The Harvard Kennedy School’s brazen move to rescind a fellowship to Kenneth Roth over criticism of Israel is becoming a massive own goal for the institution. Organizations are calling for Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf’s resignation, Roth hitting the interview circuit, and a fresh round of people checking out Human Right Watch’s apartheid report.

“Anybody who is contributing to the Israeli economy should stop. Stop that contribution until the wind changes.” Noa Sattath, an Israeli rabbi and civil rights activist often promoted by the liberal Zionist group J Street, called for crushing economic pressure on the fascistic new Israeli government during a webinar with Americans for Peace Now last week.

Hillel Halkin moved to Israel from the U.S. 50 years ago because he believed in the Zionist vision. Now the author confesses that the project failed because it could not deal with the central question, Palestinian demands, and he was naive when anti-Zionists made that argument to him years ago. Today the country is going off a rightwing-religious “cliff” — a quarter of all nonreligious Israelis between ages 18-24, and half of all religious ones, think Israel’s Palestinian citizens should be stripped of the right to vote!

An excellent piece in the Nation this week by Michael Massing documents that Ken Roth–the man who affixed the apartheid label on Israel as head of Human Rights Watch in 2021 — lost out on a fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School last year because of his criticism of Israel. Massing quotes Roth and a Kennedy School official saying the offer from a human rights center at the school was withdrawn because of the Israel issue. Then Massing identifies several pro-Israel donors he suggests had influence over the dean, Douglas Elmendorf.

The news from Israel is the job of explaining Israel to America — hasbara, Hebrew for propaganda– just got a lot harder. The government’s nakedly fascistic politics are a wakeup call to American Jews. We are enabling apartheid. We are the political lifeline for racist zealots who are going to hurt a lot more Palestinians this year. Supporting them goes against Jewish traditions. And American Jews will finally say Enough.

The new generation leaders of the American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League were both silent today as Netanyahu’s explicitly-racist far-right government was sworn in. The silence is amazing, and reflects the fact that Netanyahu blew off Jewish leaders’ warnings not to lead such a coalition or it would damage relations with the U.S. While the anti-Zionist Jewish group Jewish Voice for Peace said that the Jewish “consensus on the ‘democratic’ character of Israel has broken apart.”

The new Israeli government shows that Zionism is finally a nightmare for Jews. Israeli leftwingers report that they are “under attack,” “afraid,” and blacklisted, and that anti-occupation activists will be subject to violence of the sort Palestinians have always faced. And the “Reform movement is enemy number one” for the new government.

In two reports from Israel, NPR’s Daniel Estrin interviews three Jewish Israelis about the conflict and Zero Palestinians and characterizes the outgoing government as “liberal” when it killed hundreds of Palestinians this year. Estrin also grants prominence to fears about the new government banning soccer games on Saturday. Such reporting, based entirely inside the Israeli Jewish experience, reflects anti-Palestinian framing and ought to be an embarrassment to any mainstream American outlet.

Longtime leaders in the U.S. Jewish community, including Abe Foxman, Thomas Friedman, Rick Jacobs, and Dan Kurtzer, express fear that the new Israeli government will break the supposedly unbreakable U.S.-Israel relationship. Or as David Makovsky and Dennis Ross wrote a few weeks back in the first major sign that American Zionists are panicked by the plans, the new government will arm Israel’s “fiercest critics,” including progressives who seek to end U.S. aid and distance the U.S. from Israel. Not all these leaders are concerned about Palestinian rights. Indeed, Abe Foxman doesn’t question Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but is upset that Israel might change the definition of Who is a Jew?

The New York Times appears to be tired of cheerleading for Israel, witness two opinion pieces this weekend: a long report by Thomas Friedman in which the columnist admitted at the start that “the prospect for a two-state solution has all but vanished;” then, a full page offering by the entire Editorial Board headlined that says that Benjamin Netanyahu’s likely next coalition government “is a significant threat to the future of Israel.” Neither article mentions apartheid.