My friend the late writer Yossi Gurvitz was an apikoros in the best sense of the word, the Jewish term for a freethinker. His heresy led him to support BDS. Educated in yeshivas, he broke out as a teen when he discovered Plutarch, reading real not bible history. That independence led him in time to become “Israel’s first serious anti-occupation blogger” and to point out the vicious ethnocentrism in the basement of Jewish religiosity that Israel was awakening– “and every demon that was pushed into the basement is up and has an M16.”

A new report from Americans for Justice in Palestine Action documents that the “rightwing Zionist” lobby spent $70 million in 2022 to knock off critics of Israel, and warn politicians “to not object to Israel’s crimes.” That big money explains why Joe Biden and Kirsten Gillibrand gush over Benjamin Netanyahu in the runup to 2024 reelection campaigns.

For those concerned that Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms will threaten democracy in Israel I simply ask, “democracy for whom?”

Steve Inskeep of NPR today described Neve Yaakov, the scene of an attack last week, as being in Israel. While Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street called it a Jerusalem “neighborhood.” It is in fact an exclusively Jewish settlement in occupied Jerusalem, built on confiscated Palestinian lands, and a source of affliction for Palestinians.

“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.

Liberal Zionists like David Grossman have to own up to their ideology and admit that Israel’s drift towards the right is because of Zionism, not in spite of it.

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?