The Netanyahu government barred Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar over their support for BDS, but earlier this week Israeli lawmakers sent a letter to Congress saying the two-state solution is more dangerous than BDS. Will Netanyahu bar two-state supporters next?

The nature of Zionist politics is always to lurch right not left. As Israel moves closer to elections Ehud Barak’s party has pushed talking points on “deterrence” in Gaza which has made his leftwing Meretz partners uneasy.

When Peter Beinart said that Republicans like Israel because it’s an “ethnic democracy,” ADL Deputy Director Ken Jacobson pounced, saying that he was delegitimizing Israel as a “racist state,” and fostering the victimization of Jews. Beinart responded that Israel isn’t racist. Jonathan Ofir urges him to acknowledge the reality of what Israel has become.

As Israeli elections approach, Avigdor Lieberman remains the kingmaker of a likely rightwing coalition. Even if the new leftleaning Democratic Union and center join up, they would need the Palestinian parties and Lieberman to create a majority bloc, and that is not going to happen, Jonathan Ofir observes.

The grotesque celebration by Israeli soldiers as they destroyed a Palestinian building in East Jerusalem is being treated as an aberration. But in fact there is a long history of Israelis celebrating the destruction of Palestine. 

Ronit Lentin’s recent book “Traces of Racial Exception – Racializing Israeli Settler Colonialism”, demonstrates the importance and centrality of race in the Palestine-Israel context, an issue downplayed by Israel-apologists. Because veiling that racism in the eyes of the world is essential to maintaining the colonialist project.

When Trump called Ilhan Omar a “terrorist,” he was echoing an Israeli tactic against Palestinian dissenters. The charge has been used against sitting lawmakers, like when former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman called Hanin Zoabi a terrorist, and against poet Dareen Tatour and anti-occupation activist Ahed Tamimi.

Israel’s new Education Minister Rafi Peretz caused international uproar recently by supporting gay conversion therapy and suggesting that intermarriage is like a “2nd Holocaust”. Though the uproar over intermarriage was mostly outside Israel, for good reason – similar views about intermarriage have been expressed historically by the Israeli left.

A week ago, Haaretz published a bombshell investigative report about a government agency that was systematically disappearing Nakba archives. Yesterday, Israeli historian Benny Morris followed up with a piece focusing on the disappearance of archives specifically concerning the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948.

Haaretz reveals the existence of a secret department under the Defense Ministry which is tasked with making previously-open archives disappear in vaults. It was ostensibly tasked with protecting nuclear program secrets – but statements by its founder make it clear that it’s about undermining critical Nakba scholarship, such as the document stating that the principal reason Palestinians were fleeing in 1948 was hostilities by Zionist forces.