Last week, the BBC reported Barack Obama’s request to Congress for $200 million in military aid to assist Israel’s construction of a short-range rocket defence system, Iron Dome. The funding will be in addition to the $3 billion in military aid the US annually sends to Israel.

“It grieves me to the core,” said Steele, “to have to admit that today the American government has abdicated her traditional solidarity with Israel”:
Today, Israel truly stands alone among governments. Facing existential threats more dangerous and more imminent than ever before. That’s not to say that Israel has been abandoned, however, by the American people. But there is no denying that the current administration and its Congressional collaborators have left Israel to fend for herself.

"Why is this bastard lying to me?" (Claude Cockburn on interviewing politicians)