Renowned for his ability to pull off political miracles, Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have gradually worn down Benny Gantz’s resistance over the past 12 months. The coronavirus epidemic proved the final straw.

If there is one issue that denotes the terminal decline of Labour as a force for change – desperately needed social, economic and environmental change – it is not Brexit. It is the constant furore over an “antisemitism crisis” supposedly plaguing the party for the past five years.

The Trump plan kills the charade that the 26-year-old Oslo process aimed for anything other than Palestinian capitulation. It fully aligns the US with Israeli efforts – pursued by all its main political parties over many decades – to lay the groundwork for permanent apartheid in the occupied territories.

Jonathan Cook on the UK elections: “We on the left didn’t lose this election. We lost our last illusions.”

Chief Rabbi Efraim Mirvis has no lessons to teach Corbyn or the Labour party about racism. In fact, it is his own, small-minded prejudice that blinds him to the anti-racist politics of the left. His ugly message is now being loudly amplified by a corporate media keen to use any weapon it can, antisemitism included, to keep Corbyn and the left out of power – and preserve a status quo that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

The Netanyahu government is working hard to shut down human rights groups who are the only chance of holding it accountable for the appalling abuses committed by Israeli soldiers.

Israeli defense ministry officials want to upend the definition in international law of the settlements as a war crime by allowing settlers buy as private property the plots of occupied land their illegal homes currently stand on.

The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.

It would be a mistake to assume the political deadlock in Israel is evidence of a ideological divide. The reality is that there is strong unity – over shared racist attitudes towards Palestinians.

The current political paralysis in Israel should not be mistaken for an equal split between the center-left and the right, as the media would have its audiences believe. Rather, Israeli elections are a contest over which brand of Israeli ultra-nationalism will triumph.