As global powers make progress toward a renewed Iran deal, the Israeli Prime Minister is objecting to it, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an Israel lobby organization, is calling a new agreement “a surrender pact,” and the New York Times, characteristically, has published a biased article that raises objections to the proposed deal without giving its supporters much space to defend it.

Nancy Pelosi leads a Disneyland tour of Israel with congressional Democrats, embraces the rightwing prime minister, and gets a tour of apartheid Jerusalem from an Israeli not from the Palestinians who are being thrown out of their homes there. But of course they all call for a two-state solution when anyone visiting the land sees that there’s just one state. The Dems are carrying on a lie as big as Trump’s big lie — there will never be a two state solution and everyone knows it, but the Democrats have to keep the Israel lobby happy.

During Israel’s invasion of Egypt during the Suez crisis of 1956-1957, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower did not hesitate to defy domestic political pressures and censure Israel at the United Nations, withdraw agricultural aid, and threaten financial sanctions that put “Israel’s life… at stake.” Those measures worked to end an Israeli occupation and restrain Israeli attacks on civilians, and gave Washington prestige across the global south. The U.S. political mood changed swiftly after the ’67 war. But it could change back again in the wake of apartheid reports.

Israel has escaped accountability for apartheid because its friends have wielded the antisemitism charge against critics. But the Amnesty International report is a sharp blow to that strategy. Now global civil society is likely to become the major factor of changing the status of Zionism internationally.

The Jewish establishment is cracking. “Our institutions have to wrestle with the reality that increasing numbers of passionate Jews do not support the State of Israel,” even as the “donor bases” are shrinking, writes Rabbi Amy Bardack, a liberal Zionist leader associated with J Street. Bardack calls on Jewish organizations not to shun anti-Zionists. But there’s a reason anti-Zionists were shunned– because the principle of “equality” beats “Jewish nationalism” any day of the week.

The groundbreaking Amnesty International report on Israeli apartheid would not have been possible without Palestinian resistance, including the BDS campaign and the Great March of Return in Gaza. In attacking Amnesty, the ADL makes no attempt to substantively refute any of its arguments. Thus the Amnesty report contributes to an important shift in public mainstream discussion of Palestine that would have been unthinkable not that long ago. A line has been crossed, and moving forward, Israel’s attempt to whitewash itself as a “Jewish and democratic” state will likely be accepted by no one other than its enablers.

New York Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove says his congregants need to hear not just AIPAC and ADL and J Street opposing the Amnesty report on Israeli apartheid. But from him too, “for Zion’s sake.” “Israel is part and parcel to my Jewish identity, it’s central to my vision of the rabbinate, and as long as I’m the rabbi of Park Avenue [Synagogue], it will remain central to the mission of this synagogue.”

We are cosponsoring a talk by French author Sylvain Cypel on Tuesday February 15 at noon. “Will diaspora Jews gradually emancipate themselves from a thug nation that claims that it alone can speak in the name of Judaism?” he writes. “More and more American Jews are awakening to the idea that its political rightward drift is a calamity, and that the consequences for them could be disastrous. And that explains the anger of those among them who turn their back on Israel.”

The Illinois Investment Policy Board was created in 2015 under the guidance of pro-Israel ideologues to prevent the state pension from investing in companies that boycott Israel. However newly obtained emails show that board members see themselves having an even broader mission — “protecting Israeli sovereignty” in the West Bank.

In 1948 an Israeli leader assured the U.N. that American Jews would be Israel’s “hostage” to the world to guarantee that Israel behaved itself well. But Israel didn’t behave well, and after failing to change Israel’s conduct, American Jewish organizations soon interpreted their role to mean denying Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights, and labeling all criticism antisemitic. Abba Solomon shares how the mission of American Jewish organizations, once centered on the rights and welfare of Jews in the United States and elsewhere, was affected and — ultimately — distorted by the success of militant Jewish nationalists in Palestine.