Earlier this week, New York Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that the United States should hold Israel accountable for barring Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from entering the country.
“Congress has a duty to make decisions about whether we give aid, how we protect allies such as Israel with qualitative military edge,” she said. “I don’t know why Netanyahu would want to deny members of Congress to come to Israel if they expect us to be that never-ending partner and friend. I think our obligation, as an ally and as a friend is to hold them accountable when they’re wrong…”
This certainly isn’t the first time the subject has come up on the campaign trail. The Jewish progressive organization IfNotNow has also been asking candidates about the occupation and whether or not they’re prepared to pressure Israel in order to end it. Nearly every Democrat who’s been questioned has indicated that they would be, but no one has provided much detail in how such pressure would be applied. The only two candidates who have proposed something resembling such a policy are Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Sanders has repeatedly stated that he’d be open to leveraging aid to Israel in order to help change their policies. “The United States government gives a whole lot of money to Israel and I think we can leverage that money to end some of the racism that we have recently seen in Israel,” he said most recently. Buttigieg said he wouldn’t allow U.S. aid to pay for a potential annexation of the West Bank. “If Prime Minister Netanyahu makes good on his threat to annex West Bank settlements, he should know that a President Buttigieg would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won’t help foot the bill,” he said at Indiana University in June.
Buttigieg’s plan is obviously more specific than Sanders’, but it remains unclear how either idea would actually be implemented. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received stern criticisms from many of the Democratic candidates before he blocked Tlaib and Omar from entering the country and the move has only heightened that rhetoric, but it still hasn’t generated much in the way of policy details.
For a legislative plan that actually aims to hold Israel accountable for any of its actions, one has to turn to the House of Representatives. Earlier this year, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) introduced HR 2407, a bill that would amend the Foreign Assistance Act to block any funding for the military detention of children in Israel, or any other country. The resolution currently has 21 cosponsors (including every member of “The Squad”), but it’s not backed by Hawaii congresswoman and presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard, who has positioned herself as a critic of United States’ foreign policy. Last month, The Intercept reported that McCollum sent a letter to Bernie Sanders in June, asking him to introduce a companion bill to HR 2407 in the Senate. Sanders never got back to her and his office never responded to the publication when it asked whether he supports the legislation. They also got no response from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) when they asked the same question.
Brad Parker, a senior adviser for policy and advocacy at Defense for Children International Palestine, told Mondoweiss that it remains quite difficult to push Democrats on this issue despite their disdain for Netanyahu’s government. “For decades, Palestinian rights advocates have pushed for justice and accountability yet systemic impunity and non-rights respecting policy toward Israel remain the norm,” he said. “A small group of lawmakers led by Rep. Betty McCollum have made some real headway, but over and over we see that when discussions turn toward actual justice and accountability, most lawmakers abandon their principles and maintain a specific exception for Israeli forces and officials to completely disregard international law perpetuating impunity and an occupation with no end in sight. Increasing rhetoric concerning conditions on U.S. military assistance to Israel is promising, but lawmakers generally are still hesitant to pursue any accountability measures by putting forward concrete policy vehicles or pursuing real action on their statements.”
Parker’s point was recently encapsulated at a Working Families Party event that Elizabeth Warren attended. During a Q & A session, IfNotNow co-founder and organizer Dani Moscovitch asked the Senator how she would pressure the Israeli government to end the occupation. Warren’s answer centered around pushing Israel and Palestine towards a two-state solution, but she never actually answered the question. After the event Moscovitch tweeted, “Tonight, I asked Elizabeth Warren how her plan to confront the crisis of Occupation will apply meaningful pressure on the Israeli government to move toward freedom and dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians. She said she’d ‘push, and push hard.’…It’s a start! But it’s not a plan. Elizabeth Warren you have so many incredible plans putting forth a bold vision for structural change in this country. Do you have a plan to pressure the Israeli government to end the military occupation of millions of Palestinians?”
Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow and Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies who has been working on these issues for years. She told me that “we’re in the midst of a period of amazingly strong shifts in the public and media discourse” when it comes to Israel and that these shifts could pave the way for actual policy.”
A number of statistics back up Bennis’ assertion. According to a University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll from last winter, 40 percent of Americans support imposing sanctions on Israel if the country continues to expand its settlements; 56 percent of Democrats support such measures. 38 percent of Americans believe that Israel has too much influence on United States foreign policy (55 percent for Democrats and 44 percent for people under the age of 35); and just 9 percent believe it should have more influence. There’s also reason to believe that the media coverage of Omar and Tlaib could lead to deeper statistical shifts. A J Street poll conducted before the House passed a resolution condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement found that almost 64 percent of Democratic voters had never even heard of BDS. That same poll shows that just 12 percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of Netanyahu’s government.
“We’re a long way from a profound US policy shift away from backing Israeli occupation and apartheid to instead support for human rights and equality for all — but the first step requires huge shifts in public opinion and the media, that’s already underway,” Bennis said. “And with a few members of Congress coming out directly in favor of BDS, others calling for Israel to be held accountable for its military juvenile detention system, or for its banning of Congress members by considering conditioning military aid on human rights compliance, a lot of new possibilities lie ahead.”
“We’re a long way from … support for human rights and equality for all.” – Phyllis Bennis
That’s because Zionists insist that “Equal Justice for All” equals “Injustice for Jews”. Which is a logical absurdity (except under certain deeply bigoted presumptions).
Not specifically on topic, but relevant and well worth reading:
https://nader.org/2019/08/22/they-dont-make-republicans-like-the-great-paul-findley-anymore/
“They Don’t Make Republicans Like the Great Paul Findley Anymore!” By Ralph Nader, August 22/19
“They don’t make Congressional Republicans like Congressman Paul Findley anymore. Not even close!
“In his 22 years in Congress (1960 – 1982), Paul Findley achieved a sterling record for fundamental positions, proposals and breakthroughs that revealed a great man, pure and simple. He never stopped learning and applying his knowledge to advance the right course of action, regardless of political party, ideology or pressure from various groups.
“Findley, a courteous, kindly, ex-World War II navy veteran passed away earlier this month at the age of 98 in his home town of Jacksonville, Illinois. The District he represented was the one Abraham Lincoln was elected from for his one term in the House of Representatives. Findley was a student of Lincoln’s life, and embraced Lincoln’s view that ‘a politician should be willing to reject outmoded ways of thinking that no longer fit the times.’
“Findley was a thoughtful, studious legislator with a superb sense of justice. He was an early civil rights champion. His opposition to runaway Presidential war-making was reflected in his leading support for the War Powers Act of 1973, though he wanted stronger curbs on the White House’s unilateral militarism.
“Having been a journalist and owner of a small-town newspaper – the Pike Press, before going to Congress in 1960, Findley used his writing skills to explain issues regarding agricultural policies, a foreign policy of diplomacy and peace, and nuclear arms controls. He was an outspoken early opponent of the Vietnam War and a critic of the Pentagon’s chronically wasteful spending. He was not a ‘press-release’ legislator, staking out his opinions and leaving it at that. He worked hard and smart to lead, to persuade, to get down to the minute details of coalition-building, lawmaking and legislating.
“Back in Jacksonville, after his Congressional career ended in 1982, Findley wrote books and articles and lectured around the country. He courageously defended Americans of the Islamic faith, after 9/11, from bias, exclusion and intimidation. He did his civic duties with local associations. He also started the Lucille Findley Educational Foundation, in memory of his beloved wife – an Army nurse – he met in war-time Guam. They had two children. He always found time to be helpful, to serve others both locally and nationally. He also played tennis daily into his mid-eighties.
“Findley possessed more than a streak of mid-west populism. Agricultural subsidies disproportionally going to a few wealthy landowners upset him greatly. He got through the House, after years of rejection, and over the objections of the Republican leadership, a $20,000 yearly limit of such subsidies per farm. The measure failed in the Senate.
“Once again, in 1973, he bucked his Party and introduced an impeachment resolution against Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew, who later resigned in disgrace over a bribery scandal.
“It was Findley’s interest in U.S. policies and operations in the Middle East, following his 1973 successful effort to obtain the release of a constituent from South Yemen that showed his moral courage, his belief in dialogue between adversaries and his commitment to the treatment of all people with dignity and respect. It also led to his defeat by Democrat Richard J. Durbin, now Illinois’s senior Senator.
“Findley learned that the dispossessed and occupied Palestinian people were being treated unfairly and deprived of their human rights and self-determination. He visited refugee camps in the region. He met with Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and he urged peaceful diplomatic resolution of that conflict. For this sensible, though rare outreach by a Congressional lawmaker, he earned the immense enmity of U.S. partisans of the Israeli government. How dare he speak out on behalf of Palestinians, even though, he continued to vote for foreign aid to a prosperous militarily advanced Israeli superpower?
“As the New York Times reported: “He became convinced that the influential pro-Israel lobby known as Aipac, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had a stranglehold on American politicians that prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state and prevented rational dealings with Arab leaders in general.”
“AIPAC activists, nationally and with their local affiliates, openly mobilized to defeat Findley in the 1980 election. They failed to do so. In 1982, they tried again, helping his Democratic opponent, Richard Durbin, to end Findley’s Congressional career by a margin of less than 1500 votes. AIPAC took credit for the win, raising over 80 percent of Durbin’s $750,000 in campaign funds from around the country. AIPAC’s executive director told a gathering in Texas: ‘We beat the odds and defeated Findley.’
“Three years later, in 1985, Findley wrote and published his bold book ‘They Dare to Speak Out,’ that described his efforts at peaceful advocacy for a two-state solution, which is now supported by many Israelis and Jewish Americans. In his book, he profiled other Americans who dared to speak out, and who endured intimidating slander and ostracism. Findley’s documentation of the suppression of their freedom of speech was an early precursor of what is going on now.
“It was acceptable for the early patriots to boycott British tea, for civil rights leaders to boycott certain businesses in the South, for opponents of South Africa’s apartheid to launch a worldwide economic boycott. But some state governments impose sanctions on their contractors if they merely speak out in favor of the call to boycott, divest and sanction Israel’s illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine and its millions of Palestinians. (Today, Palestine is only twenty two percent the size of the original Palestine).
“Findley wrote his autobiography in 2011. But it will take a fuller biography to place this modest lawmaker/public citizen, and wager of peace over unlawful wars and rampant militarism, in the conforming context of his times. His career contrasts with the present big business, Wall Street over Main Street, militaristic GOP and shows that the Republican Party didn’t always demand rigid unanimity.
“To his credit, Senator Durbin eulogized Paul Findley, as ‘An exceptional public servant and friend.’ He added that the man he defeated was ‘an elected official who showed exceptional courage in tackling the age old controversies in the Middle East.’
“Senator Durbin could not say this about a single Republican in either the Senate or the House today, nor of over 95 percent of the Democrats.”
Beware of politicians who propose not to allow Israel to use USA’s aid money (or military money) to do “this or that that we do not approve of”. Money is fungible. If they can use ANY money to do “this or that” (i.e., to arrest kids at 3 AM) then they are, in effect, using USA’s aid money to do it, even if they do not keep the books that way.
Those (possibly well-meaning) politicians should instead say, “We will not give ANY money to Israel if Israel does “this or that which we do not approve of”.
Of course, such “laws” have been passed before. The USA, as is well known, does not give any military aid to countries which use the weapons for offensive purposes. Unless it’s Israel. So we must also not allow an escape hatch such as a Presidential waiver in favor of special allies.
“Democrats have no problem criticizing Israel…”
Well, that is not the point.
They can “criticize Israel” all they want: all they are criticizing is the current policies. Not, repeat not, the principle of an invader state usurping the sovereignty over Palestine. Not the invasion, theft, apartheid and genocidal practices.
That is not going to make a dent in the framework based on an acceptance of the colonial right to invasion and genocide of the Zionist state.
Zionists are jake with that; that is precisely why they keep an army in both “parties” governing the US (the Adelson Party and the Saban Party, shorthand.) In fact, the figurehead of those supposed to “criticize Israel” is a diehard Zionist mountebank of the “Labour” variety and an inveterate imperialist warmonger who voted to support every war, including the AUMF: Sanders.
Every act of that “criticizing Israel” is reducible to one thing: criticizing the openly reactionary Likud government, which is explicitly supporting and helping the current Republican administration and its hated orange-hued head against the other, Democrat war criminals.
Calling attention to that “criticizing Israel” is a diversionary maneuver. It is intended to keep the readership away from questioning the very existence of the cancerous Zionist state.
Perro que ladra no muerde…Barking dog doesn’t bite.