Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo has joined the chorus of Israeli officials who have admitted, to varying degrees, that Israel is practicing apartheid.

When Palestinians use terminologies not of their own making to describe their experiences, all in the name of gaining legitimacy in the eyes of a white liberal (and sometimes Zionist) audience, they become divorced from their own reality. This includes centering the discourse of international law, the apartheid analogy, and retractions of official Palestinian statements after pressure from the Israel lobby.

Ran Greenstein argues that Palestinians will not be able to challenge Israel as an oppressive ethnonational state in the same manner that South Africans did.

Even the apartheid regime in South Africa never outlawed human rights defenders in the manner that Israel just did when it declared six Palestinian organizations to be “terrorist organizations.” South Africa sought to maintain a reputation that it respected the Rule of Law. Israel knows that it need not worry about its image because the West will not take action against it for any wrongdoing — in the name of Israeli exceptionalism.

The liberal Zionist group J Street cannot endorse Ben & Jerry’s decision to stop selling in the occupied territories even as it seems to try to look as if it does. It is balancing the official Jewish community that is angered by Ben & Jerry’s, and young Jews who see Israel as practicing “apartheid.” It’s a straddle with political risks.

AIPAC’s cancellation of its annual conference in 2022 shows that the Israel lobby is in complete disarray, with young American Jews distancing themselves from a country that 38 percent of them call an “apartheid” state. The liberal Zionist group Americans for Peace Now has repeatedly credited the “apartheid” charge against Israel, while J Street rejects the label.

Liberal Zionists are secretly exultant over Naftali Bennett unseating Benjamin Netanyahu, hoping it will end the politicization of Israel in U.S. politics. But Apartheid is a hard sell and Bennett will quickly be on a collision course with a lot of people in the United States who think Palestinians should have rights.

“[T]he occupation is not temporary, and there is not the political will in the Israeli government to bring about its end,” write Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch. “It is time for the world to recognize that what we saw in South Africa decades ago is happening in the occupied Palestinian territories too… and take decisive diplomatic action… and work towards building a future of equality, dignity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

An important difference between apartheid in South Africa and Israel is that South Africans openly embraced white supremacy as law and apartheid. In the case of Zionism, the untruth of inequality is anything but transparent. It has been disguised and denied by a relentless barrage of shifting alibis, exculpations, mitigations, as well as heavy demonization of critics.

The Israel lobby is under huge pressure these days as the Democratic Party base becomes more sympathetic to Palestinians in the wake of the latest Israeli onslaught. A pro-Israel group, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, held an event on the Gaza conflict last week, and there were two surprising responses to the progressive shift.