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.

Mainstream Democrats were shocked by the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, but their calls for an investigation were vague, even suggesting that Israel could investigate itself– a recipe for “whitewashing,” says a human rights group. No mainstream leader approached the position of progressive Congresspeople, that the U.S. must investigate Israel, or the view of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, that Israeli “apartheid” is the context of the killing.

Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom does the right thing for J Street at Passover by admitting that the Tantura massacre of Palestinians took place in the early days of Israel’s existence. But he cannot acknowledge that Israel was then and is now an apartheid state that continues to push Palestinians out of their homes. The rabbi’s view that “Israel’s challenge is to reclaim the ‘child we prayed for'” is simply a delusion, especially in light of rightwing governments that are all committed to maintaining military occupation.

“The United States has no better friend in the world than Israel,” President Obama once said. But rank-and-file Democrats don’t agree. They put Israel at 9th on a list of America’s most important allies, way behind Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, and China among others.

Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton acknowledges the contradiction between democracy and a Jewish state: “If you actually had a true one state where Palestinians and Israelis had equal rights– a democracy, right?– then demographically the Palestinians are probably going to take over the Israelis in relatively short order, they would outvote them, and that means you would really lose the concept of a Jewish state. For everybody who advocates for a Jewish state and the right for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in the world, it’s hard to see how that works under a truly democratic single state as one would be necessarily constructed here. And that’s something that people don’t like to talk about frankly.”

In a highwater mark of mainstream opposition to the unending Israeli occupation, 50 members of Congress have signed a letter to Secretary of State Blinken urging him to try to stop Israel’s demolition of 38 Palestinian houses in al-Walaja, a village in the occupied West Bank, because the demolitions will undermine “Palestinian dignity” and “long-term Israeli security.” The demolitions are also an issue in a Michigan congressional race between two Democrats, with Rep. Andy Levin calling them “unjust.”

Israel’s rightwing parliament overwhelmingly passed a permanent law barring the naturalization of Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza married to Israeli citizens yesterday. The law in earlier forms has been cited as an “apartheid” law by human rights organizations, but even Israeli centrists voted for it with “a heavy heart.” While the Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked celebrated the law as a triumph of the Jewish state.

“The Zionist left is the real enemy of freedom, of fighting the occupation in Israel, much more than the right wing is,” says Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy. “They are the founding fathers for the settlement project. Who started it? Netanyahu, Begin, Sharon? No no no no no! Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin– Nobel Peace Prize winners, peacemakers– they are responsible. They also enable us Israelis to feel so good about ourselves. Because they were always the laundry of any crime. We have this prestigious, world-famous Supreme Court, this castle of liberalism and freedom, part of the Zionist left, and this Supreme Court enabled any crime of war, from the settlements to the tortures, everything went through the Supreme Court and everything was washed there, and it was accepted. If the Supreme Court says there are no torturing or the settlements are legal– so who are we to say or to think different?”

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.