I have also been greatly disturbed by the election of a hard right government in Israel, including the inclusion of stone racist Avigdor Lieberman in the cabinet, which if it happened in any other country would be met with the kind of protest it deserves. Netanyahu himself, like too much of Israeli leadership, thinks tactically rather than strategically, figuring that if he kick the can of - what? reconciliation? reason? reckoning? - down the road a few yards, he will have done his job. Along with this is the complete collapse of the Israeli left, which has 3 mandates (Meretz) in the Knesset and an annual Rabin day commemoration in Tel Aviv and not much else.
So I've been following the increase in volume of those who are anti-Israel (particularly the BDS movement, which has made great inroads in the aftermath of the hell in Gaza), as well as those who, like me, are pro-Israel but see clearly that the current course is unsustainable, both politically and morally.
It's interesting that none of this consideration was in evidence at all at last week's General Assembly. With the exception of a small presence by Americans for Peace Now, and one protestor against Nethanyahu's speech (pulled out of the room and dismissed with a chuckle), the entire tenor of the gathering was that all criticism of Israel is illegitimate (well, they may admit that criticism of Israel that isn't anti-Semitic is theoretically possible, but they can never find an example), that Goldstone is at best a pawn and at worst an anti-Semite, that Bibi is doing what's best for the country, that Gaza was a necessary and well-executed operation, that "delegitimization" of Israel is just this year's version of the age-old hatred of Jews. This, I believe, is self-inflicted blindness of the most astonishing kind.
One of the more reasonable criticisms of J Street's recent conference that I heard at the GA (and by reasonable I mean not that I agree with it but that that it wasn't spittle-inflected vilification of J Street as Saudi proxies or self-haters or whatever) was that people were disturbed that there were non- and anti-Zionists there, and vocally part of the proceedings. I heard this from both left and right. This is surprising to people because many on the left, such as Brit Tzedek and Eric Yoffie, have seen it as their role to define what acceptable discourse is - exactly how far left one is allowed to go. Jeremy Ben-Ami doesn't seem to be interested in this, probably because J Street is not a plenary organization, so people can say whatever they want but he's the one who decides what the policy of J Street is.
To me, J Street's conference didn't cause that discussion, it revealed it. Most OJC types are so into their own interpretation of what's happening that they have no idea that the discourse, even within the Jewish community, is moving far beyond it. That's why Jay Michaelson's piece in the Forward, for instance, was such a surprise to so many people. People like Uriel Heilman can continue to say, in response to Roger Cohen (who I'll get to in a minute):
Again, no word on what the Palestinians must do to prepare for peace, such as giving up the goal of eliminating Israel entirely, championed by Hamas, or electing a leadership free of corruption and capable of delivering on a peace deal....Typical, in that when Israel is criticized the OJC response is to point the finger at the other guy. Tired, because largely not true - the leadership of Fatah, Abbas and the rest, have done what they were called on to do in the Road Map - stopped incitement and cracked down on violence. Israel has not done what it was supposed to do - end settlement activity. These are facts, and if you don't believe me, you can ask the US government.
The biggest disconnect, which was in full bloom at the GA as in this piece, is the inability or refusal to recognize that settlements are illegal, that they are counterproductive, that Israel has twice committed to ending them, and that restricting them would signal as nothing else could Israel's good intentions, as continuing them signals the opposite. Not recognizing this means you are not serious about pursuing peace. And by the way, the only person I heard mention "settlements" at the GA was Rahm Emanuel, and the word "occupation" was uttered not at all.
But I went back to read Cohen's piece, and it strikes me that he's largely correct. (Contra Heilman, he doesn't exclusively blame Israel, but then again, neither did Goldstone.) First, he says, Obama came into office thinking that he could pick up from Taba, but there's a lot of water under the bridge since then:
He concludes by saying, like Thomas Friedman the other day, that Obama should dial expectations way back, and that a tense detente may be the best we can hope for at this point.[Obama's] approach ignored the deep scars inflicted in the past decade: the killing of 992 Israelis and 3,399 Palestinians between the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 and 2006; the Israeli Army’s harsh reoccupation of most of the West Bank; Hamas’ violent rise to power in Gaza and the accompanying resurgence of annihilationist ideology; the spectacular spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and the Israeli construction of over 250 miles of a separation barrier that has protected Israel from suicide bombers even as it has shattered Palestinian lives, grabbed land and become, in the words of Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer, “an integral part of the West Bank settlement plan.”
These are not small developments. They have changed the physical appearance of the Middle East. More important, they have transformed the psychologies of the protagonists. Israelis have walled themselves off from Palestinians. They are less interested than ever in a deal with people they hardly see.
Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.There are only two things wrong with this. First, without an Israeli commitment to ending settlement activities - well, they've already committed to it, so let's say, without an implementation of the Israeli commitment to end settlement activities - they will continue apace, and five years from now there will be 500,000 settlers in the Palestinian territories, making it all that much more impossible to retract them. Second, the other pressures on this situation will not abate in the absence of action: first, the demographic issues will continue to grow, meaning that the pressure of Israel as Jewish state vs. Israel as democratic state will not go away (you can't have both and the territories) and second, delegitimization will continue to grow, becoming ever more powerful as people who would normally oppose it become increasingly frustrated with Israeli intransigence and pull out of the conversation. And in this, I include the many progressives and young people represented by the 1,500 people who attended the J Street conference, who are at J Street on their way out the Zionist door, should this situation continue as it is with no hope of resolution.It’s not what Abbas wants but he’s powerless. Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, told me, “A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad.”
I recall my friend Shlomo dreaming of peace. That’s over. The last decade destroyed the last illusions: hence the fence. The courageous have departed the Middle East. A peace of the brave must yield to a truce of the mediocre — at best.
Bibi's, with his tactical thinking, is not prepared to deal with any of this. The OJC, with it's mythology about how everything is either the Palestinians' fault or motivated by anti-Semitism, is not prepared to deal with this. Their aversion to recognizing that time is not on their side is the biggest disconnect of all.

