Israel’s assault on Gaza last May alienated many American Jews, and a lawsuit against a Westchester temple for firing 26-year-old Jessie Sander, an avowed anti-Zionist, for her blogpost condemning Israeli “genocide” and the pro-Israel “propaganda” of American Jewish institutions, highlights the fissures inside the Jewish community.

Cracks in apartheid’s firewall: Seven establishment Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett saying Enough’s enough, take action against settler violence; it is “undermining Israel’s image and relations with the U.S. government.” I.e., we can’t do our job of selling Israel in the U.S. with this sort of publicity. The complaint is of a piece with liberal Zionist Jeremy Ben-Ami’s “rant” on twitter about a “horrific” week of violence against Palestinians. These organizations know that the Democratic base is getting sick of supporting Israel as it commits human rights violations.

Mainstream media are at last humanizing Palestinians with great potential political consequences. Ali Velshi of MSNBC met the Palestinian activist Hajj Suleiman in 2019 and when Israel killed him last week, Velshi honored his resistance with a searing report describing an Israeli occupation of nearly 700,000 illegal settlers encroaching on traditional villages and destroying their bread ovens.

Omer Bar-Lev, a Laborite who is Israel’s police minister, recently visited a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and posted a video showing border police training at a staged set of Damascus Gate. The video is a colorful proof of the apartheid reality of Israel’s rule of Palestinians and shows that there will never be a two-state solution. Even leftleaning Jewish pols bend over backward to appease the settlers.

A growing chorus in the American Jewish community uses the word “apartheid” to describe Israel’s rule over Palestinians. Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who helped save his Texas congregation from a gunman Saturday, is said to be among those who’ve made the charge. And the Forward suggests that’s why his contract was not renewed last year at Congregation Beth Israel.

A new Reut Group study on anti-Zionism’s steady gains in U.S. discourse sounds like reefer madness of an Islamophobic character: There’s an “Islamo-leftist” coalition of progressives allying with Muslims associated with “Muslim Brotherhood organizations” that are “driven by a vision of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.” Who knew! Jewish progressives have taken this new order to heart, and they “undermine” Jewish “identity, values, narrative, and relations with Israel.”

The Nation runs a righwing religious endorsement of Zionism in an apparent sop to its New York base. The article opposes BDS, citing Jewish fears stemming from Nazis and “centuries of forced exile from a historic homeland.” And leaves out the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their land. And anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that Jewish connection is “goysplaining” to Jews, Alexis Grenell writes.

Offering the new Israeli government as a model for fixing American democracy, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman leaves out the fact that its policies are as rightwing as Netanyahu’s, that numerous human rights organizations say it practices apartheid, and that it exalts a Jewish nation state law that gives Jews exclusive rights that Palestinians don’t enjoy. All in a day’s work for the man who pushed the Iraq war in his “personal crusade” for democracy in the Arab world and refuses to apologize for doing so.

The good news of Israeli leaders smearing Emma Watson as an antisemite for a mil expression of Palestinian solidarity is that this time even establishment types questioned the timeworn strategy, and may even have noticed the anti-Palestinian bigotry that animates it.

If you want to understand the power imbalance between the United States and Israel, the farce over Biden’s broken promise to Palestinians to reopen the former U.S. consulate in Jerusalem is a good place to start. The State Department has beseeched Israel to relent in its opposition to the reopening. But the Israeli government is adamant against it. And guess who wins?