2022 was a moment of truth.

The year laid bare the political reality in Palestine from the river to the sea, dispelling any illusions that we may have had about the nature of “the conflict,” as it has been glibly called by the mainstream media. Two such illusions can be discarded immediately — for Palestinians, that the Palestinian Authority’s collaborationism can be maintained indefinitely, and for the Israeli state, that Zionism is anything other than a settler-colonial project that must constantly be at war with the Palestinian people.

Every year thousands of Christians from around the world travel to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas. But just 46 miles away, an entire community of Palestinian Christians is banned from traveling to the city, even for the holidays.

It is surely shocking to hear advertisements for racial separation in an American progressive space, but last weekend’s J Street conference featured an Israeli politician, Yair Golan, offering just that as the only solution to the Palestinian problem: Israel must preserve the Zionist “dream” by separating from the Palestinian people and maintaining a “solid Jewish majority–and we need to admit that.”

Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, along with a coalition of other leading Palestinian civil society organizations, has released a new landmark report on Israeli apartheid, titled ‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism’.

The new report explores apartheid as a “structural element of furthering Zionist settler colonialism” – a framework previously overlooked by international and Israeli human rights organizations in their own reports on Israeli apartheid. 

The racial profiling is rampant before your eyes. I sauntered through Damascus Gate at midnight. The young Palestinian just behind me got stopped by soldiers demanding his i.d. card. Abuse and invective are normal here. Just look at the picture the racist Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir posted of the Palestinian politician Ahmad Tibi wheeling a suitcase in Ben Gurion airport. “Great news. Leave and don’t come back.” 

The Israeli political system is set up to perpetuate apartheid, not end it. The results of this week’s election won’t change this.

Yom Kippur begins tonight and I reflect that the most prominent moral voice in the extended American Jewish community is today Rashida Tlaib. Young Jews look to her for the appropriate response to apartheid. She inspires us. At a time when virtually every establishment Jewish organization has abandoned any pretense to universal moral values, Tlaib has led the way.

For Democrats in the United States and the political “centrists” in Israel—represented by Joe Biden and Yair Lapid, respectively—the loss of credibility for the two-state solution has meant losing more and more support for Israeli policies. This helps explain the theater we have witnessed in recent days at the United Nations General Assembly and in the American media scene, where the lone Palestinian woman ever elected to Congress has come under unrelenting attack from her own party as well as the opposition. 

Rashida Tlaib hit a nerve. It is obviously very important to the Israel lobby to maintain the claim that you can be progressive and support Israel. Being truthful about Israeli apartheid undermines this effort. Liberal Zionists are divided. J Street has condemned Tlaib’s comment. But like nearly all the Dems who attacked Tlaib, they didn’t even mention the apartheid part of her comment. Democrats don’t want to address it. They don’t want to engage with what Israel actually does and how Palestinians live.

In a move that could have far-reaching impact, the World Council of Churches agreed to study the issue of Israeli apartheid despite a German church’s attempt to block the decision.