Yom Kippur begins tonight and I reflect that the most prominent moral voice in the extended American Jewish community is today Rashida Tlaib. Young Jews look to her for the appropriate response to apartheid. She inspires us. At a time when virtually every establishment Jewish organization has abandoned any pretense to universal moral values, Tlaib has led the way.

Rashida Tlaib hit a nerve. It is obviously very important to the Israel lobby to maintain the claim that you can be progressive and support Israel. Being truthful about Israeli apartheid undermines this effort. Liberal Zionists are divided. J Street has condemned Tlaib’s comment. But like nearly all the Dems who attacked Tlaib, they didn’t even mention the apartheid part of her comment. Democrats don’t want to address it. They don’t want to engage with what Israel actually does and how Palestinians live.

“Even Israeli kibbutzes these days is hosting Itamar Ben Gvir. He is invited to speak at the kibbutzim. Unbelievable,” says Tal Schneider of the Times of Israel. And Netanyahu’s possible return to prime minister in Israel is helped by the rise of Ben Gvir’s racist party, once banned in the Knesset.

The liberal Zionist organization J Street is adamantly opposed to BDS, the nonviolent boycott campaign targeting Israel, and proudly declares that it is “Pro-Israel.” But one of its student leaders evidently disagrees with the organization. Eliana Blumberg supports BDS and says that the effort to say that being “pro-Israel means being pro-democracy, not pro-apartheid” is “futile.”

Merav Michaeli, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, taunts two million Palestinians who are under siege in Gaza: “No sovereign state would accept a siege on its residents by a terror organization.” She is showing that the “change” government in Israel can be as good at “mowing the lawn” — which means killing civilians who have nowhere to flee in Gaza– as Netanyahu so that it can hold him off in the November election.

Biden’s trip to the Middle East was a fiasco but the Israel lobby loved it. Former ambassadors Dan Shapiro and Martin Indyk celebrate the trip as a breakthrough and manage not to mention Israel’s killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an hour’s talk. While an AIPAC officials says of the speech Biden gave when he arrived, “you would have been hard pressed to write a better speech, for the things we believe in.”

The reason I won’t join up  with J Street is that it cannot face two fundamental truths: There will never be a two state solution. There is apartheid in the occupied territories and that extends to Israel. J Street is incapable of acknowledging these realities because it is sworn to the idea of a Jewish state, and these realities obliterate that fantasy. Countless human rights organizations and people of conscience have said it’s apartheid– the humiliation and brutalization of people based on non-Jewish ethnicity. J Street’s leadership is D.C. establishment, but its rank and file know this.

Liberal Zionist author Eric Alterman tells the Israeli left he’s cutting it out of his will. “I’m sorry, I’m abandoning you and your colleagues. I used to have in my will Israeli peace groups, I’m changing my will and I’m funding American Jewish scholarly and charitable institutions.” Why? “I feel like Israel has said to American Jews, we’re going on our way, and you can take it or leave it.”

The Jewish communal reality is that all the members of Jewish congregations across the world, Zionists and non-Zionists alike, adhere to the uniform code of silencing: “Thou Shalt not oppose Israel’s War on the Palestinians in the Jewish Community”. Jews are allowed to question Israel privately but are required to remain silent in public, Jewish spaces. That’s the price of admittance that even nonZionists must pay to be included in a Jewish congregation. Selfcensorship is not sufficient. In addition to self-censorship, members are required to join in enforcing that censorship on all others.

J Street’s battle with AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel is good and important because two branches of the Israel lobby are making Israel a political football. Maybe progressives will get a voice here too.