At its conference, J Street sought to triangulate support for the “Jewish state” and the progressive left as political bedfellows. But there is an inherent contradiction there, and simply hoping for the two-state solution to arrive some day — after Israel has rejected a Palestinian state for its entire existence — may get J Street access in the Democratic Party but won’t preserve its alliances on the left.
Here is what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.
Students at Duke University in North Carolina repeatedly interrupted an event last Wednesday featuring Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister who was subject to an arrest warrant issued by the UK and criminal complaints in two more European countries for her alleged role in war crimes committed during the 2008-09 Cast Lead invasion of Gaza.
The last decade in Israeli politics was all Netanyahu, all the time. The Israeli left twisted itself into a pretzel trying to get rid of Netanyahu and forgot about trying to end apartheid. Now it looks like the great hate monger is gone and the issues that matter may matter again.
The essential dynamic at the core of the Israel lobby’s activities is American Jews’ belief that they are lesser than Israelis because they have easy lives and their kids don’t serve in the army in a tough neighborhood. So they must buy US political support for Israel no matter what it does. That guilt trip is finally coming to an end.
Liberal Zionist hero Tzipi Livni says Netanyahu is paving the way to the “nightmare of Zionism” — a greater Israel with a Palestinian majority, when the true “vision” of Zionism is a Jewish majority, which can only be attained by “separation… separation… separation.” Her words echo George Wallace calling for segregation forever in 1963, but it didn’t last.
In a disingenuous ‘NYT’ column Roger Cohen presents a fawning interview of Tzipi Livni and blames the Palestinian Authority for the Spring 2014 collapse of peace negotiations. The article is a recitation of standard Israeli talking points and fails to include Palestinian or American viewpoints which squarely put the failure of negotiations on continued Israeli settlement construction.
Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Justice Minister. Five years ago she was afraid to travel because…