In fact, Israel is one of the greatest impediments to our efforts to combat ISIS, because we can’t form a natural alliance with one of the strongest nation-states in the region, Iran. Israel wants to demonize Iran forever because it needs an existential threat, someone to blame for radical Islam. Just as Israel seems to like ISIS around, because it can then argue that the United States is at war with the same forces it is contending with; ISIS = Hamas, in the Israeli prime minister’s feverish imagination.

The Israel lobby makes sure these bizarre ideas contaminate our discourse. New York Congressman Gregory Meeks was on Chris Matthews’s show last night saying that he could support putting US “special forces” in Syria And last week Meeks was in Israel assuring Netanyahu that the U.S. and Israel are brothers and sisters. He echoed Netanyahu’s nonsense that ISIS and Hamas are the same: