As we move closer to next month's vote on the Iran nuclear deal, I wanted to note some parts of the story that are not getting sufficient attention in the mainstream press. Even in Israel, where the the P5+1 deal is quite unpopular, there is increasing concern, at least among elites, at just how far Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to go in damaging US-Israel ties in his war against the Obama administration over the Iran deal. As JJ Goldberg aptly puts it, the campaign of incitement and maliciously phony charges of anti-Semitism against the White House are "effectively turning American Jews into Netanyahu's cannon fodder" in war against Obama.

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It is not too much to say that war over the deal is tearing the US Jewish community apart. Though polling of the US population in general is ambiguous on support and opposition to the deal (greatly depends on how the question is posed), there is no ambiguity on the position of American Jews. American Jews support the deal by significant margins. It's the organizational apparatus, increasingly dominated by more right-leaning funders, who are more clearly against. But even here the story isn't quite as clear cut as you might think. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency's Ron Kampeas has been keeping a running tabulation of statements from Jewish federations and regional communal groups on the deal. So far they have 19 of 51 groups opposing the deal, none endorsing the deal and the remaining 32 with a range of 'serious concerns,' 'scrutinize the deal carefully' and so on. It is a difficult spot for the leadership of these groups since traditionally they have shied away from deeply partisanized issues and ones on which their memberships are deeply divided. But here standing aside has proven all but impossible.

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It's all a dark, ugly business. Bibi's mix of myopia and megalomania, the campaign of incitement here at home, American Jews - easily manipulated and inflamed because of a dark, brutal history - really are cannon fodder in Bibi's war.