Calls for sanctions and BDS against Israel in the wake of its new government’s “bold” actions against Palestinians are causing that government to dig in. Netanyahu ally Danny Danon called on the United States to block any UN Security Council resolution against provocative Israeli actions at the holy sites in Jerusalem. While Netanyahu minister Amichai Chikli accused Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid of being the “spearhead of the BDS movement.”

The news from Israel is the job of explaining Israel to America — hasbara, Hebrew for propaganda– just got a lot harder. The government’s nakedly fascistic politics are a wakeup call to American Jews. We are enabling apartheid. We are the political lifeline for racist zealots who are going to hurt a lot more Palestinians this year. Supporting them goes against Jewish traditions. And American Jews will finally say Enough.

The new generation leaders of the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League were both silent today as Netanyahu’s explicitly-racist far-right government was sworn in. The silence is amazing, and reflects the fact that Netanyahu blew off Jewish leaders’ warnings not to lead such a coalition or it would damage relations with the U.S. While the anti-Zionist Jewish group Jewish Voice for Peace said that the Jewish “consensus on the ‘democratic’ character of Israel has broken apart.”

The new Israeli government shows that Zionism is finally a nightmare for Jews. Israeli leftwingers report that they are “under attack,” “afraid,” and blacklisted, and that anti-occupation activists will be subject to violence of the sort Palestinians have always faced. And the “Reform movement is enemy number one” for the new government.

In two reports from Israel, NPR’s Daniel Estrin interviews three Jewish Israelis about the conflict and Zero Palestinians and characterizes the outgoing government as “liberal” when it killed hundreds of Palestinians this year. Estrin also grants prominence to fears about the new government banning soccer games on Saturday. Such reporting, based entirely inside the Israeli Jewish experience, reflects anti-Palestinian framing and ought to be an embarrassment to any mainstream American outlet.

It was big news when Elon Musk suspended the Twitter accounts of at least nine tech journalists last week (over alleged dox-ing) and then reinstated them this week after Twitter users demanded their reinstatement. But in yet another demonstration of anti-Palestinianism in the U.S. mainstream, there has been scarcely any attention given to the arbitrary suspension of Said Arikat, a fixture at the State Department briefings as the longtime Washington correspondent for Al-Quds newspaper, a Palestinian publication.

Longtime leaders in the U.S. Jewish community, including Abe Foxman, Thomas Friedman, Rick Jacobs, and Dan Kurtzer, express fear that the new Israeli government will break the supposedly unbreakable U.S.-Israel relationship. Or as David Makovsky and Dennis Ross wrote a few weeks back in the first major sign that American Zionists are panicked by the plans, the new government will arm Israel’s “fiercest critics,” including progressives who seek to end U.S. aid and distance the U.S. from Israel. Not all these leaders are concerned about Palestinian rights. Indeed, Abe Foxman doesn’t question Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but is upset that Israel might change the definition of Who is a Jew?

Today I see some hope in the American discussion of Palestine. I believe the politics of Palestine are changing in irreversible ways; we can take some credit for that change and look forward to the great shift we have long yearned and prayed for.

As Qatar witnessed, Palestinians are engaged in a great and historic struggle. Which side are you on?

Tom Friedman deplores the Israel lobby for assisting Netanyahu in preventing any U.S. president from taking action on Palestinian disenfranchisement. “AIPAC and American Jewish organizations who have done Bibi’s bidding…at every turn used their power and influence to still the hand of any [U.S.] administration wanting to have a more serious and energetic and vigorous policy. And for that they will have to answer to history,” the New York Times columnist says. He said this effect is now working on the Biden administration.