Conservative donors have skewed the American Jewish establishment to support the occupation, said many speakers at the J Street conference. The liberal Zionist organization is mounting a power struggle inside the Jewish community. But those efforts do not include sanctions in opposition to the occupation.

American Jews feel “shame” and “despair” and disappointment with Israel, and are so tired of fighting over it that they are starting to lose interest, says Rabbi Ayelet Cohen of the New Israel Fund. Some rabbis are dropping it from Hebrew school curricula and no one notices, she says.

Forward opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon’s claims of anti-Semitism at Bard college have been widely refuted. Yet she has doubled down on them – saying the response only confirms the truth of her allegation. This is dishonest, and also strategic, aimed at limiting criticism of Israel inside leftwing circles.

Batya Ungar-Sargon asked students not to protest Ruth Wisse at Bard because she’s a Holocaust survivor, giving her a pass for anti-Arab racism. The panel she did want the students to protest featured Ungar-Sargon and a black Jew, Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, who now seeks an apology for Ungar-Sargon’s error-laden account of the event.

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.

American Jews who condemned Israel’s slaughter of Gaza protesters don’t understand that Judaism is now the Jewish state and it won’t survive if Palestinian refugees are allowed to return, which is why no Israeli Jews questioned the slaughter, Daniel Gordis writes, urging American Jews to stick by Israel to stay Jewish.

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.

The New York Times wants Netanyahu out because “elements of the Democratic Party have grown increasingly suspicious of Israel, if not hostile,” and replacing Netanyahu “may halt this dangerous shift.” Palestinian human rights are no account here. Though Israel’s politics have only shifted right, Israel-watchers say.

The Israeli election challenges Americans to recognize what “Jewish democracy” has produced: a rightwing society in which all the politicking has been on the far right, and even the center-left Blue White calls for expanding the illegal occupation and pounding Gaza. Palestinian parties are a sign of real democracy, but leading Jewish parties want nothing to do with them.

OneVoice was founded to end the occupation as a “moral” and “existential” imperative for Israel. But it has dropped the two-state solution in its messaging to Israeli voters in next month’s elections, focusing on issues of “division and racism” and the “cost of living.” It knows that Israeli Jewish voters are against a Palestinian state.