So, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a mistake by thinking that a meeting of the Trilateral Commission was off-the-record. Is there anything holy in this world? What next? Will the Illuminati be giving TED talks? Are the Elders of Zion going to take questions on C-Span? 
 
 In a fit of candor, Kerry told the commissioners (if that's what you call them) that a one-state solution (so-called) for the Israel-Palestine conundrum either leads to "an apartheid state with second-class citizens -- or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state." (A full report on Kerry's remarks can be found at the Daily Beast, whose reporter apparently taped the remarks.) 
 
 Carefully coordinated, entirely spontaneous bursts of outrage ensued, not only from Republicans and Israelis, but also from Democrats. "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and any linkage between Israel and apartheid is nonsensical and ridiculous," tweeted Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California. 
 
 I will dissent from Boxer's critique, both because I believe that Kerry is a pro-Israel secretary of state who worries about the Jewish state's future, and because I myself have used the word "apartheid" not only to describe a possible terrible future for Israel, but also as a way of depicting some current and most unfortunate facts on the ground. 
 
 In a 2004 New Yorker article I described how the settlement movement was slowly destroying the idea of a Jewish democratic state of Israel: 
 
 
 
 [Ariel] Sharon seems to have recognized -- belatedly -- Israel's stark demographic future: the number of Jews and Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be roughly equal by the end of the decade. By 2020, the Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola has predicted, Jews will make up less than forty-seven per cent of the population. If a self-sustaining Palestinian state -- one that is territorially contiguous within the West Bank -- does not emerge, the Jews of Israel will be faced with two choices: a binational state with an Arab majority, which would be the end of the idea of Zionism, or an apartheid state, in which the Arab majority would be ruled by a Jewish minority. 
 
 
 
 A de-facto apartheid already exists in the West Bank. Inside the borders of Israel proper, Arabs and Jews are judged by the same set of laws in the same courtrooms; across the Green Line, Jews live under Israeli civil law as well, but their Arab neighbors -- people who live, in some cases, just yards away -- fall under a different, and substantially undemocratic, set of laws, administered by the Israeli Army. The system is neither as elaborate nor as pervasive as South African apartheid, and it is, officially, temporary. It is nevertheless a form of apartheid, because two different ethnic groups living in the same territory are judged by two separate sets of laws. 
 
 I suppose this passage makes me an enemy of Israel, in the same way Kerry is an enemy of Israel, and in the same way that the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (who is also Israel's most decorated soldier) is an enemy of Israel, because Barak has also warned about the dangers of the status quo: "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel," he said in 2010, "it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state." 
 
 Few of the conditions I described in that 2004 article have changed, but I have decided, for a number of reasons, to try to avoid using the term apartheid to describe the situation in the West Bank. One, deployment of the word doesn't start conversations, it ends them. (Former Middle East negotiator George Mitchell taught me this lesson.) Real enemies of Israel -- Muslim supremacists of Hamas, anti-Semites in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and so on -- use the term "apartheid" not to encourage a two-state solution that would end official discrimination on the West Bank, but to argue for the annihilation of Israel. 
 
 Two, to describe the West Bank as an experiment in apartheid is insulting to the actual victims of South African apartheid, who lived under a uniquely baroque and grotesque set of race-based laws. (I owe a number of friends from South Africa for this insight.) 
 
 And three, to describe Israel as an apartheid state, or as a state on the road to apartheid, does not adequately capture the complexity and contradictions of Israel today. In most of Israel -- the pre-1967 Israel, not the occupied West Bank -- Arabs have more rights as citizens than they have in most any Arab country. There is still discrimination, and state resources are still distributed unfairly, but Arabs serve in the highest reaches of all branches of government. In fact, an Arab judge presided over the rape trial of a former president of Israel. As difficult as the facts of that case were to stomach, there was great happiness in Israel that an Arab citizen could send an Israeli president to jail without discernible complaint, even from the Israeli right. 
 
 The problem is not inside Israel; the problem is on the West Bank. The settlers who entangle Israel in the lives of Palestinians believe that they are the vanguard of Zionism. In fact, they are the vanguard of binationalism. Their myopia will lead to the end of Israel as a democracy and as a haven for the Jewish people. The regime they help impose on Palestinians is cruel, unfair and unnecessary. Rather than label this regime in an incendiary fashion, I now prefer simply to describe its disagreeable qualities. 
 
 But if Kerry, following Barak's lead, wants to warn about a possible apartheid future for Israel, I'm not going to condemn him as anti-Israel. Israeli leaders must open their minds to the possibility that he has their long-term interests at heart. 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg View's editorial board or Bloomberg LP, its owners and investors. ||||| John Kerry has offered us a reminder that in American politics, the debate about our closest ally in the Middle East has all the candor and thoughtfulness of a cabinet meeting in North Korea. In this case it was the mention of the word “apartheid,” which he used in a private meeting — not saying the situation in Israel is apartheid, but saying it could one day become apartheid. So last night, Kerry performed the appropriate ritual of repentance, issuing a statement walking back his previous statement. 
 
 Like others before it, this controversy played out according to a familiar script: 1) Official says something uncomfortable but true about Israel; 2) The Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) condemn the statement, pretending to be shocked and appalled that anyone could ever criticize Israel; 3) Democratic and Republican senators rush to condemn the statement as well, with the Republican response a little more intense, and a little more stupid; 4) Official issues an apology, pledging not to criticize Israel so sharply in the future. 
 
 But let’s back up. Here’s what Kerry originally said, as reported by the Daily Beast: 
 
 “A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second-class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. “Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.” 
 
 The first thing to understand about this statement is that everything in it is completely true. You have, right now, Israel presiding over a population of Palestinians in the West Bank who lack political and human rights. They are under Israeli rule, but are not Israeli citizens. The future prospect of apartheid comes from what is sometimes called “the demographic problem,” which is that Palestinian birth rates are substantially higher than Jewish Israeli birth rates, and eventually the number of Palestinians will exceed the number of Israeli citizens, at which point you have a minority government ruling over a majority population without citizenship rights. The second thing to understand is that the eventual creation of two states in order to avoid that apartheid kind of situation is something that all responsible parties agree must happen. 
 
 It’s perfectly legitimate to argue that the current situation in Israel is not comparable to apartheid in South Africa. But when people bring up the specter of a future apartheid — as Kerry did — what they’re referring to is that the number of Palestinians is destined to outnumber the number of Jews in Israel. And this observation is a common part of the debate within Israel; Kerry using the term isn’t some far-out, crazy thing that nobody has done before. For instance, just four days ago, an Associated Press story described the situation this way: 
 
 Some of the Arabs under Israel’s control, in pre-1967 Israel, have citizenship, while those in the West Bank — whose land and entry points and water resources are controlled by Israel — do not. Even though the West Bank is formally not in Israel, the country builds settlements there and their residents vote in Israeli elections. The settlers can freely enter and leave the West Bank, while Palestinians cannot. The situation seems unsustainable, and is starting to draw comparisons to apartheid-era South Africa even in Israel itself. 
 
 Kerry made note of that in the statement that he issued last night, specifically reminding people that apartheid comparisons have been been made by top Israeli officials, including prime ministers. While I’ve seen a number of headlines this morning beginning with the words “Kerry Apologizes…”, the statement he released isn’t really an apology. It does say, “if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word,” but it also notes that “while Justice Minister Livni, former Prime Ministers Barak and Ohlmert have all invoked the specter of apartheid to underscore the dangers of a unitary state for the future, it is a word best left out of the debate here at home.” 
 
 That’s fair enough — it’s perfectly legitimate to say that the word gets people too riled up and ends up distracting from the real issues at hand. But this is a reminder of just how absurdly constrained our debate about Israel is. There’s no other country in the world for which any criticism of the policies of that country’s current government will immediately be met with charges of insufficient loyalty to that other country and the insistence that only supportive statements may be made. Nobody would accuse an American Secretary of State of being “anti-British” or “anti-Japanese” if he said a decision of one of those governments was problematic, but people are routinely called “anti-Israel” if anything but full-throated support for whatever the current Israeli government does should pass their lips. 
 
 You can see it in the statement from the ADL about Kerry’s remarks. While the condemnation is more restrained than it could be, it ends with, “Such references are not seen as expressions of friendship and support,” as though “expressions of friendship and support” are all that is permissible when it comes to Israel. After Kerry’s comments were reported, you not only had liberal Democrats like Barbara Boxer condemning it, Ted Cruz actually called for Kerry to resign because of his intemperate words. I can’t wait to hear the thoughts of Sarah Palin, who used to hang an Israeli flag in her office. 
 
 So it’s less important to consider what Israel’s future is and what kinds of changes must be made than to monitor whether all public officials are being sufficiently “pro-Israel” in their every utterance, public and private. What we have in American politics when it comes to Israel is a system of censorship that requires occasional controversies like this one to remind everyone what the rules are.
– John Kerry had to backpedal after he suggested that Israel was on the path to becoming an apartheid state, and that's a sad commentary about the level of candor we have on the topic of our Mideast ally, writes Paul Waldman at the Washington Post. Kerry didn't say Israel was an apartheid state, he said it could become one—and that happens to be true, writes Waldman. Given current birth rates, the number of Palestinians will eventually exceed the number of Israelis, meaning "you have a minority government ruling over a majority population without citizenship rights." Others have made this point before, but Kerry took immediate flak from pro-Israel groups and lawmakers, who seem more concerned with making sure "all public officials are being sufficiently 'pro-Israel' in their every utterance" than with making actual progress in negotiations, writes Waldman. It's tantamount to censorship. At Bloomberg, Jeffrey Goldberg writes that he has used the word "apartheid" himself in writing about Israel's potential future—laying the blame on the settlement movement—though he spells out the reasons why he no longer uses the volatile term. For starters, "deployment of the word doesn't start conversations, it ends them," he writes. Still, he's not going to criticize Kerry. "Israeli leaders must open their minds to the possibility that he has their long-term interests at heart." Click for Goldberg's full column. Or for Waldman's full column.