The European and American media now celebrating Ukrainian civilians building Molotov cocktails is the same that condemns Palestinians for even picking up a stone to resist military occupation.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer tweets about the Ukraine while a photo shows him to be in Israel on the tab of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. Bill Keating is Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, so he’s been tweeting a lot about Ukraine, but not a word about being in Israel on the AIPAC trip. Other Reps also seem bashful about the junket, including Kathleen Rice who gave AIPAC a video testimonial from the occupied Golan Heights.

Former ambassador David Friedman says that Judaism is Zionism. “So if you do not support the state of Israel you do not support Judaism, therefore you are antisemitic.”
Then Friedman seemed to echo Ben Shapiro’s call for building a synagogue on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in occupied Jerusalem, though he said the last time he did so, he’d “started a riot.” The two extremists spoke at an event kicked off by the Florida governor, who is considered a likely presidential candidate.

The lead Israel lobby group AIPAC brought 40 members of Congress to Israel, including Democrats who met with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, even as he trashed the Iran deal. Some Democrats reportedly met with disgraced rightwing former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries toasted the “land of milk and honey” while Rep. Ritchie Torres celebrated an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied Jerusalem.

Nancy Pelosi leads a Disneyland tour of Israel with congressional Democrats, embraces the rightwing prime minister, and gets a tour of apartheid Jerusalem from an Israeli not from the Palestinians who are being thrown out of their homes there. But of course they all call for a two-state solution when anyone visiting the land sees that there’s just one state. The Dems are carrying on a lie as big as Trump’s big lie — there will never be a two state solution and everyone knows it, but the Democrats have to keep the Israel lobby happy.

The Jewish establishment is cracking. “Our institutions have to wrestle with the reality that increasing numbers of passionate Jews do not support the State of Israel,” even as the “donor bases” are shrinking, writes Rabbi Amy Bardack, a liberal Zionist leader associated with J Street. Bardack calls on Jewish organizations not to shun anti-Zionists. But there’s a reason anti-Zionists were shunned– because the principle of “equality” beats “Jewish nationalism” any day of the week.

New York Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove says his congregants need to hear not just AIPAC and ADL and J Street opposing the Amnesty report on Israeli apartheid. But from him too, “for Zion’s sake.” “Israel is part and parcel to my Jewish identity, it’s central to my vision of the rabbinate, and as long as I’m the rabbi of Park Avenue [Synagogue], it will remain central to the mission of this synagogue.”

We are cosponsoring a talk by French author Sylvain Cypel on Tuesday February 15 at noon. “Will diaspora Jews gradually emancipate themselves from a thug nation that claims that it alone can speak in the name of Judaism?” he writes. “More and more American Jews are awakening to the idea that its political rightward drift is a calamity, and that the consequences for them could be disastrous. And that explains the anger of those among them who turn their back on Israel.”

Liberal Zionists are not accepting the reports of the leading human rights organizations, lately including Amnesty International, saying Israel practices apartheid. J Street and Ameinu and Partners for Progressive Israel reject the term, while Americans for Peace Now says it has no comment for now. They would be excommunicated by the Jewish establishment for endorsing the finding, even as progressive Jewish groups have accepted Amnesty’s verdict.

Testifying before Congress, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL quotes Bruce Springsteen song titles to bash Amnesty International report calling out Israeli apartheid. “I’m on fire,” Amnesty International is having its “glory days,” but there will be “no surrender” to its “brilliant disguise.” Making a cute performance out of Palestinian suffering.