So long as Jews and Palestinians don’t have equal rights, Israel risks “dictatorship,” say 750 academics in letter urging U.S. Jews to denounce “apartheid.”

“The first Intifada was a struggle to end Israeli occupation by establishing an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories,” political scientist Ian Lustick writes. “I supported that struggle. Tragically, it failed. Three decades and half a million settlers later, that objective is no longer attainable. The BDS movement has effectively taken its place as a grassroots popular movement, based on an absolute commitment to nonviolence, a long-term strategy, a fundamental commitment to equality, and insistence on the realization of Palestinian rights, rather than calling for a specific kind of institutional arrangement.”

Any realistic discussion of Iran’s nuclear program ought to include the glaring fact that Israel has 90 nukes, according to experts. But our officials and media always leave Israel’s nukes out. Because acknowledging as much would trigger US laws against giving foreign aid to a country with unauthorized weapons.

Liberal Zionist Rabbi Jill Jacobs says that American Jews who give up on the two-state solution have abdicated a “moral and spiritual imperative.” The journey to the two-state solution is like the journey from Egypt to the promised land in the bible, with lots of setbacks and no shortcuts. “Instead of sinking into despair let’s reconnect with the moral and spiritual imperative before us.”

Liberal Zionists say there are 2 regimes in Israel and West Bank, and apartheid in the West Bank doesn’t undermine democracy in Israel. It’s a fiction, Nathan Thrall shows in London Review of Books. Israel’s discriminations against Palestinians demonstrate there has been an apartheid policy in Israeli government since 1948.

The Israel Policy Forum in a report bearing Ambassador Dan Shapiro’s name says Palestinian birth rate “jeopardizes” Israel’s Jewish character. This explicitly racial argument is also put forward by the American Jewish Committee. Shouldn’t they be ashamed?

The Israel lobby gained “superabundant” powers through what George Washington warned was a constitutional flaw, “passionate attachment” to another country. And it has “killed” US politicians who wanted to be realistic or national interest-oriented, Ian Lustick explains.

The two state solution is dead. Sen. Chris Murphy on the Senate floor, Yousef Munayyer in Foreign Affairs, and Ian Lustick in a new book are the latest public figures to acknowledge as much. But Democratic presidential candidates liberal Zionists want to deny the one-state reality so as to maintain the dream of a Jewish democracy. Amplifying Palestinian voices is the only answer to this logjam.