J Street gave a shout out to Rep. Betty McCollum from the stage of its gala but didn’t invite her to speak, because she has called out Israeli “apartheid.” The liberal Zionist organization is terrified of the left’s political and discursive power. It throws us crumbs and hopes we don’t notice its messaging. Like when J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami complained to labor leader Randi Weingarten that the left doesn’t notice “what is good and right” in Israel.
At the organization’s annual national conference, J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami announced a major pivot in the group’s advocacy: for restricting U.S. aid to Israel over its human rights abuses. “Maybe it’s time for some serious oversight and accountability for how our aid to Israel is actually being used,” Jeremy Ben-Ami said, likening Palestine to Ukraine under Russian invasion. Ben-Ami also warned that leading Jewish organizations that enforce loyalty to Israel are threatening the health of the Jewish community by undermining a traditional Jewish commitment to civil rights.
“What he talked about was Israel, that’s all he wanted to talk about” — Donald Trump explains the motivation of the late Sheldon Adelson, the biggest donor to the Republican Party, and it goes unreported in the U.S. press. Like Kevin McCarthy fawning over Adelson’s widow Miriam, an Israeli citizen, for giving the Republicans a majority in the House. Imagine a Russian billionaire with that influence!
The shocking success of the racist-fascist party Religious Zionism in the Israel election three weeks ago has caused an earthquake inside the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. And that earthquake has allowed Joe Biden to take unprecedented –for him– baby-steps to confront the Israeli government.
It seems that every day makes it harder to maintain the Palestinian exception in the American discourse when it comes to occupation, persecution, and murder– a hypocrisy we are dedicated to exposing.
The racial profiling is rampant before your eyes. I sauntered through Damascus Gate at midnight. The young Palestinian just behind me got stopped by soldiers demanding his i.d. card. Abuse and invective are normal here. Just look at the picture the racist Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir posted of the Palestinian politician Ahmad Tibi wheeling a suitcase in Ben Gurion airport. “Great news. Leave and don’t come back.”
Zionism—the ideology Itamar Ben-Gvir and Benjamin Netanyahu embody, one of Jewish supremacy in the Jewish land– is at last becoming problematic for American Jews. They are up to their chins in that discriminatory ideology, and so we begin a war over Zionism that will bring down the Israel lobby in the next ten years. Because Zionism destroys everything in its path.
After initial statements of concern about the inclusion of the racist/fascistic Religious Zionism party in Israel’s next government, the Israel lobby has congratulated Netanyahu on his inevitable return to power and rationalized the presence of the ultra-right wing faction personified by Itamar Ben-Gvir. Separating Ben-Gvir from the Israeli government and doing business as usual will be a “huge achievement” for Israel, says David Makovsky.
It was hard not to witness the death of hope in Jerusalem on Tuesday night. Those who held out hope that the Israeli system would somehow resist the right, and exhibit tolerance — that hope was dashed by the Israeli election, in which the fascistic messianic right declared its grip over the Israeli Jewish psyche.
Now, a political crisis awaits liberal Zionists and the United States — everyone who has been lying to us about apartheid and democracy and telling us Israel is an idealistic fulfillment of Jewish sovereignty and shares American values.
On the eve of Israeli elections, the juggernaut of Religious Zionism is everywhere in West Jerusalem. The ascendance of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ban-Gvir reflects a hard, militant, unregenerate country moving further and further right and their rise is set to transform Israel’s image to the world.