Israeli leaders believe that Donald Trump has set the new normal for US-Israel relations: total acceptance of Israeli expansion. And if Joe Biden is elected president today, Israelis will expect compliance from him; and Biden will likely do little to take Netanyahu on. That’s the view of Israel lobbyists as the pageant of democracy unfolds in the U.S.
Here are some of those opinions.
David Halperin, executive director of the centrist Israel Policy Forum, says in a podcast that even though a Biden administration would look more “like what we are used to” in U.S. policy, Biden won’t be able to just hit reset. Israel will resist.
We can’t assume that this is just going back to the relationship as normal. The significant steps that Trump has moved, not just on a range of issues in Israel’s favor but in the favor of Israel’s most rightwing impulses on a host of issues– mean that even reverting back to some sense of normalcy by a Biden administration would be seen [by Israel] as substantial shifts in US policy and that is likely to be more controversial in a sense… viewed in the lens of actually going against the right and what many conservative voices view as the new pro-Israel baseline that Trump has set. How that is going to look going forward is going to be an issue in a Biden administration.
The Israeli right is “concerned across the board for Biden,” Halperin said, because they fear that he will be influenced by “more progressive members of the Democratic Party” who want to condition aid to Israel over its conduct and reenter the Iran deal.
Halperin said what everyone in the Israel lobby says, it is impossible to paint Joe Biden as antagonistic to the state of Israel. Just look at how accepting he was back in 2010, Halperin notes, when Israel announced new Jerusalem settlements as he was visiting the country. A giant insult– Biden basically shrugged off. And it won’t be so easy for Biden to get right back into the Iran deal, even if he says he will.
Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum said on the same podcast that Biden may actually be a better friend to Israel than Trump because he will not threaten Israel’s bipartisan support in the U.S. Whereas if Trump gets a second term, “we will almost certainly see a clear US greenlight for some specific manner of annexation” of the West Bank, and the result will be cries for conditioning aid to Israel from the Democratic Party.
So far only a couple of Congresspeople have supported the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign targeting Israel over its conduct. That will change, Koplow said. “I don’t assume that BDS will remain so fringe in the halls of Congress if Israel goes ahead with annexation at the Trump administration’s urging.”
Haaretz says the main difference between Biden and Trump on Israel policy is Biden is “not connected” to Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s biggest donor, who does not believe Palestinians exist and who sought the destruction of the Iran deal. Trump’s pro-Netanyahu actions have surely been transactional, in exchange for Adelson’s tens of millions of dollars, even if the U.S. media doesn’t like to say so.
J Street says that Trump is holding a fire sale on pro-Israel actions to please Sheldon Adelson
As the Trump administration fears American voters will soon send it packing, it is scrambling to give its right-wing friends as many gifts as possible on the way out. Reports indicate the agreement may have resulted in part from pressure by Sheldon Adelson — the pro-settlements mega-donor who is a major benefactor of Ariel University, and who has pumped tens of millions of dollars into the president’s struggling campaign.
David Makovsky of WINEP echoes the point, that Netanyahu is grabbing all he can get now, a host of settlement-building deep in the West Bank, consistent with the Trump peace plan that accepts Israeli annexation.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s uncertainty about who will win the U.S. presidential election suggests that the recent [settlement] unit approvals are an effort to take more provocative actions in 2020, since a potential Joe Biden administration would be less supportive of such moves in 2021….But Netanyahu seemingly views the plan as a ceiling for Palestinian demands rather than a floor…
How outspoken will the Democratic Party be about Israeli expansion? All three Democratic candidates for House Foreign Affairs committee chairmanship (replacing pro-Israel warhorse Eliot Engel) told J Street they oppose the Trump move to allow scientific research funds to be spent in the occupied territories. Joaquin Castro was emphatic on this score: the settlements “violate international law.”
Even Brad Sherman, a strong Israel supporter, told J Street, “The Trump administration’s action [allowing such research] is transparently political.”
It’s one thing for those Dems to criticize, another to sanction. Dems are wary of doing so. Though surveys show that a majority of American voters and nearly 3/4 of Democratic ones support conditioning aid to Israel over its conduct, the Israel lobby is plainly seeking to contain the progressive base of the Democratic Party.
J Street’s statement attacking Trump’s fire sale for Adelson included an attack on the left. J Street equated the left with Trump, saying that both Trump and the BDS campaign insist “that there is no difference between the State of Israel and the territory it occupies beyond the Green Line.”
Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel also attacks the left base of the party, in a piece in the Times of Israel touting Biden’s “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.” Don’t worry about reports the Democratic Party is moving in an “anti-Israel direction,” Mellman says.
Joe Biden defeated the anti-Israel forces in his party to win its nomination—and then Biden refused to give in to those who wanted a less pro-Israel party platform, insisting instead that the document reflect his longstanding commitment to the Jewish state.
Mellman assures us that Biden will lie down when Israel tests him. He points out that Joe Biden helped convince President Obama to issue his only veto at the U.N. Security Council in 2011 to defeat a resolution critical of Israeli settlements, and later Biden tried to stop Obama from allowing an anti-settlements resolution to go through in December 2016. That resolution went through.
And remember, Trump took a very similar position to Biden then, trying to thwart the Obama administration’s plan, as president-elect.
Aaron David Miller says Biden is no Obama, but Israel better make nice.
Anyone believing Biden- Bibi will be a honeymoon should lay down wait quietly until feeling passes. But neither shld anyone believe Trump propaganda that Biden is an enemy of Israel. Israel is in Biden’s DNA. He’s a Clinton not an Obama. Much will depend on Bibi as it shld.
Chemi Shalev at Haaretz says that the real division here is not between Netanyahu and Biden but between the two Jewish communities thousands of miles apart. Israeli Jews have a “blind worship” of Trump, yet another poll shows. American Jews dislike Trump by a similar margin.
According to the poll, 68 percent believe Trump would be “better for Israel,” and only 12 percent think Biden would. In a previous poll, Trump trounced Biden with a whopping 40 percent majority, 70 to 30, and an even more emphatic 54 percent majority among Israeli Jews, 77 to 23.
Israeli Jewish public opinion is right wing populist with great tolerance for racism, Shalev says, a political culture at great odds with that of American Jews.
David Halperin at the Israel Policy Forum has the same concern– “unfortunately likely more distancing” between Israeli and US Jews.
As for Biden, don’t worry about him. As Shira Efron of an Israeli security thinktank told the Israel Policy Forum podcast, “He has proven his support for Israel over decades and decades. I really don’t see any reason for issues with this administration.”
Biden may demand Israel stop taking territory by force, to get the negotiation game going, but is highly unlikely to ever compromise his Presidency and demand any significant portion of the settler population to be withdrawn for two states to work. Essentially acknowledging the one state concept. Trump had figured out, by his first meeting with Netanyahu as President, what so may others have, one state is the feasible path forward. Once Palestinians have a leader who understands America and how to engage it politically, including how to separate Israel’s “security” from its “behavior”, a majority of Americans will become allies.
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https://www.arabnews.com/node/1757596
“Documenting the abuse of Palestinian Children”
Arab News, Nov. 3/20 by Chris Doyle**
EXCERPT:
“Who thinks children should be tortured or prosecuted systematically in a military court? Who believes children should be shoved into crowded jail cells during the coronavirus pandemic and denied family visits? Me neither. Yet Israel, that supposed solitary beacon of democracy in the Middle East, does exactly that to Palestinian children, and more.
“Much of this has been reported on by the UN and human rights groups for some time, but it is brought into sharp focus following a report from Save the Children (SCF), published last week, titled:
‘The impact of the Israeli military detention system on Palestinian children.’ It is a searing indictment of the Israeli authorities, and a worthy addition to the voluminous but damning high-quality research into this issue.
“SCF surveyed more than 470 Palestinian children across the West Bank. They were 12-21 years old at the time, and had all been arrested or detained as children, between the ages of 10 and 17 years.
“’A majority reported they had endured a distressing or violent arrest or detention, in most cases at night; a coercive interrogation environment; physical and emotional abuse in detention; and a denial of essential services including an adequate education — all of which constitute a breach of their rights enshrined in international law,’ SCF said.
“The report somewhat surprisingly backs off when using the term coercive interrogation. It is torture, plain and simple. SCF is not the first to make this charge, but Palestinians wonder why American and European ministers, among others, say nothing?
“The report states that the occupation has ‘impacted every aspect of their lives, from their safety and development to their psychosocial wellbeing and mental health.’ Even going to school, past settlements and military checkpoints, can be traumatic. Over 10,000 Palestinian children have gone through Israeli detention in the last 20 years.
“The impact is huge, with the children suffering from “anxiety, depression, behavioral changes, eating and sleeping disorders, and physical symptoms including chest pains, exhaustion, and numbness,” SCF said. (cont’d)
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“The report somewhat surprisingly backs off when using the term coercive interrogation. It is torture, plain and simple. SCF is not the first to make this charge, but Palestinians wonder why American and European ministers, among others, say nothing?
“The report states that the occupation has ‘impacted every aspect of their lives, from their safety and development to their psychosocial wellbeing and mental health.’ Even going to school, past settlements and military checkpoints, can be traumatic. Over 10,000 Palestinian children have gone through Israeli detention in the last 20 years.
“The impact is huge, with the children suffering from ‘anxiety, depression, behavioral changes, eating and sleeping disorders, and physical symptoms including chest pains, exhaustion, and numbness,’ SCF said.
“According to international law, detaining children should be an option of last resort. What is seen consistently with the Israeli occupation is that this is systematic, used not just as a means of controlling a subject population, but dominating and intimidating it.”
**Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU). He has worked with the council since 1993 after graduating with a first class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. He has organized and accompanied numerous British parliamentary delegations to Arab countries.
https://israelpalestinenews.org/israeli-draft-refuser-hallel-rabin-jailed-in-israels-military-prison-no-6/?utm_source=If+Americans+Knew+Subscribers&utm_campaign=c97c473d99-IAK_Daily_Updates&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_492062bf3f-c97c473d99-79054121
“Israeli draft refuser, Hallel Rabin, jailed in Israel’s Military Prison No. 6″Israel-Palestine News, Nov. 3/20
“Israeli conscientious objector, Hallel Rabin, is serving a prison term for refusing to serve in the IDF based on her reasons of conscience and pacifism.” By Stephen D. Shenfield
“Hallel Rabin, 19, comes from Harduf in the Lower Galilee – an innovative vegetarian community inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy. About a quarter of the 600 inhabitants are people with special needs who live in the kibbutz’ four rehabilitative homes.
“Since October 21, Hallel has been serving a 25-day sentence in Israel’s Military Prison No. 6 for refusing conscription into the IDF. This is her third spell of incarceration. The official committee that considered her application for conscientious objector status voted 3—2 to reject the application because her motives amount to political opposition rather than absolute pacifism.
“‘I was raised,’ says Hallel, ‘on the values of freedom, compassion, and love. Fighting to keep another nation enslaved contradicts these values. For too long, the good people of Israel have agreed to participate in the occupation’s atrocities. While I know my refusal is small and personal, I wish to be the change I want to see in the world and to show that another way is possible. Little people make big changes. It is time to shout: There is no such thing as good repression, no such thing as justifiable racism, and no more room for the Israeli occupation.’
“Mesarvot (a group that helps draft refusers) and Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit) held a protest vigil supporting Hallel Rabin on Saturday, October 31 – on the hillside facing Prison No. 6, from where demonstrators are visible and audible to prisoners and guards.”
The Israeli oligarchs plan their next round of crimes. Democracy, what democracy?