At a rally last week for the senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a man unfurled a flag bearing a swastika and began shouting anti-Semitic slurs, in what was unmistakably an attack targeted at the first Jew to be a serious contender for the presidential nomination of a major American political party. None of that, writes, Jonathan Tobin, changes the fact that Sanders has cultivated a coterie of anti-Semitic supporters, advisers, and surrogates, not limited to Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar:

[Senator Sanders’s] campaign manager Faiz Shakir is, [like the two congresswomen, a] supporter of the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS). Given that Sanders often says that he is a supporter of Israel, but merely a critic of its government, it’s hard to understand why he would give such a senior position to someone clearly opposed to Israel’s existence.

Recently, the Sanders campaign also hired Phillip Agnew, another virulent BDS backer who has engaged in repeated slanders of Israel and who is a promoter of a school curriculum that calls for the Jewish state’s elimination and that supports terrorist groups seeking to make that nightmare a reality.

The former Women’s March leader and Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour is also a Sanders campaign surrogate, despite her long history of anti-Semitic utterances and her willingness to make common cause with supporters of the hatemonger and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Another Sanders surrogate is Amer Zahr, a BDS supporter who has engaged in repeated slurs of Jews and Israel.

Bernie Sanders doesn’t seem capable of [denouncing anti-Semitism when it comes from the political left]. Even worse, he provides cover to Jew-haters who can boast they are advocating for the election of a Jewish president even as they engage in anti-Semitic hate and work for Israel’s destruction.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.