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J Street

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The screenshot of a Trump supporter holding an Israeli flag during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020. From Laleh Khalili's Twitter feed.

Racist Capitol Hill rioters brandished Israeli flags for a reason, because they admire Jewish supremacy as a guiding principle in that country. Democratic Party supporters of “Jewish democracy” who call for diversity in U.S. politics are living a contradiction that gets more glaring by the minute.

Israel’s shooting of a 24-year-old Palestinian who was trying to hold on to a generator used in construction in occupied territories has been viewed globally. It increases pressure on Americans to shut off the spigot of aid. One thing will stop Israel from ethnic cleansing of West Bank that requires shooting Palestinians: US pressure. But US press and liberal Zionists come up short.

Liberal Zionists’ moral problem is that they are so wed to “the right of the Jewish people to a state” they seek to discredit any real program to pressure Israel for Palestinian rights. Liberal Zionists could maintain this contradiction when fighting Trump seemed more important to Americans than fighting rightwing Israel; but they have now lost this figleaf, and there is an urgent need for real action, not lip service, on Palestinian rightslessness.

The murder by Israeli soldiers of Ali Abu Alia was the 6th killing of a Palestinian child in the occupied West Bank this year. And though Israeli soldiers have killed 155 children in West Bank in recent years, they have had near complete impunity– a process “unworthy of a country that proclaims it lives by rule of law,” the U.N. says. And liberal Zionist organizations maintain that impunity by insisting Israel keep getting U.S. military aid.

Ali Abu Alia

When Israeli soldiers killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy for protesting Jewish settlers taking his land, it ought to have been a George Floyd moment for liberal Jews. But Americans for Peace Now chatters about John Lennon not Ali Abu Alia, and dreams about a two-state solution that will never happen. It is time for Zionism to experience a crisis, and Jews must support the only hope for change in Palestine, BDS.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. (Photo: JoeBiden.com)

US election showed that American Jews and Israeli Jews could not be more different, American Jews dislike Netanyahu two-to-one, and so the Israel lobby is divided forever, because the Jewish community is divided on the Israel question, with many young Jews supporting boycott. And that divide will continue to spur political debate.