More than 2000 Israeli Jews in the settler movement prayed on the Haram al-Sharif in recent weeks in violation of international agreements, and the government turned a blind eye. Because it is beholden to the right wing. And Labor and Meretz members of the coalition will stomach it all because they are finally in power and when Netanyahu disappears, they will be “in the desert again for God knows how long,” Michael Koplow says.

American media and politicians underplay how rightwing Israel is in order to salute it as a robust democracy. The reality is that Israeli politicians are under “brutal” pressure from the right– and legislator Idit Silman stepped down from the coalition government this month because she was getting physically attacked and threatened on the street for her participation in a government that wasn’t vocal enough in its support for “Judea and Samaria,” biblical terms for the West Bank.

Thomas Nides, Joe Biden’s ambassador to Israel, spoke to Americans for Peace Now last week and made clear his stance with the Israeli government. He won’t buck Israel by pushing to reopen the American consulate in Jerusalem for Palestinians. “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel… I’m not going to reverse the clock.” Though Nides did reverse Trump’s policy of U.S. officials visiting illegal West Bank settlements. “I said that and my phone blew up,” Nides related. In the past he never had a twitter account. “Now I’m like a Kardashian with everything I say.”

As Doaa Alremeili watches Israel welcoming Ukrainian Jewish refugees who will join its army and oppress Palestinians, she dreams of getting out of besieged Gaza and studying in Egypt. “I have survived four wars so far. And every level gets more difficult to pass. In every war of them, I was unarmed, unprotected and waiting for death. I’m in my late twenties and I have never stepped out of Gaza. I don’t know what Jerusalem really looks like or the Pyramids or Mecca or Minnesota.”

Israel is now walking a tightrope above very unpredictable waters of public opinion in the west. The overwhelming wave of opposition to Russian aggression is justifying boycott, divestment and sanctions as well as resistance as responses to the Russian military occupation, measures for which Palestinians have vainly sought western approval. And meanwhile, Israel is playing footsie with Russia so as to maintain its freedom to conduct missile attacks in Syria against Iranian targets.

“It comes down to: Are you with the Russians or are you with the United States and the West?” asks former Defense Secretary William Cohen. The White House and some Republicans are criticizing Israel’s mixed signals on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As global powers make progress toward a renewed Iran deal, the Israeli Prime Minister is objecting to it, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an Israel lobby organization, is calling a new agreement “a surrender pact,” and the New York Times, characteristically, has published a biased article that raises objections to the proposed deal without giving its supporters much space to defend it.

After an Israeli official tells an American diplomat that the country will treat settler violence against Palestinians “severely,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett leaps in to defend the settlers, his political base. “There are marginal elements in every community… but we must not generalize about an entire community.”

A wave of settler violence spread across the occupied West Bank in the early hours of Friday morning, severely injuring several Palestinians and causing damage to their property, in a series of “revenge” attacks following the killing of an Israeli settler. 

Openly demanding that the U.S. abandon talks with Iran, Israeli PM Naftali Bennett has just violated his deal with Biden that differences are to be worked out behind closed doors. He does so because the “special relationship” between the countries gives him power: the Israel lobby works inside the U.S. to make sure there is no daylight between the White House and Israel and to immunize apartheid. But the American people want distance.