Two human rights practitioners used to have hope that Israel could be reformed, but no longer. “Today it is one solid mass of distilled evil,” writes human rights lawyer Michael Sfard.

Israel’s new government has cemented apartheid with the annexation of the West Bank and Biden doesn’t care; but American Jews who thrive in a secular democracy should be outraged by what is done in their name.

In a blatant attempt at intimidation, Israel is claiming that providing legal representation to Palestinian civil society organizations violates anti-terrorism laws.

Even liberal Zionists maintain a red line against Americans calling Israel an apartheid state. Jeremy Ben-Ami says the apartheid “label” will “distract” Israelis and keep them from doing the right thing. But Haaretz writers, desperate about the racism that prevails in their society, refer to apartheid in article after article.

Israel’s designation of 6 Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist was an “act of tyranny” aimed at the “backbone” of Palestinian society, but the designation is “completely shattered at the moment, completely in shatters” due to widespread repudiation of the so-called evidence against the groups, says Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard. And the U.S. has the power to make Israel back down. But the State Department has said it’s studying the evidence.

Leading Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard responds to South Africa’s Chief Rabbi Zeev Warren Goldstein, who recently argued that the term “apartheid” should only apply to South Africa.

AIPAC’s cancellation of its annual conference in 2022 shows that the Israel lobby is in complete disarray, with young American Jews distancing themselves from a country that 38 percent of them call an “apartheid” state. The liberal Zionist group Americans for Peace Now has repeatedly credited the “apartheid” charge against Israel, while J Street rejects the label.

“The Palestinians have never had this kind of a card in their sleeve, that actually might restrain Israel.” Human rights attorney Michael Sfard says that there is “absolutely no way” for the ICC to evade an investigation of Israeli settlements as a war crime.

It would be fair to say that a major earthquake has been happening in the Zionist camp this past week, with Peter Beinart’s essay that he no longer believes in a Jewish state, and J Street and the peace processors are doing all they can to wish the desertion away.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law, tells Mondoweiss it is difficult to know how Israel’s controversial new law aimed at barring boycott activists from entering the country will actually be enforced, but he says the law is in direct violation of international law. “Countries have wide discretion to allow are deny entry to foreigners,” Sfard says. “However, International Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the basis of a person’s opinion and provides freedom of conscious and thought. The law is definitely a violation of both.”