Last February Massachusetts state representative Steven Howitt (R-Seekonk) filed H.1558 (“An Act relative to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism”) which, like a recent U.S. House Resolution, seeks to define any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. The Massachusetts bill declares:

The term ‘Antisemitism’ shall have the same meaning that is endorsed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which shall mean a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Howitt’s description is incomplete if not intentionally dishonest. While the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, originally concocted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, does enumerate actual manifestations of antisemitism found in the politically-neutral Jerusalem Declaration, much of the IHRA’s definition centers on Israel and Zionism and is intended to weaponize any criticism of Israel, particularly to criminalize the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement.

Anti-BDS legislation, which threatens Americans’ First Amendment rights, is now found in 37 states. How such bills can even be filed boggles the mind. The right of Americans to boycott was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1982 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. Fortunately, most Massachusetts legislators have had the good sense to reject anti-democratic bills like these, as they ought to reject the adoption of a weaponized, revisionist definition of “antisemitism.”

The Jerusalem Definition of antisemitism explicitly rejects several elements of the IHRA definition Israel and Zionist groups use for transparent political purpose. Regarding Israel (and not Jews), the Jerusalem Definition says:

11. Supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights, as encapsulated in international law.
12. Criticizing or opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism, or arguing for a variety of constitutional arrangements for Jews and Palestinians in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. It is not antisemitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea,” whether in two states, a binational state, unitary democratic state, federal state, or in whatever form.
13. Evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state. This includes its institutions and founding principles. It also includes its policies and practices, domestic and abroad, such as the conduct of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, the role Israel plays in the region, or any other way in which, as a state, it influences events in the world. It is not antisemitic to point out systematic racial discrimination. In general, the same norms of debate that apply to other states and to other conflicts over national self-determination apply in the case of Israel and Palestine. Thus, even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.
14. Boycott, divestment and sanctions are commonplace, non-violent forms of political protest against states. In the Israeli case they are not, in and of themselves, antisemitic.
15. Political speech does not have to be measured, proportional, tempered, or reasonable to be protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and other human rights instruments. Criticism that some may see as excessive or contentious, or as reflecting a “double standard,” is not, in and of itself, antisemitic. In general, the line between antisemitic and non-antisemitic speech is different from the line between unreasonable and reasonable speech.

Let’s say it again – opposing Zionism, criticizing or boycotting Israel is not antisemitic.

Long before the establishment of the State of Israel — and long after — there has been considerable disagreement about the nature of the Israeli state, especially among Jews.

Orthodox Judaism rejected Zionism until the establishment of Israel, and Jews like Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Albert Einstein voiced numerous criticisms of the Zionist founders of Israel. For over a century even Zionists themselves have warned of the dangers of harshly treating Arab neighbors in Palestine. For example, see Hannah Arendt’s articles in Aufbau, recorded in her “Jewish Writings” (ISBN 9780805211948) .

Zionism and the nature of the Jewish State have long been a polarizing issue within Reform Judaism. The American Council for Judaism is a contemporary anti-Zionist organization that formed after Reform Judaism abandoned its previous condemnation of Zionism (see Thomas A. Kolsky’s “Jews Against Zionism” (ISBN 9781566390095).

Today anti-Zionist Jews include people from the Reform, Reconstructionist, Havurah, Humanist, and Masorti movements, even some Orthodox sects such as the Satmars and Neturei Karta. One public intellectual, Peter Beinart, a modern Orthodox Jew, was once a well-known Zionist but has since joined the anti-Zionist camp. The most likely anti-Zionist Jews today are young people who grew up embracing the promises, if not the reality, of American democratic values, not racist ethnocentrism. There are dozens of organizations in the United States, Europe, and even Israel who represent these overwhelmingly young Jews, among them Jewish Voice for Peace and Not In Our Name.

At the end of the day, Americans have a Constitutional right to disagree about foreign policy. Should we fight with Taiwan if China invades? Should we have expanded NATO after Gorbachev? Should we have invaded Iraq? Is India a democracy? As with any of these examples, Americans ought to be free to hold an opinion on whether Israel is a democracy or not, whether its treatment of Palestinians respects human rights and human dignity, and whether we ought to continue pumping billions of dollars into the economy of a nation that keeps millions of people caged in concentration camps.

Most controversial of all, should Americans support the continued existence of Israel as an illiberal ethnocracy or are we free to advocate for a true democracy “from river to the sea”? Anti-Zionists answer this question with a call for freedom — while those who promote the IHRA definition dishonestly characterize any call to abandon Zionism’s inherent racism and colonialism as somehow advocating a second Shoah.

As it happens, the IHRA definition has a long and twisted history. It was concocted by an extremist settler, Natan Sharansky, ideologically related to settler extremists Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich who serve in Netanyahu’s coalition government. Sharansky’s definition of antisemitism wended its way from the Israeli government to an Israeli think tank, to Zionist advocacy groups, to the US State Department, only to be subsequently weaponized against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. A short chronology:

• 1978: For many years the Hansell Memo was the policy of the United States in terms of illegal Israel settlements. “While Israel may undertake, in the occupied territories, actions necessary to meet its military needs and to provide for orderly government during the occupation, for reasons indicated above the establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law.”
• 1986: Soviet Refusenik Natan Sharansky is released in a prisoner exchange and moves to Israel
• 1995: Sharansky founds the Yisrael BaAliyah Party to advocate for the eventual absorption of 2 million Russians, many not Jewish, as a demographic offset to rising Arab population growth. He holds a variety of governmental posts.
• 1999-2005: Sharansky serves as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, Minister of Housing and Construction, Interior Minister, and Minister of Industry and Trade. Sharansky becomes Israel’s Minister without Portfolio, responsible for Jerusalem’s social and Jewish diaspora affairs. In this position, Sharansky chairs a secret committee that approves the confiscation of East Jerusalem property of West Bank Palestinians.
• 2005: Sharansky resigns from Ariel Sharon’s cabinet in protest of the Prime Minister’s withdrawal from Gaza.
• 2005: Sharansky invents the New Anti-Semitism (his term). This innovation includes the “3D Test” – demonization, double standards, delegitimization. The definition eventually finds its way into the EU working definition and then, after being dropped by the EU, is recycled by the IHRA. As employed today, “demonization” can refer to any type of condemnation of Israel. Avoiding “double standards” requires that, as the only Jewish state in the entire world, Israel must not be criticized. And “delegitimization” means that Israel has a right to exist in any form — even as a repressive state. Hence, criticism of Israel’s Apartheid system, for example, is off-limits if since calls into question Israeli self-determination, regardless of the form.
• 2005: The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights develops a working definition of antisemitism in conjunction with the Wiesenthal Center. It doesn’t take long before that definition is misused to smear critics of Israel.
• 2005: The EU drops the use of the working definition precisely because it is so political, igniting anger from Israel.
• 2010: Israeli Think Tank, the Reut Group, creates a “conceptual framework [as a] response to the assault on Israel’s legitimacy.” Reut has specifically studied critiques of South African Apartheid in order to develop a political firewall against so-called “delegitimization” of Israel.
• 2010: Israel’s National Security Council determines that a Palestinian state will delegitimize Israel — hence both Palestinians and supporters of a Palestinian state are by definition antisemitic.
• 2010: President Barak Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorse Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right” as a Jewish state. HIllary Clinton begins using the draft version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition in her State Department.
• 2016: If at first you don’t succeed… The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance announces its working definition of “antisemitism” which includes Sharansky’s 3D test and recycles the EU’s working definition. The Pompeo State Department formally adopts the IHRA definition.
• 2018: Israel approves the Jewish Nation-State Law affirming that Israel is not only a Jewish state but “a state for all Jewish people.” The Law also establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.” When the law is passed, Arab parliamentary members rip up copies of the bill and shout, “Apartheid,” on the floor of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament). United States Secretary of State (under Trump) Michael Pompeo voids the Hansell memo.

The IHRA definition is not benign. It is intensely political and the creation of an Israeli extremist in a previous extremist government who then turned it over to a think tank tasked with weaponizing it. The purpose of the IHRA definition is to pervert the natural meaning of antisemitism (baseless hatred of Jews) and punish any criticism of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state.

For any legislature to regulate what is “acceptable” speech is not only a violation of civil liberties but also (when directed at anti-Zionist Jews) both laughable and antisemitic.

Yes, antisemitic because for any legislative committee to hold a preconceived notion of what all Jews believe, or ought to believe, is the very definition of antisemitism.

Objectivity Wars panel held at the Columbia School of Journalism, with Masha Gessen speaking (Kegoktm, 2022, CC)

Masha Gessen knows something about totalitarianism and human rights abuses. The Russian journalist, translator, trans rights activist, and public intellectual was born in Russia in 1967 to a Jewish family that survived the Holocaust only to experience Stalin’s Soviet Union. In 1981 Gessen’s family relocated to the United States. As a journalist, Gessen (they, their) have written extensively about Russian authoritarianism. In 2020 they wrote in The Nation about MAGA World’s threats to American democracy. Until last week everybody wanted to hear from Masha Gessen.

In mid-December Gessen was in line to receive the Hannah-Arendt-Preis from the [Heinrich] Böll-Stiftung and the German State of Bremen for their prescient warnings and advocacy for human rights. But the latest Gaza war erupted, and with it a wave of repression of voices critical of Israel’s human rights abuses — or any advocacy of Palestinian liberation.

Just before the Böll award was to be conferred, Gessen published a piece in the New Yorker entitled “In the Shadow of the Holocaust.” The piece was mainly about how memory and history are managed in Europe. In it Gessen casually ripped Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza. They framed the piece with a visit to the Berlin Jewish Museum:

“There, an installation by the Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman, titled ‘Fallen Leaves,’ consists of more than ten thousand rounds of iron with eyes and mouths cut into them, like casts of children’s drawings of screaming faces. When you walk on the faces, they clank, like shackles, or like the bolt handle of a rifle. Kadishman dedicated the work to victims of the Holocaust and other innocent victims of war and violence. I don’t know what Kadishman, who died in 2015, would have said about the current conflict. But, after I walked from the haunting video of Kibbutz Be’eri to the clanking iron faces, I thought of the thousands of residents of Gaza killed in retaliation for the lives of Jews killed by Hamas. Then I thought that, if I were to state this publicly in Germany, I might get in trouble.”

Gessen chafes at governmental regulation of thought and language, and takes issue with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “antisemitism” which “began with the obvious — calling for or justifying the killing of Jews — but also included ‘claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’ and ‘drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.'” A competing definition, the Jerusalem Declaration, does not regard as antisemitic: support for the Palestinian demand for justice; criticizing or opposing Zionism; or evidence-based criticism of Israel.

Gessen goes on to criticize the German Bundestag’s resolution to condemn the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement], which was originally introduced by the ultra-right and Nazi-connected AfD Party (Alternative für Deutschland). Gessen writes: “one could argue that associating a nonviolent boycott movement, whose supporters have explicitly positioned it as an alternative to armed struggle, with the Holocaust is the very definition of Holocaust relativism. But, according to the logic of German memory policy, because B.D.S. is directed against Jews — although many of the movement’s supporters are also Jewish–it is antisemitic.” Gessen reminds us that the Director of the Berlin Jewish Museum Gessen began their essay with was forced to resign in 2019 for supporting the non-violent BDS movement.

Gessen mentions Zionist extremism, fascistic tendencies within it, the unprecedented extremism of the current Israeli government – and yet the demonization of any criticism by the German government and cultural institutions. “Holocaust recognition is our contemporary European entry ticket,” Gessen quotes historian Tony Judt in his 2005 book, “Postwar.”

Their New Yorker article contrasts the “Holocaust Memory Wars” in Germany and Poland and the involvement of the Far Right in both countries which includes even Holocaust deniers. Despite this, “Netanyahu was building alliances with the illiberal governments of Central European countries, such as Poland and Hungary, in part to prevent an anti-occupation consensus from solidifying in the European Union. For this, he was willing to lie about the Holocaust.”

Babyn Yar is a giant ravine outside Kyiv in the Ukraine. In September 1941, in just 36 hours, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in what is known as the “Holocaust by bullets,” which Benjamin Netanyahu inevitably compared to the Hamas attack on a rave in the Negev desert. Netanyahu has also compared Palestinians to the Jewish concept of Amalek – a biblical story about a race of people who attacked the Hebrews and mix multitudes in the desert but which now refers to the very personification of evil. Gessen writes: “Netanyahu has been brandishing Amalek in the wake of the Hamas attack. The logic of this legend, as he wields it–that Jews occupy a singular place in history and have an exclusive claim on victimhood–has bolstered the anti-antisemitism bureaucracy in Germany and the unholy alliance between Israel and the European far right. But no nation is all victim all the time or all perpetrator all the time.”

And now we get to Gaza and the quote that landed Gessen in hot water with the German arbiters of Holocaust memory:

“For the last seventeen years, Gaza has been a hyperdensely populated, impoverished, walled-in compound where only a small fraction of the population had the right to leave for even a short amount of time–in other words, a ghetto. Not like the Jewish ghetto in Venice or an inner-city ghetto in America but like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.”

The reaction in the German press was predictable. Even supposedly “left-leaning” media like taz.de (Die Tageszeitung) savaged Gessen. Die Zeit, considered to be a newspaper of record (like the NYT or WaPo), favors the narrative of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft, the German-Israel Society, or DIG, which was founded by German protestant theologians in 1957. According to die Zeit, the German-Israel Society maintains that Gessen’s article is in:

“clear contrast to Hannah Arendt’s thinking” with such statements. […] Gessen is free to repeat such views, [DIG] goes on to say. “But Masha Gessen’s views should not be honored with a prize intended to commemorate the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt.”

Anyone who has read Arendt’s work on Nuremberg, Totalitarianism, or her “Jewish Essays” knows this to be a dishonest characterization. Arendt may have been a Zionist inasmuch as she had been hounded from Germany herself, but Arendt was no friend to the Zionism that emerged following the Biltmore Conference in 1942. Arendt’s Zionism gravitated more to a binational concept promoted by Judah Magnes, whom she revered (and who was called a “Quisling” by American Zionists for warning that the Arab world was not going to accept Revisionist Zionism’s cruel vision of “Israel” and for opposing the Biltmore Conference).

Arendt gave credit – albeit with her characteristic side of critique – to a fringe Zionist group called the Ihud which promoted an Arab-Jewish federation. She made an absolute distinction between a Zionist state and a Jewish homeland. In Arendt’s writings, the latter (as long as it also provided refuge for Shoah survivors) was to be preferred. The Ihud was in fact only one of several groups with similar bi-national proposals that, as early as the Twenties and Thirties – a century ago! – knew that forcing Palestinians into cantons or concentration camps was a recipe for disaster.

Throughout her essays in Aufbau and later in the New Yorker (collected in The Jewish Writings) Arendt was brutally opposed to the extreme Revisionist Zionism that became normative Israeli Zionism and which was widely promoted by American Zionists. To cite one example, in December 1948 Arendt wrote a long essay in the New York Times in which she violated the “antisemitic” Verbot of comparing Israeli fascists to other fascists – which Gessen quotes in part in their article:

“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the”Freedom Party” (nuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine. The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.”

“A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April, The New York Times reported that terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants — 240 men, women, and children-and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Transjordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.”

“The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party. Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. During the last year of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and widespread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.”

In today’s new climate of suppressing all criticism of Israel, Masha Gessen has joined thousands of victims of firings, cancellations, shutdowns, and even arrests throughout the Western world.

The irony is that Gessen’s essay — though it may have run up against the perfunctory New German Philosemitism that replaced the reptilian Old German Antisemitism — is true to Hannah Arendt’s legacy, right down to its reaction by mainstream pro-Israel groups and the Western nations too eager to blindly defend it.

The October 7th assault on Israel by Hamas militants was a heinous, gruesome, and traumatizing act of terror for Israelis who had become complacent to inevitable resistance from people they have subjugated for 75 years. Despite members of Israel’s new government now speaking openly of genocide and ethnic cleansing, there was never much doubt that the US would side with Israel. Americans, who learn their history and geography only when wars break out, generally have little idea what kind of state they are funding, or even what kind of conflict this is.

Though almost always painted as a religious war, this last outbreak of violence is the latest chapter of a long-festering land dispute that drags on, largely because of the amount of money and weaponry the US sends Israel to maintain their grip on Palestinians and slowly erase them from lands they should have had when colonial powers carved up the Middle East in the wake of World War I.

After the attack, with concern for Israel rarely displayed toward any other country, a stream of US politicians — congressmen, senators, mayors, presidents — flew to Tel Aviv to be photographed with Israeli officials and offer condolences, even as Israel launched a barrage of over 6,000 bombs into Gaza, killing thousands of civilians indiscriminately. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” on Gaza’s civilian population (illegal under international law) and added, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Member of Israel’s Knesset Ariel Kallner called fora “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48. Kallner was referring to the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs in 1948, many of whom fled to Gaza and have lived in refugee camps for three generations. Similar appeals to cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians are routine now.

Ignoring these genocidal intentions, 420 congressmen signed a resolution supporting Israel without reservation and omitting any mention of war crimes being committed in reprisal for Hamas’s attack. A parallel House resolution calling for a pause in Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians and allowing Gaza to receive humanitarian aid was supported by only thirteen Democrats — all people of color. Biden’s ambassador to the UN vetoed a similar resolution, cynically saying “We believe we need to let that diplomacy play out.” As the US well knows from previous vetoes, only mass civilian casualties will result from letting missile diplomacy “play out.”

Americans love Israel so much that an Israeli “lobbying” group is permitted to operate in violation of FARA laws and regularly flies congressmen on junkets to Israel. Laws in 37 states punish criticism of Israel. Israel has been the recipient of the largest amount of foreign and military aid of any ally, to date receiving more than $150 billion, with more dished out every year. The United States reliably vetoes any UN resolution critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. State Department officials regularly speak of “no daylight” between US and Israeli positions and the two countries’ “unbreakable bond.” Israel is routinely described as “the only democracy in the Middle East” although it is no democracy at all for Palestinians inside Israel itself or in Gaza and the West Bank.

Although it’s not clear the love is reciprocated, American love for Israel is a product of similar history and religion. In addition to the ethnic cleansing both the US and Israel were founded on, there is also a religious dimension to the relationship. When Anthony Blinken flew to Israel after the Hamas attack he told the Israeli Defense Ministry, “I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew.” From the Christian bleachers Lindsay Graham managed to inject good-ole-boy American racism into a call for genocide on Gazans: “To Cornel West and the Black Lives Matter group […] We’re in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”

When George Washington stepped down after a reasonable number of years of service (listen up, Joe!) he left behind his thoughts on foreign entanglements in his famous Farewell Address. Warning of precisely “unbreakable bonds” and “zero daylight” with allies, Washington wrote, “nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.” Washington could have been speaking of Israel and Iran.

So when progressive Democrat Pramila Jaypal referred not long ago to Israel as a racist country practicing Apartheid, all hell broke loose. Republicans seized the opportunity to force a non-binding resolution that read: “(1) the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state; (2) Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia; and (3) the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.” The second point served to reinforce the taboo of criticizing Israel – lest one be accused of antisemitism. All but nine Democrats of color voted for the resolution.

To be fair, most white Democrats defend the United States precisely as they do Israel (we are a good people, this is not who we are) even though the U.S. was founded on genocide and slavery and continues to oppress people of color. In the case of Israel, theirs is a nation with an immense occupation by Jews of an almost equally-sized population of Palestinians, depriving them of their human and civil rights for the last 75 years and systematically taking more and more of their land.

Like the old American Confederacy through Jim Crow days, Israel promulgates laws to enshrine and reinforce Jewish supremacy and ethno-religious segregation. The degree of segregation even applies to Israeli Jews. Haredi women ride segregated buses. Segregated communities are common. Their Supreme Court affirmed the right of communities to exclude Arabs, LGBTQ+, and the disabled. Vigilantes attack Arab men dating Jewish women. More than 65 laws discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel – the 20% who were not expelled to refugee camps.

Although Israelis are officially prohibited from entering Palestinian areas, over 650,000 settlers have already seized land in the West Bank. Separate highways have been built for settler use only. Israel may be a nation of laws but Israeli courts are overly friendly to land-grabbing scofflaws while all Palestinians get is endless martial law. Life for Palestininans in Gaza and the West Bank is hell. As an occupier, Israel destroys Palestinian civilian infrastructure arbitrarily and attacks civilians indiscriminately. In the West Bank settlers operate with impunity while the government destroys Palestinian homes, schools, and crops or decides to clear a village for military purposes – only to turn around and hand it over to settlers.

Just as in the United States, where Christian nationalism is rapidly destroying what’s left of our so-called “democracy,” Jewish nationalism, with its attendant racism and illiberalism, has similarly brought Israel’s “democracy” to the point of collapse. Almost every Israeli political party has historically embraced Palestinian expropriation or expulsion to some degree, but now the most extreme Zionist elements have “taken the gloves off” and are coming not only for Palestinians but for secular Jews and their secular values. Suddenly religious settlers are being recognized for the dangerous fanatics and racists they are.

Israel’s 37th government includes elements from the Kach party, once banned as a terrorist organization. Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “tak[ing] the Ku Klux Klan and [bringing] them into the government,” equating ministers Itamar Ben Gvir, Betzalel Smotrich and others with the KKK (which actually operates in Israel). Netanyahu’s Revisionist Zionism had a long association with extremism and fascism, long before the founding of the state.

Israel’s extremist government acknowledges that Apartheid is their goal. Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who once displayed a photo of the man who massacred 29 Muslims at prayer in his illegal settlement home, told an Arab journalist on Israel’s Channel 12, “excuse me, Mohammed, but this is the reality. This is the truth. My right to life outweighs your right to move on the streets.”

The West Bank Yishi community, which was built on land stolen from the ethnically-cleansed village of Dayr Aban, used to advertise two-acre plots with tennis courts and a forest preserve to Americans eager to emigrate. “Looking for the American Dream in Eretz Yisrael? …. Do you want American neighbors and immediate access to Bet Shemesh and Ramat Bet Shemesh schools? …. Does an Arab-free environment sound appealing? Yishi is miles inside the green line and even further from the nearest Arab settlement… A place in Israel that comes as dreamed, no concessions, no compromise.” Its residents would heartily endorse Alabama governor George Wallace’s declaration, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

While American politicians ignore the grim reality for Palestinians and pretend that Israel is a Western democracy, Israelis are much more willing admit that their country practices Apartheid.

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem asserts it. Israeli author David Grossman has said it. The Israeli anti-occupation group Yesh Din calls the occupation Apartheid. Before he was assassinated by an extremist from the settler movement, Yitzhak Rabin called the settler movement a “cancer” and warned that Israel risked becoming an Apartheid state. In the 1980‘s Uri Davis, an Israeli activist, and Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli political scientist, used the phrase. The Israeli groups Adalah, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Combatants for Peace, Gisha, HaMoked, Haqel: In Defense of Human Rights, Human Rights Defenders Fund, Ofek: The Israeli Center for Public Affairs, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel and Yesh Din all supported an Amnesty International report calling Israel’s practices Apartheid.

And who knows better than the nation of South Africa? South Africa downgraded Israel’s embassy in protest of Israeli Apartheid and openly called Israel an Apartheid state at the UN. Of course, perhaps they were just sore that Israel actually supported South African Apartheid.

Many other voices recognize parallels with the old South African system. Last April, for the first time, the venerable journal Foreign Affairs ran an article calling Israel an Apartheid state. Human Rights Watch considers Israel’s treatment of Palestinians Apartheid. Amnesty International says so too. The American group Jewish Voice for Peace agrees. The American Friends Service Committee uses the term “Israeli Apartheid.” Former UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon cautiously says Israel is “inching” toward Apartheid. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman blasted a Republican pro-Israel position as pro- Apartheid. Marine Corps General James Mattis used the term describing Israel’s “democratic” dilemma: democracy or Apartheid. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made exactly the same argument. Former Vermont governor and presidential candidate Howard Dean called Israel an Apartheid state. Former President Jimmy Carter thought so too. He even wrote a book making the case.

And if compassion for Palestinians is antisemitic, you’d better tell American Jews. Among respondents of a 2021 survey commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute, a group led by prominent Jewish Democrats, 34% agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States,” 25% considered “Israel is an apartheid state” and 22% thought that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.”

Yet none of this has managed to reach the ears of Congress or the President.

House Republicans may have an excuse for the open embrace of ethnic cleansing and ethno-religious supremacy – that’s just who they are – but Democrats who refuse to call out a violent occupation and an Apartheid regime deserve nothing but contempt for their cowardice. In fact, the defense of racist ethno-religious nationalism in Israel only undermines Democrats’ credibility if not their ability to fight it here at home.

The United States has never applied either carrots or sticks to Israel. Instead we just turn on the spigot and keep the money flowing for Apartheid. This needs to stop now. Let Israel fund its own repressive racist regime without our help.