. These are among the findings of a new survey carried out by US political consultant Frank Luntz

Detailing the survey results to The Times of Israel on Sunday, Luntz called the findings “a disaster” for Israel. He summed them up by saying that the Democratic opinion elites are converting to the Palestinians, and “Israel can no longer claim to have the bipartisan support of America.” He said he “knew there was a shift” in attitudes to Israel among US Democrats “and I have been seeing it get worse” in his ongoing polls. But the new findings surprised and shocked him, nonetheless. “I didn’t expect it to become this blatant and this deep.” A prominent US political consultant known best for his work with Republicans, Luntz is meeting with a series of high-level Israeli officials this week to discuss the survey and consult on how to grapple with the trends it exposes.

• Asked whether the US should support Israel or the Palestinians, a vast 90% of Republicans and a far lower 51% of Democrats said Israel. Another 8% of Republicans and 31% of Democrats were neutral. And 18% of Democrats said the Palestinians, compared to 2% of Republicans. Overall, 68% of those polled said the US should support Israel, and 10% said the US should support the Palestinians. • Asked about which side they themselves support, 88% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats said they were “pro-Israeli” while 4% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats said they were “pro-Palestinian.” • Asked if settlements are an impediment to peace, 75% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans agreed.

In the war on the Islamic State, the alleged scourge of humanity, little is heard about the position of America’s much-ballyhooed greatest ally in the Middle East, if not the world, Israel. Now the Islamic State has been conquering territory in very close proximity to the border of Israel. But Israel does not seem to be fearful and it is not taking any action. And the Obama administration and American media pundits do not seem to be the least bit disturbed.  This is quite in contrast to the complaints about other Middle East countries such as Turkey that are being harshly criticized for their failure to become actively involved in fighting the Islamic State.

Returning to the issue of Israel, the fact of the matter is that Israel acts to protect its own national interests.  At the current time, the primary goal of the Islamic State is to purify Islam rather than attack non-Muslims. In response to Internet queries as to why the militant group wasn’t fighting Israel instead of killing Muslims in Iraq and Syria, its representatives responded: “We haven’t given orders to kill the Israelis and the Jews. The war against the nearer enemy, those who rebel against the faith, is more important. Allah commands us in the Koran to fight the hypocrites, because they are much more dangerous than those who are fundamentally heretics.”

Now there is nothing strange about Israel’s position here. It is simply acting in its own national interest. There is no reason to fight a group that doesn’t threaten it. Furthermore, it is in Israel’s interest to try to make it appear that it is acting for the good of all humanity when attacking Hamas, and though these arguments are unlikely to sway any UN members, the prime minister did provide ammunition to the Israel lobby and its supporters that could be used to persuade some gullible Americans.

While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.

Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.

Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.

I’ve been on the road for days, and a few more Clinton emails have thudded down from the Wikileaks heavens revealing deliberations about Israel inside the Clinton braintrust. Some day we will put together a leatherbound edition with morocco covers of Clinton’s Israel emails, but for now we’re just trying to chase the latest. And these three are stunners because they baldly expose the importance of Israel to donors and the party establishment. First, there was this amazing email thread among top strategists from May 2015 about revising Clinton’s talking points in her speeches at rallies and fundraisers in the weeks before she officially launched her candidacy. You just gotta read these comments as they fall. The conversation started out on a bunch of different talking points, but everyone quickly turned to Israel, and the public and private messaging.

Jake Sullivan, foreign policy aide: “Would add a sentence on standing up for our allies and our values, including Israel and other fellow democracies, and confronting terrorists and dictators with strength and cunning.” Mandy Grunwald, media advisor: “I thought this was largely for her TP [talking points] with public events not fundraisers. Do we need Israel etc for that?” Sullivan: “We def need the etc. I think good to have Israel too.” Joel Benenson, pollster and chief strategist: “Why would we call out Israel in public events now? The only voters elevating FP at all are Republican primary voters.” Robby Mook, campaign manager: “I’m w Joel. We shouldn’t have Israel at public events. Especially dem activists.” Sullivan: “I won’t fall on sword over Israel but we need more than climate in that paragraph.” Dan Schwerin, speechwriter: “What about this as a base, and then she can drop in Israel when she’s with donors: “Fourth and finally, we have to protect our country from the global threats that we see, from terrorists to dictators to diseases – and the ones that are still over the horizon. We have to assert confident American leadership to shape global events rather than be shaped by them. That includes taking on global warming and those who continue to deny that it exists. And it means always standing up for our allies and our values, especially our fellow democracies.” Mook: “I’m fine with that.” Benenson: “Good.”

That’s a smoking gun email. It says just what Stephanie Schriock of Emily’s List and J.J. Goldberg said at J Street earlier this year, the role of Jewish donors on the Democratic side is “gigantic” and “shocking.” And those Jewish donors are seen as pro-Israel all the time, by folks who study politics. But meantime, Robby Mook says just what we’ve been saying here for a couple of years: the lobby has lost the Democratic base on Israel. Young Dems, people of color, women — they’re more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis. Don’t mention Israel with dem activists. So the system really is rigged. They don’t want to hear from the people on this.

Photo: Alex Brandon/APFormer President Bill Clinton on Monday met in secret (no press allowed) with roughly 100 leaders of South Florida’s Jewish community, and, as the Times of Israel reports, “He vowed that, if elected, Hillary Clinton would make it one of her top priorities to strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance.” He also “stressed the close bond that he and his wife have with the State of Israel.” It may be tempting to dismiss this as standard, vapid Clintonian politicking: adeptly telling everyone what they want to hear and making them believe it. After all, is it even physically possible to “strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance” beyond what it already entails: billions of dollars in American taxpayer money transferred every year, sophisticated weapons fed to Israel as it bombs its defenseless neighbors, blindly loyal diplomatic support and protection for everything it does? But Bill Clinton’s vow of even greater support for Israel is completely consistent with what Hillary Clinton herself has been telling American Jewish audiences for months. In November, she published an op-ed in The Forward in which she vowed to strengthen relations not only with Israel, but also with its extremist prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Her comments on Israel have similarly contained implicit criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy: namely, that he has created or at least allowed too much animosity with Netanyahu. In her Forward op-ed, she wrote that the Israeli prime minister’s “upcoming visit to Washington is an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds of friendship and unity between the people and governments of the United States and Israel.” She pointedly added: “The alliance between our two nations transcends politics. It is and should always be a commitment that unites us, not a wedge that divides us.” And in case her message is unclear, she added this campaign promise: “I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.” Last month, Clinton wrote an even more extreme op-ed in the Jewish Journal, one that made even clearer that she intends to change Obama’s policy to make it even more “pro-Israel.” It begins: “In this time of terrorism and turmoil, the alliance between the United States and Israel is more important than ever. To meet the many challenges we face, we have to take our relationship to the next level.”

“With every passing year, we must tie the bonds tighter,” she wrote. Tie those bonds tighter. Thus: As part of this effort, we need to ensure that Israel continues to maintain its qualitative military edge. The United States should further bolster Israeli air defenses and help develop better tunnel detection technology to prevent arms smuggling and kidnapping. We should also expand high-level U.S.-Israel strategic consultations. As always, there is not a word about the oppression and brutality imposed on Palestinians as part of Israel’s decadeslong occupation. She does not even acknowledge, let alone express opposition to, Israel’s repeated, civilian-slaughtering bombing of the open-air prison in Gaza. That’s because for Clinton — like the progressive establishment that supports her — the suffering and violence imposed on Palestinians literally do not exist. None of this is mentioned, even in passing, in the endless parade of pro-Clinton articles pouring forth from progressive media outlets.

Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this morning delivered a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. By itself, the choice of the venue was revealing. Brookings served as Ground Zero for centrist think tank advocacy of the Iraq War, which Clinton (along with potential rival Joe Biden) notoriously and vehemently advocated. Brookings’ two leading “scholar”-stars — Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon — spent all of 2002 and 2003 insisting that invading Iraq was wise and just, and spent the years after that assuring Americans that the “victorious” war and subsequent occupation were going really well (in April 2003, O’Hanlon debated with himself over whether the strategy that led to the “victory” in his beloved war should be deemed “brilliant” or just extremely “clever,” while in June 2003, Pollack assured New York Times readers that Saddam’s WMD would be found).

Since then, O’Hanlon in particular has advocated for increased military force in more countries than one can count. That’s not surprising: Brookings is funded in part by one of the Democratic Party’s favorite billionaires, Haim Saban, who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Israel and once said of himself: “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” Pollack advocated for the attack on Iraq while he was “Director of Research of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.” Saban became the Democratic Party’s largest fundraiser — even paying $7 million for the new DNC building — and is now a very substantial funder of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In exchange, she’s written a personal letter to him publicly “expressing her strong and unequivocal support for Israel in the face of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement.” So the hawkish Brookings is the prism through which Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy worldview can be best understood. The think tank is filled with former advisers to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and would certainly provide numerous top-level foreign policy officials in any Hillary Clinton administration. As she put it today at the start: “There are a lot of long-time friends and colleagues who perch here at Brookings.” And she proceeded to deliver exactly the speech one would expect, reminding everyone of just how militaristic and hawkish she is.

Clinton proclaimed that she “too [is] deeply concerned about Iranian aggression and the need to confront it. It’s a ruthless, brutal regime that has the blood of Americans, many others and including its own people on its hands.” Even worse, she said, “Its political rallies resound with cries of ‘Death to America.’ Its leaders talk about wiping Israel off the face of the map, most recently just yesterday, and foment terror against it. There is absolutely no reason to trust Iran.” She repeated that claim several times for emphasis: “They vow to destroy Israel. And that’s worth saying again. They vow to destroy Israel.” She vowed that in dealing with Iran, she will be tougher and more aggressive than Reagan was with the Soviet Union: “You remember President Reagan’s line about the Soviets: Trust but verify? My approach will be distrust and verify.” She also explicitly threatened Iran with war if they fail to comply: “I will not hesitate to take military action if Iran attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon, and I will set up my successor to be able to credibly make the same pledge.” She even depicted the Iran Deal as making a future war with Iran easier and more powerful:

A recent town hall meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders became heated when the conversation turned to Israel, Hamas and the recent fighting in Gaza.   

French telecom giant Orange SA's declaration that it wants to cut business ties with Israel has given a boost to the burgeoning anti-Israel boycott movement while also drawing a sharp rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. The Orange company logo is seen covered with an Israeli flag at the "Partner Orange" Communications Company's offices in the city of Rosh Haain, Israel, Thursday, June 4, 2015. An Israeli Cabinet minister has called on the French president to fire the chief executive of French telecom giant Orange. Culture Minister Miri Regev issued her appeal on Thursday, a day after Orange's CEO announced in Cairo that he would like to sever his company's ties to Israel as soon as possible.

The move bodes poorly for Israel at a time of growing international anger over its West Bank settlements and could potentially put almost any Israeli company in the crosshairs of the boycott campaign. It also has illustrated just how deeply intertwined Israeli settlements are with the rest of the country. Netanyahu responded angrily on Thursday, calling on "the French government to publicly repudiate the miserable statement and miserable action by a company that is under its partial ownership." The remarks came a day after Orange's chief executive Stephane Richard said he would end his company's relationship with Partner Communications Ltd. "tomorrow" if he could, but that he was bound by a contract for the time being. He cited the company's sensitivity to Arab countries. Partner licenses the Orange brand name in Israel. Richard's announcement caused uproar in Israel. "The absurd drama in which the democracy that observes human rights — the state of Israel — and which defends itself from barrages of missiles and terrorist tunnels, and then absorbs automatic condemnations and attempted boycotts, this absurd drama will not be forgiven," Netanyahu also said. Pro-Palestinian activists in France have been pushing for Orange to end the relationship over Partner's activities in Israeli settlements. The settlements, built on land the Palestinians want for a future state, are seen as illegitimate by the international community.

With Richard's comments, Orange appeared to becoming the largest and best-known company to yield to pressure from a global movement calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Israeli officials say the so-called BDS movement is not out to promote peace, but instead aims to "delegitimize" the country's very existence as a Jewish state. They point to the grassroots BDS movement's support for millions of Palestinian refugees to return to ancestors' homes in what is now Israel. Israel rejects the "right of return," saying it would end the country's character as a Jewish and democratic state. In a statement issued in Paris, Orange said it sought to clarify that it wants to pull out of Israel for business reasons, not political ones. The company said it doesn't want to maintain a presence in countries where Orange itself is not a phone provider, and that the move is "in conformity with its brand policy." Orange said it "has no reason to take part ... in a debate of a political nature." Other Israeli officials also denounced Richard's comments. Culture Minister Miri Regev called on the French government to "show zero tolerance for anti-Semitism." She also urged Jewish customers of Orange in France and around the world to drop their service and switch carriers.

     President Obama gave another interview to Jeffrey Goldberg, at the Atlantic.

And this about anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. If you don’t think Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, you’re anti-Semitic. Goldberg: I know that you’ve talked about this with Jewish organizations, with some of your Jewish friends—how you define the differences and the similarities between these two concepts. Obama: You know, I think a good baseline is: Do you think that Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, and are you aware of the particular circumstances of Jewish history that might prompt that need and desire? And if your answer is no, if your notion is somehow that that history doesn’t matter, then that’s a problem, in my mind. If, on the other hand, you acknowledge the justness of the Jewish homeland, you acknowledge the active presence of anti-Semitism—that it’s not just something in the past, but it is current—if you acknowledge that there are people and nations that, if convenient, would do the Jewish people harm because of a warped ideology. If you acknowledge those things, then you should be able to align yourself with Israel where its security is at stake, you should be able to align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not held to a double standard in international fora, you should align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not isolated.

But you should be able to say to Israel, we disagree with you on this particular policy. We disagree with you on settlements. We think that checkpoints are a genuine problem. We disagree with you on a Jewish-nationalist law that would potentially undermine the rights of Arab citizens. And to me, that is entirely consistent with being supportive of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Now for someone in Israel, including the prime minister, to disagree with those policy positions—that’s OK too. And we can have a debate, and we can have an argument. But you can’t equate people of good will who are concerned about those issues with somebody who is hostile towards Israel. And you know, I actually believe that most American Jews, most Jews around the world, and most Jews in Israel recognize as much. And that’s part of the reason why I do still have broad-based support among American Jews. It’s not because they dislike Israel, it’s not because they aren’t worried about Iran having a nuclear weapon or what Hezbollah is doing in Lebanon. It’s because I think they recognize, having looked at my history and having seen the actions of my administration, that I’ve got Israel’s back, but there are values that I share with them that may be at stake if we’re not able to find a better path forward than what feels like a potential dead-end right now.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House tomorrow, President Barack Obama will tell him that his country could face a bleak future -- one of international isolation and demographic disaster -- if he refuses to endorse a U.S.-drafted framework agreement for peace with the Palestinians. Obama will warn Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy. And the president will make the case that Netanyahu, alone among Israelis, has the strength and political credibility to lead his people away from the precipice. In an hourlong interview Thursday in the Oval Office, Obama, borrowing from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel, told me that his message to Netanyahu will be this: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?” He then took a sharper tone, saying that if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach." He added, "It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.”

Unlike Netanyahu, Obama will not address the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, this week -- the administration is upset with Aipac for, in its view, trying to subvert American-led nuclear negotiations with Iran. In our interview, the president, while broadly supportive of Israel and a close U.S.-Israel relationship, made statements that would be met at an Aipac convention with cold silence.Obama was blunter about Israel’s future than I've ever heard him. His language was striking, but of a piece with observations made in recent months by his secretary of state, John Kerry, who until this interview, had taken the lead in pressuring both Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to a framework deal. Obama made it clear that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu’s.

“There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” Obama said. “Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?”

But the major change in relationships took place in 1967. Just take a look at USA aid to Israel. You can tell that right off. And in many other respects, it’s true, too. Similarly, the attitude towards Israel on the part of the intellectual community -- you know, media, commentary, journals, and so on -- that changed very sharply in 1967, from either lack of interest or sometimes even disdain, to almost passionate support. So what happened in 1967?

And Nasserite secular nationalism was considered a serious threat, because it was recognized that it might seek to take control of the immense resources of the region and use them for regional interest, rather than allow them to be centrally controlled and exploited by the United States and its allies. So that was a major issue.

While the U.S. was mired in Southeast Asia at the time -- it was right at the time, a little after the Cambodia invasion and everything was blowing up -- the U.S. couldn't do a thing about it. So, it asked Israel to mobilize its very substantial military forces and threaten Syria so that Syria would withdraw. Well, Israel did it. Syria withdrew. That was another gift to U.S. power and, in fact, U.S. aid to Israel shot up very sharply -- maybe quadrupled or something like that -- right at that time. Now at that time, that was the time when the so-called Nixon Doctrine was formulated.

Lawyers have responded to nearly 300 incidents of “censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy for Palestinian rights” filed by Palestine solidarity activists on more than 65 US campuses in the last year and a half. Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) detail the assault in a new 124-page report, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US.” “As the movement for Palestinian rights is growing in the US, so too are concerted efforts to silence any and all criticism of Israel,” said Radhika Sainath, staff attorney with Palestine Legal and cooperating counsel with CCR. A video featuring students and members of faculty who have experienced silencing, repression and intimidation was also released by Palestine Legal and CCR and can be viewed above.

The report, which is the first of its kind, documents the suppression of Palestine advocacy in the US and identifies nine separate tactics Israel lobby groups use to crush Palestine solidarity activism — especially on campuses. The groups say that 85 percent of the hundreds of incidents to which Palestine Legal has responded since 2014 involving the targeting of students and scholars “include baseless legal complaints, administrative disciplinary actions, firings, harassment and false accusations of terrorism and anti-Semitism.” Such tactics have a chilling effect on speech, the report says. “These strategies … [result in] intimidating or deterring Palestinian solidarity activists from speaking out. The fear of punishment or career damage discourages many activists from engaging in activities that could be perceived as critical of Israel,” the report says. Sainath told The Electronic Intifada that “on the one hand, we’ve seen that peoples’ lives and reputations have been destroyed because of speaking out critically about Israel’s policies — one example is professor Steven Salaita, [whose story] is covered in the report.” Salaita was fired from the University of Illinois after he expressed his criticism of Israel’s attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014.

Meanwhile, lawyers and students say they are bracing for an array of dirty tactics being planned by Israel lobby groups. Earlier this year, Republican party mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, along with Haim Saban, billionaire supporter of the Democratic party, poured tens of millions of dollars into Israel lobby groups on campus with the explicit intent of suppressing Palestine rights-based organizing. “One of the things that we’re concerned about and preparing for is a wave of anti-boycott legislation,” Sainath said, “as well as increased efforts to stop students from introducing referendums or resolutions for Palestinian rights.”

Nir Hefetz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "spin doctor" and confidant, will hand over recordings of Netanyahu and his wife Sara as part of a deal with police to turn state's evidence in the bribery case involving the Bezeq telecom giant and the Walla news site. Netanyahu, currently in the U.S. for AIPAC and a meeting with Trump, received the news at the Blair House, where he is a guest of the White House. In return for testifying against Netanyahu, Hefetz will not stand trial, face prison time or be fined. While he testifies, he will be housed at an isolated installation.

According to assessments regarding the deal, Hefetz will also give information regarding the other cases against the prime minister and his wife. Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email* Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Hefetz is the third Netanyahu confidant to turn against the prime minister in the ongoing corruption cases. Hefetz is suspected of receiving bribes and obstructing justice as part of what is called Case 4000. He is also a key figure in 1270, and is second fiddle in Case 2000. In Case 4000, Hefetz liaised between the Netanyahu couple and the Walla news website, owned by Bezeq. Hefetz arranged for flattering items on the couple and censorship of less flattering items, Haaretz's Gidi Weitz reported. In Case 1270, Hefetz allegedly served as the prime minister's confidant who sought to elucidate how Judge Hila Gerstl felt about closing a case against Sara Netanyahu. Allegedly a trial balloon was floated, hinting to Gerstl that she would be promoted to Israel's next attorney-general if she closed the case down. Hefetz claims that it all boiled down to idle chatter and hadn't been coordinated with the prime minister and his wife. In Case 2000, Hefetz had involvement on both sides of the coin. He was head of public relations for Netanyahu, before which he served as senior editor in the Yedioth Ahronoth group, owned by Arnon Mozes. In 2009, Mozes is suspected of agreeing to provide sweetheart coverage of Netanyahu, who in turn allegedly promised to get the rival (free) newspaper Israel Hayom to stop printing a weekend edition, which stood to hugely benefit Yedioth.

Channel 10 reports that Hefetz will be providing information on other cases – some of which the public hasn't even heard of yet.

Four in five Canadians believe the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel is reasonable, a national survey released Wednesday suggests. More than half of Canadians polled also oppose their parliament’s condemnation of the BDS campaign, which aims to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian rights and international law, and two-thirds would support government sanctions on Israel. These results are remarkable evidence that efforts by the Canadian government, backed by Israel and its surrogates, to demonize the Palestine solidarity movement are failing.

Partial results released last month found that large numbers of Canadians see Israel’s government negatively, and Canadians almost unanimously reject the view that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic.

According to the newly released findings, 78 percent of respondents say BDS is reasonable, but that shoots up to 88 percent among those who identify with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. Favorable views of BDS surge even higher among supporters of Canada’s other left of center parties – the New Democratic Party, Greens and Bloc Québécois. Even supporters of the staunchly pro-Israel Conservative Party are evenly split: 49 percent say the BDS call is reasonable, while 51 percent say it is not – a difference that is within the poll’s margin of error.

n the last few days, something remarkable has taken place in American politics. The president of the United States has made a point of taking on the special relationship with Israel and the Israel lobby in his effort to defend the Iran deal, and supporters of the special relationship have struck back hard, accusing him of anti-Semitism. Elliott Abrams, Lee Smith and Tablet magazine for starters. What’s remarkable is that mainstream supporters of the deal have left the president to do this heavy lifting on his own. They have largely ignored his pointed comments: that the Democrats are under pressure from big donors to oppose the Iran Deal, that the same moneyed groups pushed the Iraq war, that it would be an abrogation of his constitutional duty if he sided with Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and that Netanyahu’s intervention in American politics is unprecedented. The exceptions are Eli Clifton working hard to expose AIPAC as warmongers at Lobelog, and David Bromwich attacking the Congress-people who are Netanyahu’s “marionettes” at Huffington Post. But generally the liberal press has been embarrassed by Obama’s comments or tried to wish them away. The New York Times put AIPAC on its front page the other day, but allowed David Makovsky, an ardent supporter of Israel, to say that some of Obama’s statements are “dangerous.” David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy, is supporting the deal, but he has said on twitter that the emphasis on the Israel lobby is disturbing to him. Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli-American, tries to dispose of the criticisms of Obama by arguing that he can’t have any objection to dual loyalty in this day and age: The very idea that there’s something wrong with dual loyalty is obsolete. It’s a fossilized relic of single-identity patriotism to the patria from centuries past. Nowadays, people migrate, have mixed heritage, multiple citizenships, meta-state communities and even multiple sexualities

Ali Gharib backs her up, saying that conservative critics of Obama are attributing ideas he doesn’t have to him. While Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine says much the same; he denies that Obama was talking about Jewish pro-Israel donors when it was reported in the New York Times that the president was lobbying Democratic senators to stick with him: The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Elliott Abrams seized on that same report to say that the president was mining anti-Semitism, by talking about the Israel lobby.

So the president is out there on his own. I believe he wants us, the American people, to talk about the Israel lobby and whose interests it’s supporting at this critical moment, so that he can solidify the most important foreign policy move of his administration; but the conversation isn’t really happening. Last night on Hardball, Steve Kornacki led a discussion of Chuck Schumer’s opposition to the deal in which he and Michael Tomasky acknowledged “political” pressures on Schumer from his constituents, but they left it at that. They didn’t say what those pressures are– Israel. They didn’t say that Schumer calls himself Israel’s Shomer, or guardian, didn’t even say that he is Jewish, something that the networks have been reporting because it’s relevant. Just as Laura Rozen of al Monitor cites Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz’s Jewishness in embracing his support of the deal yesterday. I want the president’s conversation to happen. I want Americans to talk about the Israel lobby’s influence due to wealthy donors and talk about pro-Israeli activists’ loyalty to Netanyahu over the president. I think this important discussion can happen without anti-Semitism for a simple reason. Zionism is not Judaism. Jewish Americans do not all support Netanyahu. Some of us don’t even support Israel. Anti-Zionists don’t believe in the idea of a Jewish state any more than they’d support a Christian state in the U.S. Myself, I became an anti-Zionist in recent years because my liberal American values impelled me to demand that Palestinians living under Israeli rule should have the right to vote for their government.

Whatever happened to honor among thieves? When the National Security Agency was caught eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, it was considered a rude way to treat a friend. Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying—albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill—that our Israeli “friends” have gone too far with their spying operations here. According to classified briefings on legislation that would lower visa restrictions on Israeli citizens, Jerusalem’s efforts to steal U.S. secrets under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts have “crossed red lines.”  Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly, counterspies have told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony “very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.” Another staffer called it “damaging.”  The Jewish state’s primary target: America’s industrial and technical secrets. 

“No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do,” said a former congressional staffer who attended another classified briefing in late 2013, one of several in recent months given by officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the FBI and the National Counterintelligence Directorate. 

“I don’t think anyone was surprised by these revelations,” the former aide said. “But when you step back and hear…that there are no other countries taking advantage of our security relationship the way the Israelis are for espionage purposes, it is quite shocking. I mean, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that after all the hand-wringing over [Jonathan] Pollard, it’s still going on.” Israel and pro-Israel groups in America have long lobbied U.S. administrations to free Pollard, a former U.S. naval intelligence analyst serving a life sentence since 1987 for stealing tens of thousands of secrets for Israel. (U.S. counterintelligence officials suspect that Israel traded some of the Cold War-era information to Moscow in exchange for the emigration of Russian Jews.) After denying for over a decade that Pollard was its paid agent, Israel apologized and promised not to spy on U.S. soil again. Since then, more Israeli spies have been arrested and convicted by U.S. courts. 

(Reuters) - Israel will withhold critical tax revenue and seek ways to bring war crimes prosecutions against Palestinian leaders in retaliation for Palestinian moves to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), Israeli officials said on Saturday. On Friday, the Palestinians delivered documents to U.N. headquarters in New York on joining the Rome Statute of the ICC in The Hague and other global treaties with the aim of prosecuting Israelis for what they consider war crimes committed on their territory.

The ICC was set up to try war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide. Israel and the United States object to unilateral approaches by the Palestinians to world bodies, saying they undermine prospects for negotiating a peaceful settlement of the decades-old Middle East conflict.

This is highway robbery. Not only is this illegal, they are adding money theft to land theft. The revenues belong to the Palestinian people, they go to pay salaries and support our economy. Israel has no business deciding to steal our funds," senior Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi told Reuters.Under interim peace deals from the 1990s, Israel collects at least $100 million a month in duties on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

Reports, including photographic evidence reveal that Israel is using an energy weapon to attack targets in Gaza. The destructive beam, thought to be a high energy laser, is emitted from a plane identified as a Boeing KC707 “Re’em,” originally configured for Electronic Warfare. Those observing the attacks cite a beam from a 4 engine jet hitting a target which immediately turns “white hot.” After these attacks, the target area is then hit with either bombs or artillery to destroy evidence of the use of an American designed and built energy weapon illegally given to Israel. BACKGROUND The weapon used is identified as part of the YAL 1 system, a COIL laser (chemical, oxygen/iodine laser), originally intended as an aircraft mounted system to shoot down ICBMs. Boeing approached the Department of Defense in 2002 and by 2004 had mounted its first system on a 747/400 previously flown by Air India. Boeing had convinced Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that this system, mounted on as many as 7 aircraft, could fly 24 hours a day around Iran and defend “the free world” against nuclear tipped ICBMs that Rumsfeld believed Iran was planning to use. Please note that it was Rumsfeld that told television audiences that Afghanistan was “peppered” with underground cities serviced by rail links that supported division sized Al Qaeda units that, after ten years, no one was able to locate.

Boeing tested the system in 2007. The Department of Defense claimed the system could shoot down low earth orbit satellites and that in tests conducted in 2010, destroyed multiple test missiles. There is no reliable confirmation of this other than a press release from then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. CANCELLATION AND MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE The Center for Strategic Studies, in an interview with then Defense Secretary Gates published the following: “I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire.” So, right now the ABL would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.”

After $5 billion was spent, the functioning prototype only capable of being fired directly at nearby targets, a system very capable of acquisition and destruction of ground targets with no air defense protection only, was said to have been flown to a scrap yard. The plane itself is still there, at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, with other failed dreams and nightmares. However, the weapons system disappeared, only to reappear in Israel as a “missile defense” project, an adjunct to the “Iron Dome” system. Israel’s Rafael Defense had been trying to develop laser weapons on its own to intercept rockets being fired from Gaza. It was never able to neither deploy a laser powerful enough nor develop a radar system able to be effective.

But dig deeper into the findings and it is apparent that Israel’s support is eroding in key sectors of the US population. Virtually all of the increase in sympathy for Palestinians “has come among Democrats, especially liberal Democrats,” Pew states.

The number of liberal Democrats sympathizing more with the Palestinians has nearly doubled over the past two years, from 21 to 40 percent. And within the Democratic Party, it is clear that Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the more pro-Israel wing: 47 percent of her supporters say they sympathize with Israel more, while 27 percent lean toward the Palestinians. Among the supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, however, a plurality – 39 percent – are more favorable to the Palestinians, while just a third stand with Israel.

Clinton’s backers are clearly more pro-Israel, but it is still remarkable to note that this group is under 50 percent – an indication of how much opinions about Palestine and the Israeli question are shifting within the support base of the Democratic Party. The Pew survey confirms the extent to which Israel has become a partisan issue. Overall, just 43 percent of Democrats are more sympathetic to Israel, while 29 percent back the Palestinians. In contrast to the Democrats, “overwhelming shares of [Republican] voters side with Israel, regardless of which candidate they support,” Pew states. Republican support for Israel – at around 75 percent – varied little among supporters of former presidential candidates Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich compared with those of presumptive nominee Donald Trump. Just seven percent of Republicans were more favorable to the Palestinians. “We’ve been tracking this question since the 1970s and this gap is relatively new, of Republicans being more sympathetic to Israel than Democrats,” Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of research, told NPR’s Morning Edition on Thurdsay. “The gap is now as wide as we’ve ever seen it – it’s almost 35 percentage points.”

After freezing the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, Israel is taking additional steps to punish the PA’s for its request to join the International Criminal Court at The Hague. A senior Israeli official said on Sunday Jerusalem would be contacting pro-Israel members of the U.S. Congress to ensure the enforcement of legislation stipulating that if the Palestinians initiate any action against Israel at the ICC, the State Department would have to stop American aid to the PA, which comes to some $400 million annually. The stop-gap funding bill was passed in Congress last month. Both houses of the new Congress to be seated later this month will be controlled by the Republican Party, with many key positions filled by senators and representatives who are pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian. The law regarding the Palestinians initiating action at the ICC is strongly worded and states that President Barack Obama cannot waive a decision to halt aid to the PA.

The U.S. administration is concerned about the ramifications of halting the financial assistance, which is liable to make it impossible for the PA to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of employees. Although Arab states have promised to provide the PA with a financial security net, the Americans believe that, as in the past, the Arab states won’t cough up the money they promised and won’t work to keep the PA afloat. Earlier Sunday, Foreign Ministry Director-General Nissim Ben Sheetrit said that Israel’s response to the Palestinian bid at the ICC would be much harsher and more comprehensive than freezing the PA’s tax revenues. Ben Sheetrit made the remarks at a conference held in Jerusalem for Israel’s envoys to Europe. “Israel is about to switch from defense to attack mode,” he said. Sheetrit said, however, that unlike in the past, Israel will not launch a wave of settlement construction in response to the Palestinian moves. He also added Israel had no interest in undermining security cooperation with the PA or to cause its collapse.

The security cabinet is expected to meet later in the week to decide on the new measures.   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that “The Palestinian Authority has chosen to launch a confrontation with Israel,” adding that Israel would not sit idly by but would respond. “We won’t let them drag Israel Defense Forces soldiers and officers to The Hague,” said Netanyahu. “The ones who must give an accounting are the heads of the Palestinian Authority, who formed an alliance with the Hamas war criminals.”