The international delegitimization of Zionism has begun. Palestinian resistance to further ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem has been answered with a cascade of mainstream voices saying that Israel practices “apartheid” and Palestinians deserve equal rights, not missiles.

Joe Biden helped Bush and Cheney build the case for the Iraq war by allowing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be a doormat. Scott Horton’s book “Enough Already” reminds us that lies and conspiracy theories by Israel supporters fed the runup to the Iraq war. That record is required reading now that our supposed client state is escalating its attacks on Iran just as the U.S. is trying to reenter the Iran deal.

Why does Biden exasperate the left by defending Israel’s strikes on apartment houses in Gaza? Because he is dependent on the Israel lobby for Democratic Party campaign support. As Pew’s latest survey shows, Jews care a lot about Israel, Jews are overwhelmingly Democrats, and Jews make more money than other Americans on average.

The era of Israeli impunity in U.S. politics may finally be ending, as Sen. Van Hollen praises UN report on Palestine and Rep. Watson Coleman calls for Israeli “accountability.” And a report on a tense call between a top Biden aide and his Israeli counterpart left Israelis fulminating that the U.S. should “stay out” of the Jerusalem crisis.

As U.S. State Department calls on Palestine and Israel to “deescalate” tensions in Jerusalem, the US progressive movement and several politicians blame Israel for the violence.

Liberal Zionists Aaron David Miller, Daniel Kurtzer, and Eric Alterman are surely afraid that Israel will be ostracized in the manner that South Africa was due to the Human Rights Watch report finding the crime of apartheid. And their response is, Israel is nothing like South Africa, and cannot be ostracized.

The very political Human Rights Watch report finding that Israel commits the crime of “apartheid” is a response to recent events in Israel: passage of the racist Nation State law in 2018 and rightwing leaders dismissal of the idea of a Palestinian state. The report regretfully informs liberal westerners that there will not be a Palestinian state, and the state that does exist in the land is not a “Jewish democracy.” That news is the report’s largest political lesson.

The Human Rights Watch report accusing Israel of apartheid has gotten far more attention than similar reports in recent years. And it’s gotten an incensed vitriolic response from the right-wing Israel lobby. While the liberal Zionist lobby has tried to argue that the report is about the occupation. HRW’s finding was far more wide-reaching than just the occupation.

The New York Times top foreign affairs columnist has given grants through his family foundation to MEMRI, a pro-Israel propaganda shop that has a record of Islamophobia, and other pro-Israel organizations without disclosing as much to readers.

A leading American human rights group will declare this week that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, according to the Algemeiner website. The Human Rights Watch report titled, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” is said to accuse Israel of practicing apartheid appears to be part of a trend in which mainstream organizations come out for an end to Israeli impunity. It follows Carnegie Endowment call on governments to pressure Israel to give Palestinians equal rights.