Israel’s year-long political stalemate appears to be over. Netanyahu was saved by coronavirus and racism. The virus made him popular. Racism stymied Benny Gantz’s efforts to form a government with Palestinian support.

The Israeli hospital system would collapse without Palestinians, who make up a sizeable percentage of doctors, nurses and pharmacies, but the Jewish politicians who are trying to form the country’s next government exclude the 15 Palestinian legislators from any real role in that future. And they call that a democracy?

As Netanyahu likens himself to the captain of the Titanic amid the coronavirus pandemic, Israeli political protests of his powergrab have gone forward despite lockdown, with people in cars with black flags.

Netanyahu has adopted a fatherly tone in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, trying to present himself as the indispensable Prime Minister, even as he runs a racist campaign against rival Benny Gantz’s effort to build a coalition to put him out of office.

Israel lobbyists are thrilled by Bernie Sanders’s recent stumbles at the polls. A Democratic Party Israel lobby group spent $1.4 million against Sanders, and Obama’s former ambassador to Israel writes, “No issue brings out [Joe] Biden’s passion more than his commitment to the U.S. partnership with Israel.”

Blatant racism by three Israeli pols, including one allied with the leftwing party Meretz, has stymied the effort to knock Netanyahu out of the premiereship. Sadly, American liberal Zionists are too busy pushing a “progressive” slate to the World Zionist Congress to denounce the racism among their allies. magine if a Democratic Party politician refused to work with black leaders?

“There is no life, no existence for the Israel left and even center without the partnership with the Israeli Arabs” — a J Street expert interprets the rise of the Palestinian Joint List as the only real resistance to Netanyahu’s racebaiting.

Rabbi Noah Zvi Farkas tells AIPAC that Zionists have to tell progressives about their need for Israel because of Jewish “vulnerability” and “trauma” from “thousands of years on the margins of society” in order to get them to stop “preaching BDS.” And it’s working, he says.

“As surely as Israel relies on the extraordinary young people in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces], it relies on you for steadfast support and success,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer tells thousands of American college students at the AIPAC policy conference, describing their “mission” to fight BDS on campuses.

Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden told the Israel lobby group AIPAC this week that it is “dangerous” for Israel to become “another issue that divides Democrats and Republicans.” But he warned that Israeli moves to build more settlements and annex occupied territories were threatening that divide by alienating young Americans.