We keep a close eye on Senator Elizabeth Warren because she has a very progressive base inside the Democratic Party, will maybe run for president, and has undertaken a balancing act on Israel: supporting Israel’s “right” to shell schools and hospitals during the Gaza onslaught last summer, for instance, but also not signing on to hawkish Senate provisions re Iran, the Palestinian statehood initiative, and Hamas. Oh and she visited Israel last fall and met with the rightwing prime minister of that country.

The other night she was at a dinner for leading Israel lobby group AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in Boston, at which keynote speaker Sen. Lindsey Graham said that “Everything that starts with ‘Al’ in the Middle East is bad news.” As someone pointed out to Graham later, Al means “the” in Arabic…

Uri Blau the renegade Israeli journalist broke the story:

[Graham said,] “Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula… Everything that starts with ‘Al’ in the Middle East is bad news”… Attending the dinner were Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Governor Charlie Baker, and Israeli Consul General for New England Yehuda Yaakov, who posted pictures and comments about the event, according to the report.

It has been picked up in Haaretz but not the New York Times or Boston Globe. Why do we have to read about the doings of the Israel lobby in the Israeli press, not the American media?

I’ve called Senator Warren’s office for comment.

Thanks to Peter Feld.