The cracks are showing in Israel’s legitimacy.

Ultra right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the U.S. next week. A brief look at his trip demonstrates two things clearly:

1. Israel’s extremist government is becoming increasingly isolated.

Mainstream Democratic lawmakers and media outlets have recently called to cut or condition the billions of dollars in unconditional military funding that the U.S. sends to Israel each year. Even President Biden, with all his unwillingness to hold the Israeli government accountable, has not invited Netanyahu to the White House during his trip next week.

2. The longstanding alliance between the right wing in the U.S. and Israel is only getting stronger.

Recent reports indicate that Netanyahu plans to meet with Elon Musk on next week’s trip — even after Musk came under heavy fire in the last few weeks for promoting antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories on Twitter.

This hasn’t stopped the Israeli Prime Minister, who plans to talk with Musk about increasing Israel’s artificial intelligence capabilities — the same technology that Amnesty International described last year as producing a system of “automated apartheid” in Israel.

These are their shared values: Netanyahu wants to surveil and control Palestinians, and Musk is happy to help him do so. And this is the Israeli government’s vision of Jewish safety: the entrenchment of apartheid in high-tech systems. Even Musk’s promotion of antisemitism on one of the world’s largest social media platforms, which he owns, doesn’t disqualify him from being a partner to the Israeli government in their oppression of Palestinians.

Given the glaring hypocrisy and extremist politics of the Israeli government, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that apartheid and democracy can never coexist, and that a government willing to ally itself with antisemites has no concern for Jewish safety.

The cracks in Israel’s legitimacy are showing. And we need to keep pushing until Palestine is liberated.

Elon Musk vs. the ADL

Elon Musk kicked up another firestorm recently after threatening to sue the ADL. As the internet rushed to take sides, JVP issued a reminder that in some arguments, both sides can be wrong. 

We were subsequently bombarded with antisemitic messages.

“A pro-Israel lobby with a civil rights hobby”

For years, the ADL has run cover for the Israeli apartheid regime by conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Noah Kulwin’s piece last year in Jewish Currents details the ADL’s “unbearable” anti-Palestinian politics.

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