The Nation
Feb 20, 2023
Israeli apartheid is more obvious than ever, and liberal supporters of Zionism are being confronted with a reality that they have tried for so long to deny.
“I underscored the ironclad U.S.-Israeli relationship, our commitment to Israeli democracy & security,” Blinken tweeted with total banality after meeting with Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid. He was equally hollow after his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, praising the two-state solution and adding, “Anything that moves us away from that vision is—in our judgment—detrimental to Israel’s long-term security and its long-term identity as a Jewish and democratic state.”
It’s business as usual, in other words. The situation on the ground, however, is anything but.
To begin with, Israel has recently intensified its assault on Palestinian life. It has stepped up its demolition of Palestinian homes, its deliberately terrifying midnight raids on Palestinian families, and its brutalization of Palestinians at checkpoints, in schoolyards, in olive groves, and on pastoral hillsides. And the soldiers of its occupation army have been shooting to kill Palestinian men, women, and children at a rate of more than one every single day so far this year. A recent update by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, covering the period from December 20, 2022, to January 9, 2023, documents the killing or wounding of 399 Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces; the demolition of 69 Palestinian-owned structures (and the resulting displacement of 70 Palestinians); 31 attacks on unarmed Palestinians by heavily armed Jewish settlers; and 202 Israeli raids into the West Bank. All this in just three weeks—and not counting the recent incursion into Jenin, in which Israeli troops killed nine more Palestinians (a 10th victim later succumbed to injuries) and inflicted massive damage to homes and infrastructure; or a later raid into Jericho in which Israeli soldiers killed another five Palestinians.