Nada Elia says that Palestinian participants at the 2019 J Street national conference betrayed Palestinian interests by validating the organizations’s regressive agenda which has been long rendered moot by an on-the-ground reality that predates Trump and Netanyahu.

“I look back [with] regret at Gaza,” Ben Rhodes confesses at J Street. While another Obama official Tommy Vietor says the Yemen war was “wrong” and a “disaster.” And NY City Councilman Brad Lander says he regrets keeping quiet about Palestinian human rights over 10 years of defending Israel. “I was pushed to find more courage,” he says.

A major theme has emerged at this year’s annual J Street conference: conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel. This lines up with a wider shift that seems to be happening throughout the country. An October 25 report from the centrist Center for American Progress shows 56% of voters say they’d condition aid if the Israeli government continues to expand settlements or ends up annexing the West Bank. That number goes up to 71% when applied only to Democratic voters.

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.

A liberal Zionist group promotes the view of Israeli professor Jonathan Rynhold that progressive Democrats will support Israel once Netanyahu is gone. His argument would be more persuasive if he even mentioned the human rights violations and Gaza massacres that are at the heart of progressive disaffection with Israel.

The success of the Palestinian Joint List in the Israeli election has given hope to liberal Zionist groups for a post-Netanyahu era of non-discrimination and a better international image. Though there is little in Israeli Jewish politicians’ conduct to support the hope, Ayman Odeh of the Joint List will be speaking to J Street next month.

Lately we’ve seen several institutional efforts to show that American Jews are all for Israel, except the lunatics. That’s because the appearance of wall-to-wall US Jewish support is a necessity for Israel lobby groups in convincing politicians to back Israel unconditionally. IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace are a threat to the Stalinist consensus.

The news this morning that Israel will bar a visit by U.S. Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib…

Democrats are all for two states as an article of faith. But their Israeli counterparts can’t use the phrase, instead talking about “divorcing” Palestinians or “separating” from Palestinians. So maybe we should pay more attention to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who says, “separate but unequal” didn’t work in the U.S. and it won’t work over there.

Democrats voted 209-16 for a resolution that characterizes the nonviolent BDS campaign that targets Israel as bigoted. The Dems made the Israel lobby group AIPAC grateful for bipartisan support, and fought off Trump’s efforts to characterize Dems as “anti-Israel.” The vote demonstrates the importance of the Israel lobby for the 2020 presidential race, but if you call out the lobby the NYT will say you’re anti-semitic.