Netanyahu has issued an unprecedented apology over the killing of a Palestinian in 2017, admitting Israeli officials covered up their role in his death. But the Israeli PM’s remarks don’t just belatedly expose a police crime, they expand and deepen the lies

Israel has waged a long war against Palestinian history. Today, archives are sealed up, Palestinians are penalised in the law courts, the past is rewritten for the classroom, and reality is erased from the maps produced by digital behemoths like Google and Apple.

For Netanyahu, a strategic alliance with the Gulf has always been about more than just grabbing the occupied territories. It is central to his vision of an unreformed, maximalist, ethnic supremacist, Israeli state secure in the Middle East, serving as a regional hegemon alongside US global power.

The rapidly growing demonstrations against Netanyahu have yet to draw a connection between his personal abuses of office and the systemic corruption of Israeli politics, with the occupation its beating heart.

Antisemitism in the Labour party is making headlines once again – but this time it’s the party’s new leader, Keir Starmer, not the media or the Israel lobby, dragging Jeremy Corbyn’s name though the mud.

The Jewish National Fund has won plaudits for its environmental work, but its real mission – pursued to this very day – is uprooting Palestinians on behalf of the Israeli state, not planting trees.

Peter Beinart’s argument – that a commitment to Israel is now entirely incompatible with a commitment to equality for the region’s inhabitants – is a potential hammer blow to the delusions of liberal Jews in the United States.

Tzipi Hotovely’s appointment as Israel’s new ambassador to the UK has put British Jews uncomfortably on the back foot. With Corbyn the bogeyman gone, they will finally have to face harsh truths about Israel they have deeply buried.

After making so much of annexation during three election campaigns, Netanyahu will not be forgiven by many on the right should he fail to capitalise on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab the title deeds to occupied Palestinian land with US blessing.

Through sacking Long-Bailey, Starmer has shown he is determined to tightly delimit criticism of Israel within Labour as the annexation issue unfolds. Like Johnson, Starmer will play his allotted role in this political game of charades – one long understood and tolerated by Israel and its UK lobbyists.

Strangely, Israel’s large Palestinian minority has found itself treated both as much-abused, second-class citizens and as an unwilling shop-window dummy on which Israel can hang its pretensions of fairness and equality.

The US and Israel don’t just share brutal and racist policing methods. In a world of depleting resources and a contracting global economy, they are devising strategies to prevent resistance from a growing underclass.

Washington and Israel are trying to intimidate the Hague ‘war crimes’ court so it drops its plans for investigations. But it is critically important to probe the US as the most powerful offender, and Israel as the most persistent.

Israel has exploited the steady decline in the numbers of Palestinian Christians to advance its claim that they are being hounded from the region by Muslim extremists. But the real blame lies with Israel and the foreign Churches

An attack on a prominent British-Palestinian doctor and academic, Ghada Karmi, by a self-styled “antisemitism watchdog” looks suspiciously like a new trend in anti-Palestinian bigotry and bullying dressed up as victimhood.

Mike Pompeo will use his visit to sound out Benny Gantz more closely now he is inside the government and, if needs be, gently lean on him – on Netanyahu’s behalf – to ensure he doesn’t publicly waver on annexation from within the coalition.

In what many critics claim amounts to a power grab, Netanyahu began pushing through changes last week to Israel’s basic laws, the equivalent of a constitution. The move was described as “terrifying” by Elyakim Rubinstein, a conservative former supreme court judge.

Palestinian workers’ dependence on Israel is now placing them in harm’s way. Although many are likely to catch the coronavirus in Israel while working, Israel is refusing to take responsibility for their welfare.

Labour leader Keir Starmer is desperate to put the antisemitism episode behind him and the party. Recent history is his warning. He knows that any effort to defend Corbyn’s record will simply revive the campaign of smears. And this time, he will be the target.