The news from the political convulsion in Israel is that power has shifted. Israel is no longer dictating terms to the United States, the United States is in a position to dictate terms to Israel.
So much is clear from a number of events. The recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza ended after 11 days and not 51 or 22, because Joe Biden told Netanyahu to stop. And that was because Rashida Tlaib told Biden to make it stop. For once there was political pressure on the White House from the Israel-critical lobby.
Now Netanyahu is gone and Israel’s new prime minister is to the right of Netanyahu on the West Bank, but it doesn’t matter. Naftali Bennett won’t dare to go too far, whatever that means.
Yes– what does it mean to go too far? For the first time this is the discussion taking place inside the Democratic Party. What is our line going to be?
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, is plainly a burgeoning movement inside the Democratic base. Seven leftwing candidates for New York City Council seats endorse BDS (Jewish Insider reports). While rightwing Republicans are leading the opposition to BDS because they see it as a wedge issue to divide Democrats.
Liberal Zionists respect (and fear) the Democratic base. Last week Americans for Peace Now came out for conditioning American aid to Israel over its “human rights violations,” including bombing Gaza and killing 67 children — and APN bragged that it was the first liberal Zionist group to make the call.
Even more significantly, Randi Weingarten, the American Federation of Teachers leader and a stalwart at J Street, is cracking. Some AFT locals have voted in support of BDS and when old guard Israel lobbyist Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL expressed alarm, Weingarten wrote him a letter refusing to come down on them. Weingarten said that while her union doesn’t support BDS, it supports “dialogue, debate and the free ability to express a range of viewpoints” and “the national union does not override locals over differences or questions of policy” (per the Jewish Journal).
It can’t be long before IfNotNow endorses BDS as the only answer to apartheid, and J Street moves left with Americans for Peace Now.
In a call last week Nadav Tamir of J Street said that as far as Israelis are concerned, the Squad runs the Democratic Party.
Most Israelis think we have a very progressive Democratic party that is pushing Biden in the wrong direction and he is holding. They tend to see Sanders and the Squad as the whole Democratic party. Any mention of restricting aid is very frightening.
Israelis are keenly sensitive to American politics. Arguably this is how Naftali Bennett became prime minister. Israeli leadership sees the Biden Democratic Party leaving the reservation and it wants to preserve Israel as a bipartisan issue. The Israeli government knows it has to tone things down. Right, left and center agree on that.
Liberal Zionists are hopeful that the non-Netanyahu government will keep Israel support bipartisan in the U.S. Bennett will do nothing to provoke the United States in the West Bank. Differences between the two countries will be handled privately. It’s in both Biden and Bennett’s interest not to go back to the rancor of the Obama-Netanyahu relationship.
So the Iran deal will slide back into place without a lot of angry opposition from Israel.
Again, though, this is because of Israel’s waning power in the United States. Netanyahu was able to dictate policy to the Democratic Party thanks to the Israel lobby. No more. The days when Haim Saban would script Hillary Clinton on BDS are over. The days when the lobby could knock off Israel critics are over. Every single one of the 25 cosponsors of Rep. Betty McCollum’s 2019 legislation to restrict aid in defense of Palestinian children were reelected in 2020, Rashid Khalidi said in an appearance with the Arab American Institute last week. “The Squad has become a Battalion,” James Zogby said.
The two factors on our side are the rise of the progressive left and the defections in the U.S. Jewish community. No matter how private Biden and Bennett try to keep their differences, these forces will continue to assert themselves. Republicans will continue to drive the wedge in the Democratic Party.
You cannot sell Israel to American progressives. In Le Monde, the sociologist Eva Illouz writes that Israel is “considerably weakened.” It has lost its sense of purpose and entered a “profound moral crisis” and American Jews are abandoning it.
[E]merging from Netanyahu’s long reign, Israel is considerably weakened. The Diaspora and the American Democratic Party, which have always been its mainstay, are pulling away and a perhaps irreparable split within the Jewish people is occurring.
What Israel has gained in territory it has lost in legitimacy, not just in the eyes of the nations but in the eyes of a part of the Jewish people themselves.
The legitimacy crisis won’t end: Democratic Party values and Israeli values are incompatible. The most revealing comment I heard during the recent Israeli election season was Barak Ravid’s analysis that the reason Bennett could include the Palestinian party Ra’am in his governing coalition was that 130,000 Israelis went to Dubai for Hanukkah vacation under the normalization deal with the UAE and got to see Arabs as real people.
“They were doing their vacation in an Arab city, listening to Arabic all day around them, eating Arabic food… listening to Arabic music,” Ravid said. “In Israel when people walk in the street and hear Arabic, some of them freak out.”
What more do you need to know about the illegitimacy of a society built on the ruins of Arab villages? Where Arabic is a second-class language under the law? That leading human rights groups describe as an apartheid state?
I’m hopeful about the inclusion of Ra’am: that it will lead to full equal rights for Palestinians in Israel and Palestine. But that will only happen with continued American pressure.
Democratic progressives have the opportunity to push BDS, and they will do it. And they will change the power map of the conflict forever.
h/t Donald Johnson and Robert Herbst and Michael Arria.
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“Only a consistent application of a rights-centred foreign policy can signal to Israel’s leaders that violations of international law will no longer go unaccounted for. Mr President, now is the time to set a new benchmark in American foreign policy that leads with justice and paves the way towards lasting peace.”
Signed,
Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Jan Egeland, Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General and former United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
Kumi Naidoo, Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity and former International Executive Director of Greenpeace International
And 680 global leaders from 75 countries.
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Meanwhile, around the world:
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/6/19/dear-president-biden-you-need-to-act-on-palestine
“Dear President Biden, you need to act on Palestine”“Over 680 global sector leaders call on President Biden to honor his commitments and protect Palestinian human rights.” Al Jazeera, June 19/21
“Dear President Biden,
“We, the undersigned global coalition of leaders – from civil society to business, the arts and faith communities, politics and Nobel laureates – call for the US leadership to take action to help bring an end to Israel’s institutionalized domination and oppression of the Palestinian people and protect their fundamental human rights. A sustainable and just peace – for all people – will remain elusive if US policy holds on to a political status quo devoid of justice and accountability.
“Your administration has committed to a foreign policy ‘centered on the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights’. More recently, you stated, ‘I believe the Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely, and enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and democracy.’ For Palestinians, the space between these statements and their daily lives could not be wider.
“Even after a formal ceasefire, Israeli police and settler violence against Palestinians continues. The forced dispossession of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including families living in the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, and aggressive actions by Israeli forces against peaceful protesters and worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, are the latest evidence of a separate and unequal governing system. These policies unravel the social fabric of communities and undermine any progress towards a democratic, just and peaceful future. The logic driving them has led to the recent displacement of 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza who must also survive the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by a 14-year blockade.
“Moving forward, the United States must address the root causes of the violence which successive administrations have neglected. Your administration must apply concerted diplomatic pressure to help end the ever-expanding discrimination and systemic oppression and ensure accountability for Israeli authorities that violate Palestinian rights. (cont’d)
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This is interesting, it seems there is in fighting between Netanyahu and Lapid. Once a snake, always a snake. This war criminal is still hungry for power and will do anything, even sabotage his own country to achieve it.
Diplomatic officials accuse Netanyahu of sabotaging ties with US — reportUnnamed sources tell Israeli TV that former prime minister trying to drive a wedge between Jerusalem and Washington for his own political interests
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-june-21-2021/
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/06/manchin-rubio-reintroduce-bill-allowing-states-to-crack-down-on-bds-movement/
“I’m hopeful about the inclusion of Ra’am: that it will lead to full equal rights for Palestinians in Israel and Palestine. But that will only happen with continued American pressure.”
I’m very surprised indeed to read the comment above from the pen of Brother Philip Weiss whose writings for which I have always had the utmost respect. He should be aware that Ra’am is part of the problem and not part of the solution to the oppression of the Palestinian people. Ra’am is a reactionary, Islamist Palestinian-Israeli political party that is rife with corruption, reactionary social policy positions and has made Faustian bargains with the Zionist occupation regime, the most recent being joining the Bennett-Lapid government. While it claims to be working in the legislative sphere on behalf of Palestinian citizens of Israel to get them a better deal with more budgetary allocations and other state benefits and services, the reality is Ra’am has a very limited following in the Palestinian community west and certainly east of the Green Line. Much of that has to do with the low reputation of the people who are Ra’am’s leading figures and its defense of shady deals and the discredited two state solution despite overwhelming evidence that it is dead.
That said, what will lead to full equal rights for Palestinians in Israel, Palestine (both pieces being political names for all of historic Arab PALESTINE), and hopefully for those of us exiles in the Palestinian Diaspora who want to go home already (lest we forget!), is the revival and continued vitality of the Palestinian Resistance Movement via the unified popular struggle of all Palestinian people and their supporters and allies across historic Palestine and around the world as we saw beginning on May 10th, culminating in the nationwide general strike of May 18th and continuing until now both inside and outside historic Palestine.
Complementing the profound impact of the revived Palestinian popular resistance movement are the BDS movement and Palestine solidarity networks across the world, especially here in the USA where pressure is being brought to bear on the main supporter of the Zionist apartheid-fascist regime, the US Government. Secondarily, the BDS and Palestine solidarity movements across Western Europe, especially in the UK, France and Germany are critical to weakening the support of those western governments most responsible within that region for supporting and propping up the Zionist regime.