On the same day that over 1,000 Black activists, artists, scholars, students, and organizations issued a statement affirming their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and "commitment to the liberation of Palestine's land and people", the well-respected Senior Editor of Haaretz.com, Bradley Burston, wrote a column revealing that liberal Zionist attitudes in Israel may be shifting. Entitled "It's Time to Admit It. Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid", the piece starts out:
What I'm about to write will not come easily for me.
I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.
I'm not one of those people any more. Not after the last few weeks.
Burston is no raging leftist, having previously written for the conservative Jerusalem Post and criticized other liberals for having a double-standard towards Israel. He's clearly had a change of heart.
What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?
Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.
Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Jews and Arabs in the West Bank.
Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.
Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.
Can you imagine a statement like that coming from mainstream daily here?
It seems clear that a rift has developed in Israel (and the US) among Jewish liberals over the Apartheid analogy and BDS (who knows what liberal gentiles are thinking). Netanyahu, in challenging Obama and the US Congress on the Iran Deal, making it a loyalty test on a variety of levels, is forcing a re-assessment across the political spectrum about the nature of the Occupation and settlements, particularly in light of recent terrorist activities carried out by the settlers with a nod and wink from the government. September is going to be interesting with the Iran vote coming up and Netanyahu betting it all against world opinion that he can outgun an American President.