We won’t have truthful discussions about Zionism in this country until people are honest about the fact that anti-Palestinian racism permeates our political culture.

The western media argues that only Israeli victims deserve justice. Thousands of Palestinians never do.

The New York Times says that Israel values human life, but a reexamination of Times coverage of Israel’s 2018 massacre of peaceful protesters in Gaza shows that the Times itself does not uphold such values.

You see no universal Western outrage over the US support for the Saudi blockade on Yemen, which has killed an estimated 377,000, most of them children dead of famine. The Western press sometimes does report on Western atrocities, but with nothing approaching the rage it reserves for the crimes of our enemies. If there isn’t a constant drumbeat of stories about our atrocities as there is for Putin’s, and pundits aren’t constantly agonizing over our need to do something, the unspoken message is that our crimes simply aren’t that important or bad. Yes this is an argument for whataboutism– but you must be a moral imbecile to think there is something wrong with it because of that.  

It never crossed the minds of most pundits or politicians or Democrats to be critical of Blinken’s pathologically dishonest response to Rep. Ilhan Omar about U.S. and Israeli accountability. His response was normal, entirely mainstream, precisely because Israel is an apartheid state and the US is a superpower and neither is accountable to their victims and we aren’t supposed to notice the lack of accountability.

Russiagate is an excuse to ramp up a new Cold War. That’s why so many national security types love it. Antiwar types should see this as an internecine fight between different factions of warmongers, a jingoistic and xenophobic way to blame our country’s pathetic political culture on evil foreigners. McCarthyism 2.0 The more demented liberals online blame every criticism of the Democrats on Putin.

The New York Times is actively whitewashing the U.S. role in Syria with a childish piece of propaganda telling its readers we armed only honest trustworthy Boy Scouts, not these current horrible racist murdering dregs.

On the basis of alleged “anti-Semitic tropes,” numerous critics of Israel, many of them writers of color, have been accused of bigotry for their criticisms of Israel. The latest is Ali Abunimah, accused by Matt Seaton of NYRB. Meantime, you can say anything you like to dehumanize Palestinians and no one in the mainstream will call you out.

The New York Times publishes Israel advocate Matti Friedman’s false claim that the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada are a repressed memory, but that’s why the left is no account. The Second Intifada as a political crossroads is a standard talking point of Israel supporters. What is repressed is the Palestinian death toll, which Friedman leaves out of his op-ed completely.

‘The Atlantic’ hiring Michael Oren to explain Israeli racism as understandable and justifiable is farcical, like having a former Trump official write about immigration policy. But readers should prepare themselves: the MSM is going this way. Yes it’s Jim Crow, but Israel has no choice.