On Friday, Israel’s defense minister, center-right pragmatist Moshe Yaalon, announced his resignation: “To my great sorrow, extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel.” His post, the Guardian reports, has been offered to his ideological nightmare: right-wing hawk Avigdor Lieberman.

In an act of political cowardice, the campaign of Bernie Sanders has suspended a young staffer named Simone Zimmerman, who was recently hired to coordinate the campaign’s outreach to Jewish communities, for criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, the right-wing Prime Minister of Israel, in a year-old post on Facebook. The New York Times has the details:

Speaking today at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest and most influential organization in the so-called Israel lobby, likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton drew a sharp contrast between her own position on the American-Israeli relationship and that of another politician whose more realist approach had won him few fans in the room: President Barack Obama.

At Davos this weekend, in a “special conversation” between Fareed Zakaria and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister articulated his strategy for defeating extremist ideologies: “I think the key is despair, is to rob them of hope—the hope that their wild fantasies will actually win out the day.”

In the wake of his widely condemned remarks last week—remarks that seemed to play right into the hands of Holocaust deniers and revisionists—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like to offer a few points of clarification: 1) The Nazis definitely did the Holocaust, but 2) we should still definitely blame the Palestinians, too.

In an address to the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided it might be a good idea to partially absolve Hitler of responsibility for the systematic genocide of six million Jews. In doing so, Netanyahu parroted an idea that has since been widely rejected by the vast majority of historians.

On March 3, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak before both chambers of Congress about the ongoing negotiations between the United States and the Iranian government over the latter’s ability to acquire and develop nuclear technologies. It’s already considered one of the most controversial political speeches in recent memory, and it hasn’t even happened yet.

Today Jeffrey Goldberg published an essay at The Atlantic about rising tensions between the governments of the United States and Israel. Things do not seem to be going very well. Goldberg opens his piece by quoting an unnamed “senior Obama administration official” who recently told him: “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit.” Bibi is the nickname of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What did Sean Hannity whisper in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ear during their post-interview slow dance? He's still not telling—and he doesn't much like your guessing, either. This morning the Fox News personality took some time to respond personally to a few of the many Twitter users who took yesterday's teasing Tweet as an opportunity to troll.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he plans to "significantly widen" Israel's ground operations in Gaza amidst news that 27 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed since troops entered the territory yesterday.

Phone conversations are almost always awkward, and rarely more awkward than when you're calling someone for the very first time and apologizing for the time your military killed eight Turkish citizens in a raid on a flotilla bringing aid to the blockaded Gaza strip. And yet! Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did just that today, calling his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan, apologizing for the "operational mistakes of the Israeli military," and starting down the path toward the normalization of relations between the countries:

There's been a whole lot of cognitive dissonance going on in the Middle East on Sunday, as violence — and the death toll — continues to escalate despite reported efforts by both sides to reach a ceasefire. Today, an Israeli strike in Gaza City aimed at a militant allegedly involved in rocket attacks against Israel killed 12 Palestinians. According to a Palestinian health official, the 12 dead included five women and four children, and the Israeli Defense Force admitted that the targeted Hamas commander was not injured.

Two Sundays ago, the New York Times ran an article about Mitt Romney and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two have known each other for about 35 years. They went through Boston Consulting Group's "boot camp" together. They "can almost speak in shorthand." They finish each other's sentences and once accidentally ate from opposite ends of the same long strand of spaghetti. Their lives are an endless geopolitical meet-cute: Romney wants to run the nuclear big-box store of the United States, but he has enough love in his heart that he'd never crush the beautiful Middle Eastern shop around the corner.

What do presidents do when no one else can hear them? The same thing the rest of us do: complain about other people! Like on Monday, when President Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy were caught on microphone bitching about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While Barack Obama was sharing fine teas and cakes with the Queen of England and Kate Middleton in London today, hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu swooped himself into a long, colorful address to a joint session of Congress. Everyone loved the guy, especially Republicans! Is there any sort of waiver or whatever that they can give him to run for the U.S. presidency? Some would hope.

The historic Bieber-Bibi Summit—in which Canadian and Israeli dreamboats Justin Bieber and Benjamin Netanyahu were to meet over danishes to discuss hair products and the Middle East—is over before it even began. But just who failed to be the mensch in this situation is still up for debate.

Justin Bieber touched down in Israel today, and is scheduled to perform in Tel Aviv on Thursday night. But some time in the days in-between, he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet. The historic Bieber-Bibi Summit will cover matters such as the recent violence in Gaza, the reform spreading through the Middle East, and whether Justin prefers boxers of briefs.

Because he doesn't have enough to do, President Obama is hosting direct talks between Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, starting at dinner Wednesday. The main course... was hope. And, some kind of actual food, one imagines.

Israel and Palestine have agreed to resume talks, which would begin in September in Washington.