The amazing news from the last day domestically is that Israel’s routine slaughter of Palestinians to put down an uprising is No Longer Routine in the U.S. mainstream. Yesterday there were demonstrations across the country, and Democratic politicians are heeding the American street.
The two leading pro-Israel Democratic senators are 1, Robert Menendez, who expressed sharp criticism of Israel and 2, Chuck Schumer, who has gone silent.
Robert Menendez, chair of Senate Foreign Relations, is a reflexively pro-Israel politician who put out a surprising statement yesterday.
“I am deeply troubled by Israeli military actions that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza as well as Israeli targeting of buildings housing international media outlets…. Israel has every right to self defense from terrorists committed to wipe her off the face of the map. But no matter how dangerous and real that threat may be, I have always believed that the strength of the U.S. Israel relationship flourishes when it is based on the shared values of democracy, freedom, pluralism and respect for human rights and the rule of law.”
Menendez repeatedly decried Hamas for terrorism and the use of human shields in the densely populated Strip. But he added:
I also believe there must be a full accounting of actions that have led to civilian deaths and the destruction of media outlets.
Accountability for Israel! The International Criminal Court is now investigating Israel for war crimes, including the 2014 assault on Gaza that killed more than 500 children.
Ron Kampeas who reported the Menendez statement calls it huge: he notes Menendez is “most pro Israel Dem,” a star of AIPAC, and one of four Dems to vote against the Iran deal, along with Schumer, Ben Cardin and Joe Manchin.
As for Chuck Schumer, he has had nothing to say about the onslaught. His twitter is empty of reference to the Gaza attacks, and Israel lobbyists are pressing for him to come forward. Both the New York Post and Newsweek say that Democrats are rallying around the Palestinians and leaving Schumer and Pelosi “isolated,” as Newsweek puts it. When Bernie Sanders wrote in the New York Times yesterday that “Palestinian Lives Matter,” he reflected the spirit of the Democratic Party; and Schumer knows it. The Black Lives Matter movement has come out for sanctions against Israel for its “deadly, racist attacks against the Palestinian people.”
Schumer has been highly responsive to the Jewish community from the beginning of his political education (when Norman Finkelstein remembers him with a transistor radio glued to his ear at school during the ’67 war). Schumer has said that his name means “Guardian” in Hebrew and that means guardian of Israel; and he has ended speeches with the cry, Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel live. He voted against the Iran deal in 2015 and said later he did so out of concern for Israel’s security, but as the politics of the conflict have changed, he has muted the cheerleader for the apartheid state, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Israel yesterday at 5 p.m.
Apartheid states aren’t democracies.
There has been wide speculation that AOC is planning to primary Schumer in 2022; and Schumer is obviously concerned about the progressive street that has overwhelmed several establishment Democrats of his generation, notably Eliot Engel, the darling of the rightwing Israel lobby, defeated by insurgent Jamaal Bowman in 2020. Today Bowman is calling out pro Israel congressperson Ritchie Torres over the humanitarian disaster Israel is causing. “This is about Palestinians deserving peace, land, and self-determination, like everyone else.”
It was only 11 years ago Schumer called for Israel to “strangle” Palestinians in Gaza economically.
The American street was fairly passive in 2014 the last time Israel answered the Palestinian thirst for freedom by killing 2200 in Gaza, including 526 under 18 and 247 women between 18 and 59. But now the American street is enraged. Even Paris Hilton is decrying the “genocide.”
Even American Jews are in freefall, and the American-Israel divorce is proceeding apace. Here is a Jewish Currents piece commemorating the Nakba and referring to genocide. “After a full and true accounting of all that has been and is being taken from us, the Nakba will demand its justice: End the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and give it all back.” An Israeli businessperson on twitter writes that he feels safe in Tel Aviv, but “What terrifies me, however, and keeps me up at night, is the thing that this [article] represents.”
David Menschel, American documentarian, says no thank you to the special relationship:
I’ve been told since birth that the people of Israel & I have some special relationship. It’s not so. They are just murderous colonists in a far off land, grotesquely using our historic narrative of victimization to justify an apartheid. I feel nothing for those people.
h/t Adam Horowitz, Dave Reed, Michael Arria, Ofer Neiman and James North.
What,s a zionist to do.Anti semites are popping up all over the place.Dont these Jew haters know that God “Himself” gave the middle east to the Jewish People , aka “the chosen ones”.
Looks as if that yarn no longer passes the smell test.
It,s time to close down this criminal zionist operation and free those who have been the victims of this vile and evil child of the devil.
Way past time.
Today on CNN Fareed Zacharia interviewed Rashid Khalidi and Martin Indyk and it was unbelievably frank and civilised , given the absense of the usual suspects-ie Naftali (I love to kill Arabs) Bennett and Mark (let me be clear) Regev an australian who invaded Palestine after deserting the nation that educated him , who wallow in the same old tedious moans and groans about KHAMAS who has threathened to wipe Israel off the map which is not true.I believe Hamas threathened to wipe the Zionist regime from the pages of time.I personally wish them well in that endeavour.
These zionist apologists are soon to see their jobs get a whole lot harder as audiences shut them down without having to worry about th usual howls of antisemitism.
Students will be able to stand up and tell the facts about the Borderless and criminal apartheid state without constant interuptions from the folks paid to make a nuisance of themselves.
Attention President Biden, et al!!
“The times, they are a’changin'”
Ever faster, the ‘Special Relationship” between “Israel” and the American people is deteriorating.
No surprise!!
The logjam which has so long prevented proper discussion of these maters is evidently losing a few logs. Are they enough?
Menendez is “deeply troubled”, meaning he wants to be paid more. Schumer, on the other hand, doesn’t do it only for money but also racist madness.
Menendez harshly criticizing Israel? Schumer no longer the Shomer? Even Ossoff, one of the newest of the lobby’s agents in Congress, leading a group of 25 Democratic senators DEMANDING that Israel stop the bombing?
This is all tangible evidence that things are, indeed, changing in Congress. When representatives like these gentlemen, whose pro-Israel bona fides have been unquestioned until this, begin to break away from the lobby, can all the others – the majority of Reps that would love to stick it to the lobby if they had the political opportunity – be far behind?