Back in 2016, I had an argument with younger colleagues about Israel. Netanyahu is the nadir, I said, the place can’t get any worse, U.S. Jews are waking up, and Israel will pivot to liberal Zionism. Don’t be nihilistic!
And they said, You ain’t seen nothing yet! Israel will just keep getting worse. And the U.S. will just enable it, and so will the U.S. Jewish community.
And this week proves again: They were right, and I was wrong.
The new Netanyahu government is marking Ramadan by storming Al-Aqsa and terrorizing Jerusalem and is compelled to do so because its messianic racist base keeps growing– so the next Israeli government will be even more rightwing than this one.
And the State Department assures Israel there will be no consequences for mocking U.S. demands and even issues its blessing to Israel for sweeping the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh under the rug.
And our elite media host Zionists spouting anti-Palestinian racism. And all herald the supposed “two-state solution,” which, if they paid any attention, they could see treats Palestinian “like trashbags.” And all herald the Abraham Accords designed to consign the Palestinians to the garbage heap.
And as for my Jewish community that I have such abiding faith in — OK, some of them are at least in shock, and I honor the young Jews of IfNotNow for advancing the “apartheid” discourse– but check out the big news about boycotting Israel this week.
A major international economics conference is taking the historic step of pulling out of Israel in May. And though I take hope from that, as a supporter of BDS, look at the reasoning a Jewish leader of the conference gave to Haaretz:
“We believed that the majority of the conference participants support the pro-democracy movement in Israel and would not want to cross lines of peaceful protestors or signal tacit support to the actions of the Netanyahu government, which threaten both democracy and the rule of law.”
So boycott is cool when it’s Jews boycotting Jews over the threat to Israeli democracy– whatever democracy means in a Jewish supremacist state. But decades-long Palestinian calls for boycott simply don’t register for liberal Zionists.
So if Netanyahu just backs off on the judicial revolution he has undertaken, all the Israel-flag-wrapped demonstrators in Tel Aviv will go home, and apartheid and annexation and state terrorism will keep marching on, and it will be back to business as usual in the Jewish establishment– tarring anyone who dares to speak up for Palestinian rights as an antisemite.
Some days you really have to acknowledge reality, and be a nihilist.
Thanks for reading!
