The increasing difficulty that Israel advocates in the United States face in trying to sell an apartheid regime to liberal Americans–Jewish and otherwise–had, while Benjamin Netanyahu was Israel’s prime minister, led many to simply embrace the right, and leave liberals behind.
Now, with Yair Lapid in office, and given his deep ties to the Democratic party, the pro-Israel strategy has shifted its attention back to liberals, particularly among Democrats. But these efforts face tremendous obstacles, not only in the illiberal reality of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians but also in that Israel is lurching further rightward every day.
In my latest piece at Mondoweiss, I examine one effort in New York City that is trying to reach disaffected, liberal Jews, especially young ones. But its failure is inevitable because it is based on a fictional version of Israel.
Thank you, Mitchell, for an excellent article. As a Jewish American, I have long regarded Zionist disregard, disrespect, disempowerment and dispossession of the Palestinian people as immoral, unjust and cruel. Judaism is a religion; Zionism is an ideology.