Archive

July 2021

Browsing

Israel lobbyist David Harris, who couldn’t explain why young Jews are turning against Israel, is finally leaving the American Jewish Committee. And Rabbi Michael Miller is leaving the JCRC because he knows he’s out of touch with the progressive movement in Jewish life.

Screenshot of B'Tselem video of Israeli soldier taunting Palestinians in occupied Hebron, May 13, 2021.

“You are very fat. And ugly,” an Israeli soldier says to a Palestinian woman as he raids her home in occupied Palestine May 13. While the same day another Israeli soldier shouts homophobic abuse at a household and threatens to rape a woman. Two new videos from the human rights group B’Tselem document its charge that Israel maintains an “apartheid regime”. While settlers hurl anti-Muslim racism as soldiers do nothing.

Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations meet with Benjamin Netanyahu, June 1, 2021, and state that it is "an honor" to meet with the Israeli PM "to express solidarity with Israel on behalf of American Jewry." From Conference twitter feed. Jewish leaders are, l to r, Malcolm Hoenlein, Dianne Lob, Netanyahu, and William Daroff.

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.