The US leadership is looking beyond its recent cuts to the the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, with the State Department reexamining the entirety of its aid budget to the Palestinian Authority, Hadashot news reported Wednesday.

In 2014, Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya’alon accused Secretary of State John Kerry of ‘acting out of incomprehensible obsession and a messianic feeling’ in his pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Today, the U.S. is indeed on a messianic mission – only of a different kind – and, this time around, Israel could not be any more supportive.

The leaders of 21 humanitarian aid groups wrote to the Trump administration on Wednesday to object “in the strongest terms” to a decision to withhold $65 million in planned US contributions to the United Nations agency that serves Palestinian refugees.

Democrats are not looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and determining that they have framed the issue incorrectly in their minds, or deciding that the Palestinian cause is more just and worthy of greater support. They are looking at Israel, and deciding that they like it less. Trump is such a divisive figure and is so wrapped up with Israel that Democratic views on Israel will remain a referendum on Trump after he is gone.

The founder of the Louis B. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Marcus came to the attention of student activists last spring when he waded into a student discussion about whether to boycott Israel. In the wake of a fierce BDS debate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Marcus wrote to university administrators condemning BDS as anti-Semitic.

The Tamimi family, whose imprisoned teenage daughter Ahed has become a Palestinian cause celebre, was the subject two years ago of a classified investigation that included checking whether they were “a real family,” Michael Oren, an Israeli deputy minister and former ambassador to the United States, said Tuesday.

The Knesset gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a bill allowing Israel to hold the bodies of terrorists rather than returning them to their families, over fears that their funerals may be used to encourage further attacks.

Support for the two-state solution in principle falls below half for Palestinians and Israeli Jews – 46% of both populations support this solution today; Arab citizens of Israel are the only population showing a strong majority in favor (83%). Palestinian attitudes become more pessimistic in general and support for militancy rose following US President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

By destroying schools in Palestinian villages in Area C and elsewhere, Israel is forcing Palestinians to make a cruel choice — between their land and their children’s futures.

A Knesset committee has approved a bill to close the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria – without discussing the international implications.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Wednesday that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had approved a proposal to legalize a West Bank outpost that had been the home of an Israeli shot dead in a terror attack earlier in the month.