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Its not hard to say death to israel. Even a child can say it.

I wish people understood more what liberal zionism is and the danger it poses.

The recent conversion of many Western politicians and media commentators from open supporters of the Gaza genocide to weak critics (tough words, no action) of the Netanyahu regime is no accident.

Of course, these weasels are concerned to restore their plummeting credibility in face of the worldwide rejection of Zionist atrocities, but they also have their way paved by Liberal Zionists who want to redirect the moral force of Palestinian solidarity into a historical compromise which preserves many aspects of Jewish colonial privilege.

Liberal Zionists, including most North American Jews, have long hated Netanyahu and other openly fascist Zionists for destroying their dream of a nicer, kinder colonial regime. Most still speak of a ‘two-state solution’.

Almost anything might seem like a haven after two years of the genocidal slaughter in Gaza and the open Israeli commitment to systematic child killing and a ‘final solution’ for Gaza.

But important compromises appear immediately when there is any move towards recognition of a Palestinian state. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned in 2022 that “Dismantling the Israeli apartheid… will not automatically address the question of Israeli domination over the Palestinians, restore permanent sovereignty over the lands Israel occupies … nor … fulfill Palestinian political aspirations”.

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Even if Netanyahu were overthrown tomorrow and apartheid in historic Palestine were dismantled, key challenges would remain over what to do about historic land theft, the right to return for millions of refugees, and questions of justice over the multiple mass murders. And in that scenario, the voice of Liberal Zionism, in support of Jewish colonial privilege and backed by its Anglo-American sponsors, would become very important.

As I argued in my 2023 book West Asia After Washington, a collapse in the current Israeli regime would likely lead to a second stage of struggle over those compromises, and not a clean break into a free and democratic Palestine. We have seen the results of these bad compromises in the dismantling of other racist states - Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa - where massive land and economic inequality problems remain.

The problem with Liberal Zionism lies in its main aim: to rescue the Israeli dream by distancing itself from and denouncing the genocidal Netanyahu version. That rescue could involve anything from two states to a single democratic state where apartheid is dismantled but special Jewish privilege is maintained in parts of the post-1967 occupied territories.

It is clear that openly fascist forces dominate the Netanyahu-led Israeli colony today, but not Zionism worldwide. Liberal Zionists remain very influential in the USA, despite the recent setbacks for their natural home in the US Democrat Party.

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Liberal Jews, who see themselves are tolerant and anti-racist, are repulsed by the apartheid brand. Two former Israeli Prime Ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, both from the Israeli Labor Party, have argued that if the two state project disappears, there will be no alternative to the South African road and dismantling apartheid.

The Israeli Labor Party was the traditional base for liberal Zionism within the colony, even though many of its leaders had participated in the worst of Zionist terrorism. Yigal Allon, for example, a former Haganah terrorist in the 1930s and army commander during the Nakba massacres, became Israeli Prime Minister briefly in 1969. His ‘Allon Plan’ argued for divide and rule in the region but also for returning some of the occupied territories (after the 1967 war) to Arab control.

By contrast, the ‘Yinon Plan’ of 1982, argued by Likud adviser Oded Yinon, was a more comprehensive strategy for occupying and dominating the entire region.

The late Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Labor Prime Minister who signed the Oslo peace accords with the PLO, spoke of a freeze of ‘settlements’ in the West Bank but invested billions in infrastructure for those same settlements, leading to their expansion.

In other words, both factions presided over expanded colonisation, but the Liberals at times, could contemplate a weak, marginalised Palestinian state in exchange for greater recognition of the Israeli regime under a ‘two state solution’, legitimising all the land theft since the 1960s.