Tlaib 1, Biden 0

The only good news today as the bombardment of Gaza continues is that Palestinian rights have moved to the top of the list for the American progressive movement at last, and that courageous Democratic Congresswomen from the midwest have risen to the occasion, challenging their president to do more.

This moment is crystallized by the amazing photographs from Rashida Tlaib’s encounter with President Biden on a tarmac in Detroit yesterday where by all accounts she forcefully told Biden that Israel is committing war crimes and massive human rights violations in Gaza, and the White House must do more to stop the apartheid government there from slaughtering Palestinians. Tlaib was accompanied by Debbie Dingell, who later offered support to her view.

Tlaib is already having an effect. Biden told Netanyahu today that “he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” the White House says. Biden is “still not demanding an immediate ceasefire but it’s the most forceful Biden has been so far,” Raf Sanchez of NBC reports. “White House is under serious pressure from Democrats + Europeans, Arab states.”

Benjamin Netanyahu made his own defiant statement this afternoon. Israel is not under a “stopwatch,” he said, and will conclude its operations when it has achieved its goals.

On MSNBC today, Martin Fletcher reports that Israel is now under “severe pressure” from the U.S. to end its attacks.

Tlaib didn’t mince words yesterday, according to the Detroit Free Press. An aide said that she

“conveyed… the same messages she has shared on the House floor and publicly. … The U.S. cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians.”

“Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with U.S.-supplied weapons. Congresswoman Tlaib reiterated that the status quo is enabling more killing, that the current U.S. approach of unconditional support for the Israeli government is not working, and that the White House must do far more to protect Palestinian lives, dignity and human rights.”

The New York Times spins the encounter as Tlaib being an outlier, but Biden was plainly impressed:

Ms. Tlaib echoed a scathing speech she delivered last week on the House floor, telling the president that he must do more to protect Palestinian lives and human rights, said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe her remarks…

Mr. Biden shook Ms. Tlaib’s hand after the conversation, and later praised the congresswoman during his public remarks at the factory in Dearborn.

Biden at the Ford plant after the encounter, per NPR:

“I admire your intellect, I admire your passion and I admire your concern for so many other people,” Biden said.

“You’re a fighter and God thank you for being a fighter,” he said, promising to do everything he could to ensure that Tlaib’s family in the West Bank remained safe.

Biden is plainly on the defensive here. Later, asked by a reporter if he would answer “a quick question about Israel,” as he sat at the wheel of an electric truck at a Ford plant, Biden said, “Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it.”

And by the way, there were demonstrations in the Detroit area in support of Palestinians during Biden’s visit.

The progressive wing of the party has come to the fore on this question, because it is accurately describing what is going on in Israel and Gaza and echoing the views of ordinary Democrats. Here is Tlaib pressuring Biden on the 17th:

@POTUS + @SecBlinken: If you support a cease-fire, then get out of the way of the U.N. Security Council and join other countries in demanding it. Apartheid-in-chief Netanyahu will not listen to anyone asking nicely. He commits war crimes and openly violates international law.

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush is also keeping up the pressure on the White House.

In a matter of hours, the IDF killed four generations of one Palestinian family in Gaza — the oldest was 90, the youngest was 6 months. The outright massacre in Palestine is a human right catastrophe, one that we must immediately stop funding. @POTUS, the world is watching.

Politico says the entire party is shifting, with Sen. Tim Kaine saying he can’t understand why the President just can’t call for a ceasefire when children are being killed; and Sen. Chris Murphy saying a ceasefire call is a “no-brainer.”

Biden is obviously struggling to keep the Israel lobby happy. Politico also reports that the White House feels the pressure from the left but was willing to take the hit by shutting down the ceasefire demands at the United Nations. Biden chose private diplomacy– urging Israeli officials to show restraint — as a way of preventing a ground invasion of Gaza. So the White House tried to have its cake and eat it: stay on Israel’s side, but keep the slaughter down. Reporter Nahal Toosi:

The U.S. calculus from the start was designed to keep the conflict as short as possible. But, amid conversations with counterparts in the region, senior Biden administration officials determined that the best way to tighten the time frame was to push Israel from behind the scenes, not publicly demand a cease-fire or support a U.N. Security Council resolution doing so.

More signs of the changing politics. Yousef Munayyer has a strong op-ed in the New York Times saying that the latest conflict shows that Palestinians, undivided, have moved on from a two-state paradigm to a demand for equal rights; and the Democratic base is ready for this struggle. So leaders should heed the new political reality.

But the Palestinians who can most shape the future now are in the streets and squares, speaking to one another and the world directly, and making clear that the “green line” that divided Israel and the occupied territories was an instrument of division, not liberation.

The energy of this moment represents an opportunity to wed Palestinian aspirations with a growing global consensus. According to a 2018 poll by the University of Maryland, 64 percent of Americans would support equal rights in a single state if the two-state solution fails. That number climbs to 78 percent among Democrats. Among scholars and experts on the Middle East, one recent poll found, 66 percent say there is a one-state reality…

The two-state peace process has acted as a convenient excuse for third parties who would rather pretend it presents a viable path to peace — no matter how clear its failures have been — than ever hold Israeli leaders to account. But the curtain is falling

Eric Levitz in New York Magazine observes that while the discourse has dramatically shifted, policy has not, of course. Levitz notes three reasons for the change: great organizing by the Palestinian solidarity community; the growing influence of social media, eroding the gatekeeping status of the MSM and highlighting Israeli massacres. And third, “A related but distinct factor is the changing demographic composition of mainstream newsrooms. America’s dominant media institutions are growing more racially diverse, and Black and Hispanic Americans tend to evince more sympathy for the Palestinian plight in opinion polls.”

That trend of course extends to people of color and Muslims in the House of Representatives, whose voices dominated the special hour of concern over war crimes last week– Ayanna Pressley, Andre Carson, Cori Bush.

Bari Weiss, formerly of the New York Times, laments the shifting politics of the issue in an eyebrow-raising discussion with Trump’s envoy Mike Pompeo.

“How has Israel become a partisan issue? I’m watching as every progressive member of Congress gets up and basically grafts on parochial American racial politics on to a foreign conflict, framing Hamas as the underdog… Are the Republicans in any way to blame for making this a partisan issue, or is it the fault of the left?”

So Israel is the underdog, and racial politics must stay at home. No wonder she’s talking to Pompeo.