Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss / June 23, 2023
Liberal Zionists who are trying to save Israel from itself have adopted a term fashioned by the left – “one-state reality” – and are calling for U.S. pressure against Jewish colonization of the West Bank.
Fifteen years ago pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. started talking about the “one-state reality.” Israel had put so many Jewish colonists in the West Bank that it had destroyed any possibility of creating a Palestinian state. In fact, it had established apartheid.
Since then, the number of Jewish colonists has nearly doubled –to about 700,000 — and finally, this spring, the “one state reality” became a talking point in the U.S. mainstream. The Council on Foreign Relations published a major piece with that title in its journal Foreign Affairs, burying the two-state solution and all but stating that Israel practices apartheid. Former UN head Ban Ki-moon said so yesterday after a visit to the region with the Elders.
I have seen and heard compelling evidence of a one-state reality, with systemic impunity for violators of international law and human rights.
And there’s been an echo. Liberal Zionists are also using the term “one-state reality.” They are deeply frustrated by 25 years of Israeli governments that have been dedicated to the settlement project. And they are frustrated by the U.S. government’s failure to do anything to stop the settlement project– including Joe Biden’s passivity as Benjamin Netanyahu plans yet more illegal Jewish colonies.
“Words are not enough to curb Israeli government policies,” Americans for Peace Now says. “The administration has numerous tools in its relationship with Israel which it could use to express its displeasure in consequential deeds rather than in ineffective rhetoric.”
In pushing for U.S. action to save Israel from itself, these pro-Israel advocates are finally naming the reality.
At the Israel Policy Forum, Michael Koplow fully endorses the Foreign Affairs article’s description of an “unequal one-state reality,” which he sees, fearfully, as leading to a bloody struggle for equal rights.
Koplow says the U.S. must get “serious” about taking on the Netanyahu government. The thrust of his attack is on other American Jews, the rightwing Israel lobby, for enabling the Netanyahu government’s “growing prioritization of settlements before everything.”
If your response to what the Israeli government is poised to do in the next few weeks is to insist that settlements aren’t really a problem but are only a trifling distraction, then please enjoy your one-state reality. Enjoy trying to convince anyone that Israel is genuinely interested in finding a fair and negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…
The audience Koplow is talking to are other advocates for Israel, more right-wing than himself, who are all over the U.S. political establishment. Like Ted Deutch of the American Jewish Committee, who can’t say a word of criticism of Israeli policies. Or the Jewish Federations, which actively supports Israel’s settler movement.
Another acknowledgment of the one-state reality comes from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Trudy Rubin reports on her recent tour of the occupied territory and seems to abandon her belief in Israel’s virtue. The Inquirer has long shut the door on the word “apartheid.” That word appears seven times in Rubin’s reporting.
“We already live in a one-state apartheid reality,” Mustafa Barghouti tells Rubin. “Physically, it is impossible to have a Palestinian state now. One democratic state is the only realistic solution.”
The article has a despairing tone. Rubin believes that a two-state solution would preserve Israeli “democracy” and protect Israel from the fate of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon– “tribal,” inter-communal conflict. But isn’t that Israel’s problem, too? Rubin notes the anti-Palestinian bigotry of Israeli society: “[T]he phrase ‘two-state solution’ is anathema to the Israeli right. Even those on the center-left, who still cling to that formula for lack of an alternative admit they see no current path to get there.”
Openly grasping at straws, Rubin says her best hope is that the pro-democracy protesters in Israel will topple the Netanyahu government or force out his fascistic ministers, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. To get there, Rubin wants U.S. pressure:
[T]he Biden administration should press much harder on Jerusalem to curb settlement expansion and strongly consider voting against Israel when the issue arises in the U.N. Security Council. (Cutting U.S. military aid to Israel would no doubt be a nonstarter with Congress…)
That’s pretty mild pressure. But it puts Rubin at odds with the mainstream Israel lobby. That’s the news: Rubin, Koplow, and liberal Zionists position themselves as outsiders fighting the right-wing Israel lobby that supports the settlements.
J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami recently wrote to oppose the “occupation denial” of the main Israel lobby groups. “Too many ‘pro-Israel’ voices” are lobbying Congress to forget about the occupation:
In Washington, too many legislators are giving in to lobbyists’ efforts to delete any mention from Congressional action of settlements, Palestinians, international law or even the need to support Israel’s liberal democracy.
Political groups like AIPAC – whose Super PAC spent over $25 million in the 2022 Democratic primaries – are working to impose a cost on candidates who express even minimal concern about settlements, Palestinian freedoms and the need to resolve the conflict.
Ben-Ami vowed to continue taking members of Congress to the West Bank to see “the dangerous, painful realities on the ground.”
J Street is taking on a long pro-settlement tradition at the top of the Democratic Party in which liberal Zionists have been implicated. Bill Clinton unseated incumbent president George Bush in 1992 by running to his right on the settlements. Barack Obama backed down on his anti-settlements push in 2011 as he was running for reelection, and J Street went along with the shift.
Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden all removed language about settlements and occupation from the Democratic platform.
Even members of J Street’s recent congressional delegation to Israel met and praised Netanyahu. And lately, a large majority of Democrats in the NY Assembly opposed legislation targeting charities that support the illegal Jewish settlements. They do so because they are defending Israel’s “right to exist.”
So the right-wing Israel lobby has successfully imposed on both the Democratic and Republican parties a blind fealty to the Israeli government no matter what it does.
The pro-Palestinian left is addressing this same reactionary structure– JVP Action also wants to “dump AIPAC” on Capitol Hill.
Though the left has moved on from the one-state reality to a more honest description of the Palestinian experience: apartheid.
Philip Weiss is senior editor of Mondoweiss.net and founded the site in 2005-2006
