Mainstream voices say the Trump-Biden policy of normalizing relations between Israel and Arab monarchies so as to crush Palestinian hopes is working. “If you talk to the UAE leaders or Saudi Arabia leaders or even Egyptian leaders, they don’t want to hear now about the Palestinian issue, they don’t want to stick their fingers into this mess. Let Israel deal with it,” says Ehud Yaari an advocate for Israel at the Washington Institute.
The rightwing Israel lobby is enraged by the new report by the Special Rapporteur to the U.N. accusing Israel of “apartheid”– a “landmark moment of recognition of the lived reality of millions of Palestinians,” says Amnesty International. But J Street has had nothing to say about the report. It surely hopes it will go away, because these reports foster demands among progressives to actually do something about human rights violations beyond acknowledging their existence.
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.
Amnesty International’s bombshell report on Israeli apartheid has unleashed angry attacks from Israel lobbyists who say that the report endangers Jews, is “steeped in antisemitism,” and its “real agenda” is “Jew hatred.” And by the way, it dismisses 2000 years of Jewish history. While the liberal Zionist group J Street, which rejects the report, says that such accusations are inappropriate; and Americans for Peace Now says that the mainstream organizations are manufacturing outrage without having read the report, which reflects Palestinian experiences.
The Israeli government “fully supports and assists” the recent spike in settler violence against Palestinians. Because “Continuous, systemic violence meted out by settlers is part of Israel’s official policy, driving massive takeover of Palestinian” lands, B’Tselem says in a groundbreaking report. But the Washington Post’s recent article on settler violence suggests that the Israeli government is taking it on vigorously.
Liberal Zionist organizations could provide Joe Biden with the political capital inside the Jewish community and Democratic Party to confront Israel on its recent designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist organizations.” But so far they have have done little to take on the designation and even offered a platform to the Israeli government to defend the charge. It’s little wonder the Biden administration is keeping its mouth shut.
Israel’s designation of 6 Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist was an “act of tyranny” aimed at the “backbone” of Palestinian society, but the designation is “completely shattered at the moment, completely in shatters” due to widespread repudiation of the so-called evidence against the groups, says Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard. And the U.S. has the power to make Israel back down. But the State Department has said it’s studying the evidence.
There are more than two settler attacks on Palestinians a day this year on average. According to two Israeli human rights experts, the violent settlers are working with the cooperation of the army and the Israeli government to take over more and more land for Jewish settlement in a policy of pushing Palestinians out of Area C. This is a traditional use by the army of Israeli settlers.
Mike Pompeo is issuing alarmist claims about Iran as he considers a run for the presidency. His views are not very different from those of Yossi Alpher, who says the U.S. should have killed Khomeini in 1979 and Israel should be propping up dictatorship thru the Middle East by spying on dissidents. And a liberal Zionist organization, Americans for Peace Now, gives a platform to Alpher’s amorality.