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.

The Biden administration, and congress members from both sides of the aisle, are condemning Amnesty International’s new report on Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians.

The elites are finally not afraid to take on the Palestinian issue as shown by an overwhelming vote to condemn Israeli “apartheid,” passed by the convention of Washington, D.C., Episcopalians last week. “We will not make people happy with this resolution, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do,” said Rev. Michelle Morgan, rector of St. Mark’s Church, Capitol Hill.

The New York Times relies on Amnesty International often but is ignoring the organization’s report charging Israel with “apartheid.”

Amnesty International is the latest human rights organization to declare Israel an apartheid state, calling for an end to the “system of oppression and domination” it imposes on the millions of Palestinians living under its rule. 

The pro-Israel tactic of accusing advocates for Palestinian rights of antisemitism is weakening, as shown by a series of recent attacks. Now labelling Amnesty International an antisemitic organization for stating that Israel practices apartheid can only discredit those tactics further. Palestinians are becoming more relatable to the world, and the antisemitism charge is transparently its own form of bigotry, for it denies Palestinians the right to self-determination.

In his new book, “The State of Israel Vs. The Jews,” Sylvain Cypel paints a too-hopeful portrait of the anti-Netanyahu wing of American Jewish life as a virtuous broad tent united in their opposition to racism. What actually exists is a hodgepodge of intercommunal bickering, toothless fingerwagging, and hand-wringing– and this against an ever growing backdrop of Jewish only roads, deliberate bombings of civilian infrastructure and Associated Press offices, as Cypel himself meticulously documents. And in assigning importance to that Jewish argument, Cypel fails to treat Palestinians as autonomous political actors in the struggle.

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.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid says that in 2022 the debate over Israeli apartheid will be “unprecedented in its venom and in its radioactivity,” and Israeli journalists repeat the claim without reviewing the facts.

If there was no other way to have Judaism exist without Apartheid Israel, I would have to go against Judaism, Jonathan Ofir writes. But that’s not the case. There is a way out. Judaism and Jews can exist without Apartheid – and therefore, I fight against Apartheid and for Judaism simultaneously.