One of Joe Biden’s political achievements this year is that he has taken what seemed to be a big issue for Trump– Israel — out of the campaign. The Israel lobby trusts Biden.
Biden has quietly sold himself as a hawk who will end the politicization of Israel. He promises to reestablish the consensus on Israel support inside the Beltway and reassert the use of American force in the Middle East. Trump reminds audiences that Biden backed the Iraq war, and he promises to pull the U.S. out of the Middle East–and make Israel a domestic political issue.
On Friday the president tried to elicit a speaker-phone endorsement from Benjamin Netanyahu when he announced the Sudan deal.
Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi? Sleepy Joe. I think — do think he would had made this deal? Somehow, I don’t think so.
Netanyahu wouldn’t play ball:
Well, Mr. President, one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America. And we appreciate what you’ve done enormously.
Netanyahu knows he can count on Biden, who has said, “Send a message to Bibi, I love him.”
As for all those Israel critics in the Democratic Party, Biden has convinced the lobby he’s not with them. Biden chose a running mate in Kamala Harris who “60 Minutes” says has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, but who threw the progressives under the bus on Palestine without a qualm. Harris has embraced the right-wing Israel lobby group AIPAC and Netanyahu too and when the New York Times asked her about Israel’s human rights record, she got a puzzled look and said, “What… are you referring to?”
Biden and Harris have actually run against their own Democratic base on foreign policy issues. By doing so, they have won the support of Haim Saban and the Democratic Majority for Israel, an AIPAC offshoot inside the Democratic Party. Indeed, Biden has reunified the lobby: J Street and DMFI and neoconservative Never Trumpers are working happily together for the former vice president.
This is remarkable because the Obama years were characterized by fierce opposition from the Israel lobby: Bill Kristol started the Emergency Committee for Israel to stop what he saw as Obama’s withdrawal from the Middle East and his pressure on Israel. But this time round, the ECI is disbanded and Kristol campaigns for Biden and questions Trump’s commitment to using force in the Middle East.
Biden’s pro-Israel surrogates have a unified message: Biden will be Israel’s friend forever, he won’t make Israel a “political football” in the American discourse, and he will take on the Russians in Syria.
Barack Obama picked up the theme of Biden as more hawkish in a campaign appearance in Florida on Saturday:
When Russia puts bounties on the heads of our brave soldiers in Afghanistan, the commander in chief can’t be MIA. He can’t be somebody who doesn’t read the briefings.
Meanwhile, Trump has run against Biden by characterizing him as a hawk. In New Hampshire yesterday:
For the last half century sleepy Joe Biden has been outsourcing your jobs, opening your borders, and sacrificing American blood and treasure in the endless, horrible, ridiculous foreign wars. Afghanistan, 19 years, 19 years. He voted for the war in Iraq.
Bernie Sanders of course also spoke about endless wars and Biden’s Iraq war vote; and the Israel lobby fought him fiercely.
Trump is said to be the only president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war overseas (per Bruno Macaes of Flint Global speaking on the BBC). Trump spoke about bringing the troops home and combating the “military industrial complex” in Lumberton, NC Saturday:
Afghanistan, we’re coming home. They’re tired of fighting. Everybody’s tired. 19 years in Afghanistan, we served as policeman… We could win that thing so easy, but we’re like policemen. And it’s enough. 19 years. Will you say 19 years is enough? We bring them home… We’re bringing our troops back home. I’m taking a lot of heat. I’m taking a lot of heat from the military industrial complex. Did you ever hear of that? The military industrial complex doesn’t like that I’m bringing them back home, but if it’s okay, we’re bringing them back home.
We’re in so many countries, we’re in countries that you’ve never heard of and they don’t even appreciate it, on top of it.
Neoconservatives hate that sort of thinking. Bill Kristol, a leader of the Never Trumpers, laid out his doubt about Trump’s willingness to use aggression years ago. He said that Trump and Obama both want the U.S. to “retreat” from its dominance of world events.
Trump’s ‘America First’ policy is nationalist and somewhat isolationist, while Obama’s foreign policy was that America should do less unilaterally, become more internationalist and not throw its weight around. Both agree that America should retreat, not get involved in conflict in the Middle East, and both view nation-building as too difficult. Trump really hasn’t done much to reverse what I regard as Obama’s terribly failed policies, in particular in Syria…However, my fear of America under Trump – which is compounded by the preceding eight years under Obama – is that the international world order is more fragile than people think. There has been a further erosion of US power in the international order under Trump.
Bill Kristol doesn’t trust Trump on Israel.
Trump is friendly to Israel – and is better disposed to it than his predecessor – but he also doesn’t have a deep attachment to the state…
Biden does seem to have a deep attachment to Israel, and his commitment to depoliticizing the issue here and to using U.S. power are what got rightwing Israel lobbyist Abe Foxman to endorse Biden in the Times of Israel last month.
A stable, credible, influential, revered — and sometimes feared — America has been a force multiplier for world Jewry for decades, often in ways that are most clearly visible to those of us working behind the scenes on behalf of global Jewish causes…
Here, too, there is no doubt in my mind that Trump’s failings of character and America’s dismal global standing have hurt Jewish interests.
Foxman conceded that Trump has done a lot for Israel. He trashed the Iran deal, moved the embassy, defunded Palestinians, and brokered normalization deals with Arab neighbors. But Foxman says the price is too high: “these decisions have come at the cost of Trump’s frontal assault on bipartisan support for Israel, and some have been clothed in deeply offensive stereotypes about Jews and their ties to the Jewish state.”
Trump has attacked a core principle of the lobby, that it works quietly behind the scenes rather than arguing the issue publicly. Foxman laments that Trump “weaponized” the issue.
Our community has an enormous stake in bipartisanship. It is the only way to combat anti-Semitism and bigotry. It is how we built a strong US-Israel alliance… [L]eaders of conscience have cultivated and sustained the broadest possible base of support for this agenda.
Trump has damaged that necessary consensus, and we cannot permit Jews and Israel to be weaponized for anyone’s narrow political interests.
Foxman assured hardline supporters of Israel that “I am confident [Biden] and Kamala Harris will not back down from confronting Israel’s enemies and detractors, even if they emerge within their own party.”
Recent polls show that Jews overwhelmingly support Biden (by about three to one). Trump’s empowering of antisemites in the U.S. is obviously a factor in that support.
But Israel is way down the list of concerns. “The top two ranked issues are the pandemic and health care, at 26% and 17% respectively, with foreign policy ranked last among six issues, at 5%,” an American Jewish Committee poll found.
In a J Street poll, only 6 percent of Florida voters listed Israel among their top priorities. “[T]he notion that American Jews make their voting decisions based on Israel – and that they support right-leaning Middle East policies – is proving to be a total myth,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said. “No matter how many times he claims to be the ‘most pro-Israel president’ ever, Trump is facing a tidal wave of fierce opposition from American Jews in Florida, in Pennsylvania and across the country.”
It is certainly a political achievement of Biden’s that he has so neutralized the Israel issue in this election. But if he gets into office, how long will that last? The base of the party will demand change.
This is, admittedly, hopeful speculative fluff, but Harris seems like she could be educable on Israel. An interesting piece on her appeared in the NYT Magazine this weekend:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/magazine/kamala-harris-crime-prison.html
She’s a prosecutor but she understands the marginalization of groups when she sees it. She just hasn’t looked at Israel yet.
Just try saying the word, Phil, ‘Covid 19’.
Covid 19. Okay?
Now let’s try another, ‘worldwide pandemic’.
Great.
Baby steps.
Neither Biden or Trump will be able to turn America until Israel’s trump card, armed struggle, is set side for civil rights. That’s how to empower BDS.
Trump positioned himself to influence Israeli polices by articulating America’s vital interests and by delivering for the Israeli people. So sad Abbas couldn’t see that. Trump probably understands one state leads to a deal with Iran.
If Biden wins, Mondoweiss and activists will have to up their game. He should have to own his Syria, Libya, Ukraine machinations.
Anyone who imagines a) that Biden will actually reign for – at best – more than a few months is living in an imaginary world; b) that Harris will see “the light” and become humane, develop a conscience, a morality, ethics is equally dwelling under a delusion. Harris has herself – when she was “running” (back where I originated, would be politicos “stand” for election, a much more appropriate verb especially in light of this year’s set up) for candidacy for Prez (she was NOT popular) – told the story of how, as a child she raised money for Israel…Truth or fantasy, she is, as remarked below, married to a zionist and is herself one. She also has absolutely no trouble with imprisoning people (and mainly of a similar skin hue but of much lower socio-economic class standing) for years for essentially non-violent offenses (that 1994 Crime Bill); nor with letting cops get away with whatever they do. How likely is it that she will – all of sudden – see the Palestinians as fellow human beings who have been murdered, ethnically cleansed, had their lives and homes destroyed in order for the so-called state of Israel and its zionist colonial settler population can grab everything? Highly Unlikely. She – like Biden – will continue along the trajectory of Mammon and Moloch worship in ways that benefit themselves. Grotesque.
“The base of the party will demand change.”
Let’s be our age, please. Whatever the “base” of the party demands has never been of any consequence, will never be, and your duty as a journalist, again, doesn’t stop at mentioning the demand — you are expected to explain what it’s worth, where it’s likely to lead, and why. At least, that’s what you guys used to do.