Democrats have been unreliable peace brokers in the Middle East, and – just like Republicans – censor any criticisms of Israel. Democrats pretend that Israel’s nuclear weapons don’t exist, while other countries are sanctioned or threatened with fire and fury if they so much as spin up a centrifuge. When Israel kills American citizens our own government does little or nothing. Every politician from Susan Rice to John Kerry, to Mitt Romney, and now Donald Trump, has used the tired old phrase “no daylight between Israel and the U.S.” to imply that the interests of both countries are identical.

The Democratic Party has wrestled with “Israel as Foreign Policy” in each of its last two conventions. Actually, the party has a serious AIPAC problem and its wrestling is mainly with AIPAC’s power. Now, with Donald Trump in office, some Democrats say they are worried that the president’s settler-ambassador David Friedman will move the American embassy to Jerusalem.

But in 2012 the DNC itself tried to push through a motion to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. An undemocratic roll was called by Antonio Villaraigosa and an unexpectedly loud “no” vote caught the DNC offguard. AIPAC had “vetted” the motion – had actually written the text – and Obama was counting on its passing. The “no” vote was finally overturned after multiple attempts in a clearly undemocratic maneuver, and the incident remains an ugly stain on the party’s ethics and democratic practices.

In 2016 the issue of the occupation of Palestine came up again. Clinton supporter Robert Wexler insisted that Democrats could not afford to mention the “O” word if a Two State Solution could be salvaged. Sanders supporter James Zogby pushed back, pointing out that everyone knows the occupation exists. Both sides disagreed whether Democrats should support or condemn the BDS movement. At the end of the day, the DNC adopted wording that made AIPAC and Clinton happy. And the Democratic Party has since chosen to tar the BDS Movement with the Israel lobby’s “anti-Semitic” brush.

So in December 2016, when the UN Security Council took a vote on a motion to condemn Israeli settlements, the US abstention was remarkable, something that had rarely been done before. Obama was again denounced by Republicans and the Israel lobby as an Islamist-Leftist who loved Shariah and hated Jews.

But what had happened was that a tiny crack of daylight had opened up between the United States and Israel. Because Israel’s interests are not identical to ours. Not even close.

Obama’s abstention was a Hail Mary to save the Two State solution. America’s extreme right white ultrationalists in their brown shirts and white hoods, and uncompromising Zionists like David Friedman, are now singing a triumphant tune: there will never be a Two State solution.

But, really, what is the alternative?

Between Gaza and the West Bank there are 4.5 Palestinians living under continuing Israeli military occupation. There are another 1.7 million Arab Israelis. There are almost 6 million stateless Palestinian refugees waiting for a homeland. There are 8 million Jewish Israelis in Israel, some of whom live most of the time in Europe or the U.S. Demographics are not on Israel’s side. By 2035 Jews will be a minority in Israel-Palestine.

Israel can either (1) work with the international community to create a contiguous Palestinian state that would accommodate some number of the Palestinian diaspora; (2) continue the occupation indefinitely; or (3) turn Israel into a multicultural democracy under secular law.

Democrats had better figure out if they prefer option (1) or option (3) because option (2) is barbaric and cannot be sustained. And Democrats will need to develop muscle and guts to push back against AIPAC and the boatload of Israel lobby groups that work tirelessly to keep the occupation in place – to steal more land and build more settlements.

And, frankly, it’s hard to understand why Democrats have such a problem with a secular, multicultural democracy. If that’s what they truly believe in.

As he was leaving office, George Washington offered a few pieces of advice. One was a warning about permitting double standards that favor a particular nation:

“… a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter… It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions … and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity…”

No one in modern times has said it any better.

Israel’s influence is all out of proportion to its objective strategic importance to the United States. Yet because of American religious sentiment and a strong Israel lobby, any attempt to end its occupation or alter its settlement policies are rebuffed, while conversely the tiny nation seems to constantly intrude into our domestic politics.

Israel is an insignificant trading partner, although every state governor travels there on a trade mission during his term. The state of Israel is not part of NATO, though NATO has provided it with an office in Brussels. No Israeli troops have ever assisted in any US-led military “coalitions” in the Middle East. Israel serves as a check to Hezbollah and Syrian power, tests American military equipment, assists in intelligence gathering, and its nuclear weapons can more easily reach Asia and Eastern Europe. Still, not even NATO allies during the height of the Cold War ever received the level of military aid Israel has.

Since its founding Israel has received more foreign and military aid than any other nation – $124 billion as of 2015, plus another $40 billion this year. An analysis by the Congressional Research Service describes Israel’s unique benefits:

“Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $124.3 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, although in the past Israel also received significant economic assistance. Strong congressional support for Israel has resulted in Israel receiving benefits not available to any other countries… In addition to receiving U.S. State Department-administered foreign assistance, Israel also receives funds from annual defense appropriations bills for rocket and missile defense programs. Israel pursues some of those programs jointly with the United States.”

Negotiations over Israel’s aid package last summer were a lopsided and distasteful affair, with Israel demanding more money from the United States and Congress hammering the American president in Israel’s behalf.

Although often described as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” Israel’s “democracy” extends many rights only to its Jewish majority and punishes Arabs – from a right to immigrate only for Jews and sixty years of occupation for Arabs; to civil law for Jews but martial law for Palestinians. On land that has been expropriated from Palestinians separate roads and services exist only for Jewish settlers. There is also widespread segregation of Jews and Arabs within Israel’s own disputed borders and numerous instances of racism and Islamophobia. This has led many to compare Israel with the old South African Apartheid system, which never qualified as a democracy, though in 1985 Ronald Reagan tried to sell it as such:

“They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country — the type of thing where hotels and restaurants and places of entertainment and so forth were segregated — that has all been eliminated.”

Of course, Reagan also said that ketchup was a vegetable.

One of the most disturbing realizations of the past election was how many of Donald Trump’s supporters are racists, anti-Semites and white supremacists. A majority are Islamophobes as well, supporting Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and – here’s the strange part – they’re also enthusiastic Zionists.

How can anti-Semism and Zionism manage to coexist? This was the question Naomi Zeveloff asked in a piece in the Forward, a lefty Jewish magazine.

Zeveloff found that many white supremacists admire Israel for “fighting the ‘good fight'” with Muslims. They admire a society which privileges a single ethnicity and religion and actively discourages multiculturalism. For white supremacists Israel is a “model for white nationalism and/or Christianism.”

Columbia University sociologist Todd Gitlin put it less charitably:

“Anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism are varieties of ultra nationalism, or, to put it more pejoratively (as it deserves to be put) tribalism. They both presume that the embattled righteous ones need to bristle at, wall off, and punish the damned outsiders. They hate and fear cosmopolitan mixtures. They make a fetish of purity. They have the same soul. They rhyme.”

Weeks after the election white supremacist and anti-Semite Richard Spencer gave a talk at Texas A&M University. Security was provided by Houston’s Aryan Renaissance Society and WhiteLivesMatter. Some came to listen, others to protest. But Texas A&M Hillel Rabbi Matt Rosenberg came to engage. After Spencer’s talk Rosenberg asked Spencer, somewhat naively, to join in a “loving and radically inclusive” act of studying Torah together. Spencer scoffed at the idea that he needed some loving to counterbalance all the hating, and instead used the rabbi’s invitation to point out Zionism’s uncanny similarity to white supremacy:

“Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel? […] Jews exist precisely because you did not assimilate to the gentiles […] I respect that about you. I want my people to have that same sense of themselves.”

Birds of a feather.