Shocking images of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the restoration of Taliban government have become a “talking point of the Israeli right,” says Israeli journalist Neri Zilber, speaking on an Israel lobby event. Israel must never withdraw from Palestinian territories it has occupied for 54 years, the right says. “We can’t agree for such an arrangement with the West Bank… Withdrawal from the West Bank should never be countenanced, considered seriously.”

Ben & Jerry’s acceded to activist pressure to stop selling in the occupied territories because the Movement for Black Lives insisted that Palestine was in its agenda for racial justice and when Israel committed its May massacre in Gaza, there were 300 protesters outside the Ben & Jerry’s store in Burlington chanting “Shame, Shame, Shame.” An organizer says, “It shook up the Ben & Jerry’s people.”

The extremist response by Israeli leaders to Ben & Jerry’s — that it is antisemitic or terrorist — ignores the fact that McDonald’s has refused to operate in Israeli settlements for many years. McDonald’s just didn’t make a big splash about it. Ben & Jerry’s very public move is fostering the BDS campaign that sees Israeli human violations on both sides of the Green Line.

Israel is determined to pressure Unilever to change the Ben & Jerry’s decision not to sell ice cream in occupied territory; and six left-of-center Jewish parliamentarians originally signed on to a letter deploring the decision. They backed out later, but their instinct shows how broadly committed Jewish Israelis are to “Judea and Samaria” as part of Israel.

The Israeli government knows that if Jewish settlers succeed in evicting Palestinians in Jerusalem, the country could lose the Democratic Party. “You know what scares them most? The position of the Democratic members of Congress and the Democratic Party. They’re scared of the response. They’re very apprehensive of losing the younger generation, the Democratic Party and the Biden administration,” says Daniel Seidemann.

The secret is out. Yair Lapid’s call for a Jewish majority in Israel shows that Israel’s raison d’etre is Jewish supremacy. Jews in Israel have spent immense effort and time over the last 70 years, trying to find another meaning for a “Jewish state”, and failed. A Jewish state is one in which the Jew is master and everyone else should be thankful for what rights he deigns to grant them.

Yair Lapid, hero of liberal Zionists in the U.S., explains why his government sought a law barring Palestinian families unification in Israel. “There’s no need to hide from the purpose of the law. It’s one of the tools meant to secure a Jewish majority in Israel. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.” And leftwing Zionist party Meretz went along with the racist bill. Though Palestinian members of Knesset overwhelmingly opposed it.

Israel has indeed taken American advice historically, when pressured with delays to arms deals. President Joe Biden should follow this precedent.

Liberal Zionists are secretly exultant over Naftali Bennett unseating Benjamin Netanyahu, hoping it will end the politicization of Israel in U.S. politics. But Apartheid is a hard sell and Bennett will quickly be on a collision course with a lot of people in the United States who think Palestinians should have rights.

It was not Naftali Bennett or Avigdor Lieberman who finally dethroned Benjamin Netanyahu, but the Palestinians themselves.