As the presidential race comes to its last ten days, and Florida is up for grabs, Biden’s surrogates are doing their utmost to champion Biden’s pro-Israel bona fides.
On an American Jewish Committee conference call yesterday, Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America dismissed the critics of Israel inside the Democratic Party as a fringe and said there had never been a candidate as pro-Israel as Biden.
On the issue of Israel, we have never had a presidential candidate with a longer stronger record than Joe Biden. Since he was elected to the Senate in 1972, Joe Biden has never waivered in his commitment to Israel’s security… He and President Obama finalized the largest military aid package in our history– ten year, $38 billion in military assistance, life-saving military assistance.
And that commitment is reflected in the Democratic Party platform… No conditioning, no cutting of aid.
Surveys show most Democrats do support conditioning aid to Israel because of its illegal settlements and human rights violations, but Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have been emphatically against that idea.
Biden is even trying to position himself to Trump’s right on Israel. He is fighting the effort by Republicans to paint him as part of the “most hostile administration ever to Israel,” as Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition said yesterday on the AJC call.
Yesterday Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democratic leader from South Florida who has been a ceaseless Israel backer, said that Trump has compromised Israel’s security.
Despite his rhetoric, Trump’s actions have undermined the U.S-Israel relationship… It’s time for a President @JoeBiden, who will stop compromising Israel’s security and is committed to fighting anti-Semitism.
Wasserman Schultz referred to an op-ed in the Miami Herald titled, “The Jewish state is less secure because Trump has not been Israel’s friend,” written by Dan Shapiro, Obama’s former ambassador who now works for an Israeli thinktank, and Obama Defense aide Eric Lynn.
Trump’s policies frequently jeopardized Israel’s security, undermined Israel’s Jewish and democratic future, and turned Israel into a domestic political football. While some credit Trump with popular decisions like moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, a closer analysis shows that he has endangered the Jewish state in many ways…
Trump emboldened Iran through failed and reckless policies, including his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. Under the deal, Iran was kept at least one year away from a nuclear weapon. With the deal in tatters, that is now down to less than six months. Iran has increased its malign activities including recent cyberattacks on Israel, strikes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and harassing U.S. troops in Iraq.
Lynn and Shapiro also attack Trump for promising to give the United Arab Emirates American fighter planes without consulting Israeli officials, thereby undercutting Israel’s advantage over its neighbors.
And as Soifer did on the AJC call yesterday, Lynn and Shapiro adopt a hawkish position, assailing Trump for his efforts to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, as a blow to Israel, leaving it with “no one to rely on.”
In 2018, Trump announced via tweet his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Israelis were shocked by this sudden reversal, even as they conducted an ongoing campaign against Iranian forces in Syria. The pullout (only partially completed) relieved pressure on Iran, the Assad regime and Hezbollah, while ceding even more influence in Syria to Russia. Major Gen. Amiram Levin, former commander of Israeli Northern Command, said, “As long as Trump is in power, Israel has no one to rely on.”
Like many other liberal Zionist Israel lobbyists, Shapiro and Lynn lament that Trump has made a political football of Israel in the United States.
Trump has worked to divide Americans over Israel. He calls the 70 percent of Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats “disloyal,” cynically cracking the broad, bipartisan foundation of American support for Israel…. Biden… will end the cynical politicization of Israel.
They also say that by undermining the so-called two-state solution, and encouraging annexation, Trump is forcing Israel “to choose between its Jewishness and democracy.”
Shapiro and Lynn are ignoring the many progressives in the Democratic Party that want Israel to choose between Jewishness and democracy and that regard the two-state solution as a cruel delusion.
As Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition said yesterday on the AJC call, Trump is more willing to talk Middle East policy in his speeches because the Democratic Party is split on the question. Many Democrats see Israel as a “pariah nation,” he said.
Biden is not giving those voices any oxygen in this campaign. But if he wins they will be part of his coalition, and eager to take on the Shapiro/Soifer wing of the party in months and years to come.
Once again, probably as demanded by his pay master, Zionist zealot Sheldon Adelson, Trump prostrates himself before “Israel”:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/21/state-department-weighs-labeling-several-prominent-human-rights-groups-anti-semitic-430882
FOREIGN POLICY
By NAHAL TOOSI 10/21/2020
EXCERPT:
“U.S. weighs labeling leading human rights groups ‘anti-Semitic’”
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing for the declaration, according to a congressional aide with contacts inside the State Department.
“Amnesty International USA’s interim executive director said any allegations of anti-Semitism were ‘baseless.’
“The declaration is expected to take the form of a report from the office of Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. The report would mention organizations including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It would declare that it is U.S. policy not to support such groups, including financially, and urge other governments to cease their support.
“The report would cite such groups’ alleged or perceived support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has targeted Israel over its construction of settlements on land Palestinians claim for a future state.”
|| … They also say that by undermining the so-called two-state solution, and encouraging annexation, Trump … ||
Stupid as he is, Trump is a late-comer to the “undermining the 2SS” game. He shouldn’t be blamed for the fact that the intransigence and seemingly-insatiable greed of Zionists has been undermining the 2SS for decades.
|| … Trump is forcing Israel “to choose between its Jewishness and democracy.” … ||
It’s no surprise that Zionists are whining (again): Only a truly terrible and horrible person would be so nasty and mean as to offer to a supremacist state the option to choose between supremacism or democracy. :-(