Altogether, the United Nations and its agencies have condemned Israel so many times that, on one of those proportional maps, tiny Israel would loom over Saudi Arabia, with its beheadings and ban on women driving.
.. Israel has legalized the creation of additional West Bank settlements, built roads that only Jewish Israelis may use and, while recoiling from the word “apartheid,” adopted some of its techniques. For many Palestinians, freedom of movement is impossible.
.. For its part, Israel has drifted to the right, content to let the clock tick.
.. It permits too many Israel supporters to dismiss legitimate criticism as anti-Semitic babbling or to focus on the astounding failings of the Palestinians and not on the rightward drift of Israel in response. A law that stifles dissidence, that bars lovers of Israel from Israel itself, is not only repugnant on the face of it, but also additional evidence that occupation of the West Bank is corroding Israeli democracy. Israel may win the West Bank and lose its soul.