Looking at Kamala Harris’s record on Israel

If elected president, many believe that Kamala Harris will continue Joe Biden’s doomed policy in Gaza.

BY MICHAEL ARRIA  JULY 22, 2024 

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/looking-at-kamala-harriss-record-on-israel/

Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination after Joe Biden dropped out of the race this past weekend and immediately endorsed her.

Harris has been a staunch supporter of Israel for years. In 2017 she addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference and reminded attendees that the first resolution she co-sponsored as a senator was aimed at combating “anti-Israel bias” at the United Nations.

“Let me be clear about what I believe. I stand with Israel because of our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations,” she told the crowd.

In 2018 she gave an off-the-record speech to the organization, but eventually released her comments.

In that speech she claimed that she raised money for the Jewish National Fund as a Girl Scout.

“Having grown up in the Bay area, I fondly remember those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” she told the audience. “Years later, when I visited Israel for the first time, I saw the fruits of that effort and the Israeli ingenuity that has truly made a desert bloom.”

“The vast majority of people understand the importance of the State of Israel,” she added later. “Both in terms of its history and its present in terms of being a source of inspiration on so many issues, which I hope we will talk about, and also what it means in terms of the values of the United States and those values that are shared values with Israel, and the importance of fighting to make sure that we protect and respect a friend, one of the best friends we could possibly have.”

While running for President in 2019, Harris was praised by the lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) for running to the right of Obama on the Iran deal.

On the campaign trail Harris told Kat Wellman, a voter affiliated with DMFI, that she would reenter the agreement but “strengthen it” by “extending the sunset provisions, including ballistic missile testing, and also increasing oversight.”

“I was very impressed with her. I thought she gave an excellent speech, she gave a very detailed, responsive answer to my question,” Wellman told a local paper after the exchange. “I’m pro-Israel, so I was very concerned and all about making sure we limit nuclear missiles in any country that could possibly destroy us all. I thought her answer was very good.”

Harris has condemned the BDS movement and claimed that is “based on the mistaken assumption that Israel is solely to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, she voted against an anti-BDS bill in 2019 citing First Amendment concerns.

After the October 7th Hamas attack, Harris publicly declared that Israel had the right to defend itself.

“Let me be also very clear, as I’ve said before: We cannot conflate Hamas with the Palestinian people,” she told reporters. “Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization.  Hamas has vowed to repeat October 7 until Israel is annihilated. No nation could possibly live with such danger, which is why we support Israel’s legitimate military objectives to eliminate the threat of Hamas.”

In June she hosted a screening of Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary Screams Before Silence, which was promoted as “a documentary film on the sexual violence committed by Hamas” on October 7th, a film that’s been criticized for relying on information from the Israeli group ZAKA.

“We cannot look away and we will not be silent,” Harris said at the event. “My heart breaks for all these survivors and their families and for all the pain and suffering from the past eight months in Israel and in Gaza.”

Many expect Harris to continue largely continue Biden’s foreign policy. “In practice, we can expect the Republicans’ public agenda to be a blunt statement of their racism, while Democrats will be less forthright,” wrote Mitchell Plitnick shortly before the Biden announcement. “On the ground, there is good reason to believe that Democrats will want to continue the two-state delusion, while Republicans will encourage Israel to kill it once and for all with annexation.” 

Insofar as policy differences might exist, some have pointed to recent comments Harris has made about the assault.

In a March speech Harris called for a six-week “temporary ceasefire,” the first member of the administration to mention such a move. She’s also repeatedly called on the Israeli government to do more to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid.

In a recent interview with The Nation, Harris expressed sympathy for campus Gaza protesters saying that, she thought they were, “showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza,” though she was quick to note she does not “wholesale endorse their points.”

The foreign policy team around Harris is also viewed as more progressive on foreign policy than Biden’s. Her National Security Advisor is Phil Gordon, who helped push for the Iran Deal when he worked for the Obama administration.

“I think he’s very much on the progressive wing of the national security continuum,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Jewish Insider in 2023. “He’s Obama redux.”

Uncommitted National Movement Leader Layla Elabed, and other progressive organizers, have already put out statements calling on Harris to embrace a shift in policy.

“For months, we’ve warned that Biden’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza would hurt his electability,” said Elabed. “Now, it’s crucial for Vice President Harris to take a clear stance against weapons for Israel’s war and occupation against Palestinians. Supplying weapons to Netanyahu’s regime makes a mockery of Democrats’ claims to fight against MAGA authoritarianism…”

“It’s time to align our actions with our values,” she added. “Vice President Harris can start the process to earn back trust by turning the page from Biden’s horrific policies in Gaza.”

Israel's Continued Denial of the Reality of the Occupation Will Be Its Ruin

Opinion | Haaretz Editorial

https://archive.is/CQ7my

The opinion issued Friday by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which stated that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law and that Israel must end its occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as soon as possible, revealed nothing to Israelis that they did not already know.

The opinion shatters the lie that the occupation is only temporary and intended only for security purposes. This is the lie that Israelis told themselves during decades of occupation while they seized more and more Palestinian land, dispossessed Palestinians of their land and built settlements on it, all under the patronage of successive Israeli governments, through the agency of the settlers and with the backing of the Israel Defense Forces and the judiciary. The opinion bursts this bubble of lies and views various acts of the Israeli government as annexation of the territory.

Yet there is not even a sliver of hope that after 57 years this opinion will spur the State of Israel to wise up and comply with the demands to evacuate the settlements, and to end the occupation and the military control over the Palestinians and compensate them as well. This is mere wishful thinking, which can be deduced from the disturbing reactions in Israel to the opinion. All of them, from those of the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues all the way to the Knesset opposition of Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, can be situated along on the spectrum of religious Zionism.

After all, what difference is there between the far right's calls of "sovereignty now," Benjamin Netanyahu's babble about the impossibility of denying "the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home," Gantz's nonsense about the "judicialization of a political-diplomatic conflict" and the outrageous moralist preaching of Lapid, who declared the opinion "detached, one-sided and tainted by antisemitism and lacking an understanding of the reality on the ground"?

But it should not be inferred from this that the opinion will not have political and economic consequences that may cause Israel – as a result of the costs it will be forced to pay – to rethink its course regarding the occupation and settlement enterprise. It isn't only about sanctions on violent settlers or on organizations affiliated with settlements.

The most important point in the opinion, from a practical perspective, is the obligation it places on international organizations and United Nations member states not to recognize as legal or help to maintain the situation arising from Israel's unlawful presence in the territories. Member states are in effect obliged, in the wake of the opinion, to conduct a preliminary review of any interaction with Israel, whether in the territories or in Israel proper, to ascertain that it does not contribute to Israel's presence in the territories.

Israel's working assumption – that the world will continue to ignore the occupation – has been shattered in recent months. If Israel continues to ignore what the world tells it, it may wake up to a reality in which it is boycotted and ostracized like apartheid-era South Africa.

 

JOE BIDEN LEAVES AND KAMALA HARRIS ARRIVES. NOTHING CHANGES.

The much-announced resignation of Joe Biden from the Democratic presidential candidacy, and his probable replacement with Vice President Kamala Harris, does not change anything in essence, since both respond to the same interests: the Deep State, the military-industrial-security complex, the pro-Israel lobby, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the neocon cabal, Wall Street, Big Pharma and BigTech.

Both politicians are puppets of the interests and power groups that manage the United States and whose main objectives are: To maintain the economic, military, political and scientific-technological hegemony of the United States in the world; maintain the predominance of Israel over the Middle East and of the pro-Zionist elites over the Western countries; subdue and dominate the Global South; subordinate the countries that oppose the hegemony of the West (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea), and preferably, decimate and divide them in order to subjugate them; continue exploiting at will the economic, human, natural and cultural resources of the planet for the benefit of 1% of the oligarchs of the West and Israel.

Biden, Harris, Trump and J.D. Vance are puppets of these power groups, so the elections in the United States are a farce, in which the citizens of that country choose between one or another of the employees of the owners of the planet. But nothing changes in essence.

The real fight is between the elites of the West (North America and its Latin American vassals, Western Europe and the allied countries of the Asia-Pacific and Middle East vs. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Afghanistan, the Houthis and the Palestinians; with some countries in the Global South trying to distance themselves from the West, although without fully committing to the bloc that refuses to subordinate itself to Washington and its allies).

So, nothing has changed in the United States presidential election, since the same power groups only decide to put new representatives of their interests in one party or another, but the population of that country and the world in general has nothing to say about it, nor does they benefit from it in any way.

Yemen gears up for ‘long war’ against Israel

Sanaa announced targeting the port of Eilat on Sunday morning, hours after a brutal Israeli attack on the western Yemeni city of Hodeidah.

News Desk

JUL 21, 2024

https://thecradle.co/articles/yemen-gears-up-for-long-war-against-israel

The Armed Forces of Yemen’s Sanaa government announced an attack on the southern Israeli port city of Eilat on 21 July, one day after Israeli jets violently bombarded Hodeidah province in response to the unprecedented Yemeni drone strike on Tel Aviv. 

Sanaa’s statement also announced an operation targeting a US ship in the Red Sea. 

“The missile force of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out an [effective] military operation targeting important targets in the Umm al-Rashrash area in southern occupied Palestine with a number of ballistic missiles, and achieved its goals successfully, thanks to God,” Yemeni army spokesman Yahya Saree said. 

“The naval forces, the unmanned air force, and the missile force of the Yemeni armed forces carried out a joint military operation targeting the American ship Pumba in the Red Sea with a number of ballistic missiles and drones. The operation led to a direct hit on the ship,” the statement added. 

The Israeli army said it intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen outside its airspace. Sirens sounded in the southern port city, which has been attacked numerous times by Yemeni forces since the start of the war in Gaza. 

Israeli warplanes launched heavy raids on Yemen's western port city of Hodeidah on 20 July, targeting fuel depots and oil refineries as well as the province's power station. According to an updated toll from Sanaa’s Health Ministry, six people were killed in the Israeli attack, and at least 83 were wounded, mostly with severe burns. 

The bombing was a response to the unprecedented Yemeni drone attack on Tel Aviv on 19 July, which killed one Israeli and injured several others. Hebrew media described the attack as a dangerous escalation that marks a new phase in the war – referring to the inability to prevent the attack as a “mega-failure.”

Several Yemeni officials have publicly vowed since the bombing of Hodeidah that a response will come, and that the operations against Israel will continue and increase.

“Yemen's response is coming and will be painful and agonizing. You will not escape punishment … The battle is long, and the Zionists must pay a heavy price and endure the strikes. The hand is on the trigger. Yemen does not have the word ‘overlook’ in its dictionary, nor does it stand idly by in the face of any criminal aggression,” Ansarallah political bureau member Ali al-Qahoum said on 21 July. 

Saree announced in a statement on Saturday night that Sanaa is preparing for a “long war” with Israel. 

The Yemeni army and Ansarallah movement “will not stop their operations in support of our brothers in Gaza, whatever the repercussions and whatever the results, and they are preparing, with the help of God Almighty, for a long war with this enemy until the aggression stops and the siege is lifted,” Saree said. 

“Today, as we enter into a direct war [with Israel], this means that our target bank will expand …. We know when and where to strike … and the surprises will be significant,” Information Minister in the Sanaa government, Dhaifallah al-Shami, told Al-Mayadeen on 20 July. 

An anonymous Yemeni source told Al-Mayadeen on Saturday that “the war has become direct with the occupying entity,” and that “operations in Yaffa [Tel Aviv] will continue, and Yemen will not be content with just a response; the Yemeni army's target bank may expand.” 

ICJ: Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is 'unlawful' and breaches laws concerning apartheid

Top UN court says Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories should be brought to an end 'as rapidly as possible'

By Katherine Hearst and Imran Mulla

Published date: 19 July 2024

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/icj-delivers-landmark-opinion-57-year-israeli-occupation

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on Friday which found that Israel's decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories was "unlawful", and that its "near-complete separation" of people in the occupied West Bank breached international laws concerning "racial segregation" and "apartheid."

Delivering the court's findings, ICJ President Nawaf Salam said that Israel must make reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by its occupation, adding that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states have an obligation to not recognise Israel's occupation as legal.

"The sustained abuse [by] Israel of its position as an occupying power through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the occupied Palestinian territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful," Salam said, reading the findings of the 15-judge panel.

He added that Israel's policies and practices in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem amounted to the annexation of large parts of these territories and that the court finds Israel systematically discriminates against Palestinians in the occupied territory.

"A number of participants have argued that Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to segregation or apartheid, in breach of Article 3 of CERD [Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination]," he said.

"Article 3 of CERD provides as follows: 'States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction'. This provision refers to two particularly severe forms of racial discrimination: racial segregation and apartheid," he said.

"The court observes that Israel’s legislation and measures serve to maintain a near-complete separation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the settler and Palestinian communities.

"For this reason the court considers that Israel's legislation and measures constitute a breach of Article 3 of Cerd," he added.

Friday's decision follows a request in December 2022 by the United Nations General Assembly for the court to give its view on Israel's policies and practices towards the Palestinians and on the legal status of the 57-year-long occupation of Palestinian lands.

Among other comments, he said that the "transfer by Israel of settlers" to the occupied territories was contrary to the Geneva Convention, adding that Israel's occupation of natural resources is "inconsistent with Palestinians right to sovereignty over natural resources". 

The advisory opinion has no binding force but carries significant legal and moral authority, and could increase pressure on Israel over its assault on Gaza.

Salam said, in reference to objections raised to the court being asked to deliver the ruling, that there were "no compelling reasons for it to decline".

He added that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza were considered a single unit under international law and rejected the arguments put forth by Israel that it was no longer occupying Gaza because of the removal of settlers in 2005.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the court's decision as "false," adding that the Jewish people do not "occupy their own land".

Israel's foreign ministry rejected the opinion as "fundamentally wrong" and "detached from reality."

Meanwhile, Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir denounced the court as "antisemitic," and reiterated calls for annexing of the West Bank.

The UK's Foreign Commonwealth and Development spokesperson told Middle East Eye that foreign secretary David Lammy, who has recently visited Israel and the Occupied Territories, was clear "that the UK is strongly opposed to the expansion of illegal settlements and rising settler violence."

"This government is committed to a negotiated two-State solution which can deliver a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state," the spokesperson added.

Ayoub Khan, independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, told MEE that the UK government should respect the ICJ's findings and "apply pressure of sanctions if Israel fails to abide by the international rule of law."

Independent MP for Blackburn Adnan Hussain said the ICJ's advisory opinion is a "historic moment for international justice, and confirms what the Palestinians, legal scholars and human rights community have been saying all along". 

He called for governments around the world, including the UK, to divest from "trade with occupied territories considered illegal under international law". 

In February, the court heard submissions from 52 countries and three international organisations, more than in any other case since the ICJ's establishment in 1945. The vast majority of them argued that the occupation is illegal and urging the court to declare it as such.

This development coincides with a separate case brought by South Africa to the ICJ, accusing Israel of committing genocide in the enclave.

In January, the ICJ ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, allow more humanitarian aid to enter and preserve evidence of violations.

However, humanitarian organisations have repeatedly criticised Israel's aid restrictions, as famine threatens the area.

Israel has been occupying what is recognised under international law as Palestinian land since the 1967 war.

East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza all fall under this category, and the separate legal systems, construction of settlements and acts of violence meted out against Palestinian residents are all key factors that will be considered in the hearings.

This is the second advisory opinion delivered by the world court since 2004, when it issued a landmark opinion on the legality of Israel's construction of a wall in occupied Palestine. The court decided that the wall, often referred to by Palestinians and rights group as the "apartheid wall", was illegal and should be destroyed.

When Supporting Israel Is a Liability: Is Gaza Changing the West?

by Ramzy Baroud 

Posted on July 19, 2024

https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2024/07/18/when-supporting-israel-is-a-liability-is-gaza-changing-the-west/

Much has been written about the political earthquakes in Britain and France, the first resulting in the crushing defeat of the Conservative Party and the latter in the overpowering of the far right, by a largely leftist coalition.

But these were not the only important outcomes of the July 4 and July 7 general elections in two of Europe’s most influential countries.

One other important, if not unprecedented outcome, was the centrality of the Palestinian cause to the political discourses in London and Paris which, in truth, are only reflections of greater changes underway on the entire European continent and body politic.

For a long time, we have been told that outward advocacy of Palestinian rights is a lost political cause in Europe, where Israel holds a special status due to the West’s historical role in creating, sustaining and defending Israel.

That affinity, however, was cemented by more than mere political traditions. In countries like the United States – but also Britain and France – the pro-Israel lobby served the role of a powerful constituency. Using money, media influence and alliances with other influential political and religious circles, they often determined the future of politicians.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an illustration of the power of the lobby. Each cycle of US elections is often associated with stories that demonstrate the disproportionate political power wielded by AIPAC.

The latest example was the June 2024 defeat of progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat who was unseated by a pro-Israel candidate. It is believed that AIPAC has spent a whopping 15 million dollars to have Bowman replaced.

The support of the lobby, however, is no longer a guarantor of political success, or failure. This is due to the growing awareness among ordinary Americans of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, the successful counter strategies of some progressives and the changing political demographics of the Democratic Party.

The Israeli war of ‘extermination’ in Gaza, per the words of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan, has made the cause of Palestinian freedom a global one. No amount of media disinformation, or lobby money can help Israel redeem its tarnished image. Many Israelis, too, have reached that realization.

The horrific war, the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and the global solidarity efforts have all served as a boost for many governments around the world to adopt stronger stances in support of Palestine. The recent volley of recognitions of a Palestinian state attests to this claim.

Moreover, the rising power of the Palestinian political brand has recently allowed countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway and Slovenia to defy the US position which discouraged the recognition of Palestine outside the realm of the so-called ‘peace process.’

The political discourse associated with the recent decisions is as important as the recognitions themselves.

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez linked Madrid’s decision to the “historic justice for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

The country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Yolanda Diaz, went further on May 23, when she said that Madrid “will continue pressuring (..) to defend human rights and put an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people”, signing off her statement by declaring: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

If such an attitude was confined to a single country, that state would have been seen as the ‘radical’ exception. But Spain is only one example.

Even before the official results of the French elections were declared, President of the Parliamentary Bloc of ‘France Insoumise’ – ‘France Unbowed’ – Mathilde Panot stated on July 7 that the bloc would recognize the State of Palestine within two weeks.

Particularly interesting about Panot’s declaration is that she did not consider the recognition of Palestine as a symbolic gesture, but as “one of the available means for us to exert pressure (on Israel).”

For the left in France, supporting the Palestinian cause was not a liability during a greatly contested election. It was one of the secrets to their success. Despite the Right and Far-Right parties’ relentless attempt to stain the left over its stance on the Gaza war, they failed miserably.

A somewhat similar scenario was repeated in Britain. The Conservatives’ hardcore support for Israel proved worthless, if not a disadvantage. Even pro-Israel members of the victorious Labor were trounced by independent candidates, namely because of their positions on the war on Gaza.

The above assertion was expressed in a statement by Adnan Hussain, an independent who defeated Labor’s Kate Hollern in Blackburn. “I promise to make your concerns against the injustice being inflicted against the people of Gaza be heard in the places where our so-called representatives failed,” he wrote.

The political shift in Europe to a pro-Palestine, or at least less emphatically pro-Israeli position, is happening at a much faster rate than anyone had hoped or anticipated.

Though the war played a big part in this, the shift is expected to grow in the coming years because European voters are clearly fed up with their governments’ blind support of Israel.

They are using their democratic systems to effect real changes in government, thus policies with the aim of ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Responsible governments, like Spain, Norway and Ireland, are responding to the wishes of their people accordingly. Others, including the US, should follow suit.

Israel is falling apart, and American leaders are in denial

Israel’s inability to solve the Palestinian issue except by apartheid and massacres has fostered a fascistic and racist political culture in the country. But this truth must be kept from Americans.

BY PHILIP WEISS  JULY 15, 2024 

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/israel-is-falling-apart-and-american-leaders-are-in-denial/

Several left-wing voices have said lately that Israel is falling apart. The society is torn over the war, the government is dominated by brutal racists, and the country’s only answer to the fundamental question – half the population is Palestinian – is apartheid and rolling massacres.

Israeli political culture smacks of fascism. The latest slaughters of civilians in Gaza gain immediate approval by centrist politicians while right-wing ministers issue calls for execution of Palestinian prisoners. The whole society denounces the release of an innocent doctor abducted by Israeli forces in Gaza and embarks on (what Gideon Levy calls) “a hysterical campaign of panic, incrimination, hatred, dehumanization, lust for vengeance, thirst for blood.”

There is a sense that Israel has no way out. No wonder there are reports that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have fled the country since last October.  

How does the United States deal with these realities? The answer for the last 20 years of anti-Palestinian hatred has been denial. The answer for this political cycle is also utter denial.

The U.S. establishment insists that Israel is a healthy democracy and it is capable of moving towards a two state solution in which Palestinians live side by side with Israelis.

No expert on the situation believes as much; but these fictions sustain our political class, like Paul Begala saying on CNN last week that Biden has shown great leadership on Gaza. If our pundits had to confront the truth– Israel is a Jewish supremacist state that is only interested in more land with fewer Palestinians on it, and it kills young Palestinians without any hesitation– the U.S. would have to take action along with the rest of the world, to isolate Israel.

This is the lesson of the Jamaal Bowman defeat; the congressman saw the occupation up close in 2021 on a J Street trip to Israel and Palestine and according to excellent reporting by Calder McHugh in Politico, he could not lie about Israel’s dead end and war crimes.

“[The two-state solution] was the thing that you say so that everyone leaves you alone … so that at the very least you could satisfy both sides, Palestinian freedom and the Jewish state,” [Bowman] says. But what he took from five days of meetings and interviews, over boxed lunches and fancy dinners, was that there was no political will at the top of the Israeli government to pursue a two-state solution or engage in any sort of sustainable peace process — and that America’s willingness to send significant aid to Israel without any conditions attached was therefore unwise.

And after Bowman called Gaza a genocide, and said that boycott is legitimate, J Street stripped its endorsement.

Bowman had undercut the great lie of American foreign policy. That Israel is a robust democracy, and it’s moving toward a Palestinian state.  

Telling the truth is politically impossible because of the Israel lobby. The Democratic Party is incapable of alienating forces that bring down nearly $20 million on the head of Jamaal Bowman in a few weeks and smear him as an antisemite for telling the truth. As Columbia deans were suspended for texting about pro-Israel donors.   

So while Israel is in a freefall to which its only answer is unending massacres and famine that the world sees and hates, the U.S. crisis is simple. Our leaders must deny this reality to keep the lobby happy.

The good news is that some truthtellers in the U.S. mainstream are not afraid to speak out. There is of course the Squad, and a segment of communal Jews who have turned on Israel—IfNotNow and Peter Beinart.

Lately Megan Stack in the New York Times published an excellent report on the overwhelming “darkness” in Israel. Stack characterized Israeli society as one of official “Jewish supremacy,” repeatedly cited the apartheid reports, and said that Netanyahu had demolished the possibility of two states.

The piece quoted a mainstream columnist who responded to pictures of Palestinians on the beach in Gaza by calling for “rivers of blood.”

“We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. [Yehuda] Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”

Shlezinger is not a “fringe” figure, Stack said. The signs of the hardening are “in plain view.”

Dehumanizing language and promises of annihilation from military and political leaders. Polls that found wide support for the policies that have wreaked devastation and starvation in Gaza. Selfies of Israeli soldiers preening proudly in bomb-crushed Palestinian neighborhoods. A crackdown on even mild forms of dissent among Israelis.

The piece showed that when a society doubles down on apartheid, it becomes fascistic.

But the U.S. mainstream is still incapable of accepting this message. Stack is an outlier at the New York Times. It is verboten to name apartheid in the Democratic Party. The cable stations won’t touch this stuff.

Liberal Zionists play an essential role in the denial. Two years ago I reported that a J Street U leader supported BDS in a post for Americans for Peace Now. The liberal Zionist bloc responded decisively. Peace Now took the piece down and J Street issued a statement saying that the student did not endorse BDS. The student repudiated her own position. A red line had been crossed.

So the essential tool of anti-discrimination movements– from Montgomery bus boycott to the agricultural workers to South African apartheid – is quashed by a liberal organization. In fact, J Street has cast BDS as “antisemitic.”

The antisemitism charge plays a key role in the denial. Bowman was accused of antisemitism and being anti-Israel because he was bearing witness against apartheid. Columbia University has suspended two honorable Palestinian solidarity groups under the same smear– antisemitism– surely because of donor pressure. The direct mail coming to my mother’s house from the leading Jewish organizations says there is a giant surge in antisemitism in the country, and cites all the anti-Israel students and groups. No mention whatsoever of the 10s of thousands of civilian victims in Gaza.

So the witnesses must be destroyed so that the Establishment is allowed to persist in its view that Israel is a democracy pursuing a two state solution – “dreamcastle Israel,” in Max Blumenthal’s stinging phrase. Like this upcoming trip to Israel from a leading New York synagogue that denies anything is wrong.

TEMPLE EMANU-EL IS SPONSORING A TOUR OF ISRAEL TITLED “REDISCOVER ISRAEL” THAT AIMS TO STIR AMERICAN JEWS’ FEELINGS FOR THE “COUNTRY WE LOVE.” AN 8-DAY TRIP IN OCTOBER 2024 “FOR THE HEART, MIND AND SPIRIT,” THE TRIP FEATURES GETAWAYS TO THE DESERT, YOGA SESSIONS, AND MEETINGS WITH ISRAELI SOLDIERS.

Seeing Israel for what it really is would expose the failure of Zionism. Its principal goal was to create Jewish safety. But Jews are unsafe in Israel because the society is oppressing an indigenous people, which resists. As my mother’s best friend assured me in Jerusalem 18 years ago, “There will be one war after another till they accept us.”

There are always pragmatic rationalizations for denial. If there is no illusion of a two-state solution to wave at people, then the most powerful country in the Middle East will be destabilized, and there will be a bloody and unending rollercoaster (as someone once put it) toward equal rights for all.

But we are plainly in such a savage reality now, and the U.S. establishment is siding with Jewish supremacists. And Palestinians are paying the terrible price for dishonesty and self-righteousness. Don’t say you didn’t know.