Jew or not a Jew?

Sounds like right-wing Israeli Jews are awfully damned close to defining members of the J Street as not being real Jews.

J Street and AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, "got it on" in debate in Jerusalem in front of select Israeli politicians and others.

Boy, I would have loved to been a fly on the wall at this debate. Was the term "self-hating Jew" used at all? (Even as Israel gets less democratic on controlling free expression.)

No, to Zionists in Israel, the U.S., Canada, or elsewhere, Israel is certainly not Hamas. It really isn't the Palestinian Authority, but the increasing fragmentation, intransigence, and even corruption in Israeli politics mean that it IS getting closer to being like the PA, at least.

As for moving further away from robust democracy? Two examples, or, rather, two new laws:

Two laws passed this week have been widely condemned by civil liberty groups and advocates on the left. The first is known as “the Nakba bill,” in reference to the Arabic word for “catastrophe” commonly used by Arabs to describe the birth of Israel in 1948. Arabs who are Israeli citizens often commemorate Israeli independence by noting their losses — the destruction of hundreds of villages and the exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

The new law allows the Finance Ministry to remove funds from municipalities or groups if they commemorate Independence Day here as a day of mourning or reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The original bill, which produced much alarm and was altered, would have imposed prison sentences.

The second new law that has drawn criticism from the left establishes admissions committees for small communities in the Negev and Galilee, areas with large Arab populations. The new law says that communities with 400 or fewer families may set up committees to screen potential residents for whether they fit in socially. At the last minute, a rider was added barring discrimination based on race, gender or nationality, but critics contend it will still serve to keep Arabs out of Jewish communities.

Of course, only self-hating Jews or "moral equivalence" goyim would protest such laws, right?