In today’s New York Times, Robert Wexler, a longtime Israel advocate and former Florida Congressman, says what our site has been saying for a while — the U.S. political debate over Israel/Palestine is veering left, and progressives are bringing an end to “unflinching [American] support for Israel.”
[T]he debate over the Iron Dome system represents a tectonic shift in the discourse among Democrats, one that is likely to shape U.S.-Israel relations for decades. Indeed, a small group of progressive Democrats have now forced a simmering debate within the party, and in their constituency, to the surface. . .
For a number of years now progressive activists, and some politicians, have challenged what was once orthodoxy: resolute U.S. support for Israel. Whereas previous congressional debates were characterized by bipartisan, reflexive support for Israel’s security interests, progressives have successfully infused Palestinian rights into the equation.
Wexler’s answer to that simmering leftwing agenda of “Palestinian rights” is. . . .to double down on the two-state solution. This is now the liberal Zionist answer. J Street, Americans for Peace Now and other kindred groups are backing the Rep. Andy Levin legislation that says vaguely that U.S. aid should not go toward perpetuating a 54-year-long occupation.
Wexler is head of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, and his piece is typical of arguments by the more liberal wing of the Israel lobby. He congratulates the new Israeli government for taking steps toward supposedly easing life for Palestinians under occupation. He exalts the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel in religious, economic and strategic terms (“a relationship deeply meshed into the U.S. economy in dozens of states and integral in ensuring the United States commands the new frontiers of security in cyberspace”).
But the best thing about the article is that Wexler admits that Israel commits human rights abuses. Three times he refers to killings of civilians.
[T]here is increasingly vocal criticism of expanding settlements in the West Bank, housing demolitions and civilian deaths.
Yes — Israeli snipers have killed 40 protesters there in recent months, to the point that the army chief told them to “relax.”
Wexler goes on to admit that Israeli “raids against Hamas. . . have killed civilians.” And he offers this twisted logic about why Israel kills “innocent Palestinians” in Gaza.
The [Iron Dome] system is defensive; it protects countless numbers of innocent Israelis from Hamas rocket attacks and saves numerous innocent Palestinians by avoiding even more punishing Israeli military responses to those attacks.
Notice the framing, it is a trap (says Donald Johnson who pointed this passage out). Hamas attacks; Israel defends itself and also hits innocent civilians. So Hamas isn’t responding— no, they are attacking, and Palestinians can be divided into categories of innocent civilians and guilty attackers.
Why don’t we have those categories for Israelis? Are Palestinians ever justified in using force to defend themselves? Are there any guilty Israelis deserving of a military response?
In this framing (Johnson goes on), we are the civilized people who can work with the present “civilized” Israeli government in gradually nudging Israel towards treating Palestinians almost as though they had rights. So the U.S. should adopt the liberal Zionist view and continue trusting and supporting the Israeli government.
This just isn’t good enough. Israel has decades of experience in pretending to move toward a two-state solution, while instead consolidating the occupation and strengthening the system of apartheid. Wexler says he’s met with Palestinians, but he nowhere quotes the skepticism that most of them share. He won’t or can’t recognize that Palestinians must be central players in their own liberation.
Some day he and other liberal Zionists will have to concede that, too.
1 of 2
Re: Wexler
The U.S.-Israel relationship is unique, multifaceted and evolving. It is no longer one captured by secular slogans of shared values or pursuit of peace. It has theological overtones with the American evangelical community, moral expectations from progressives about the rights of Palestinians and the interest of an active American Jewish diaspora. It is a relationship deeply meshed into the U.S. economy in dozens of states …
——————-
Going forward referencing this statement is the perfect way to rebut Bari Weiss, Bret Stephens, Big Zionism, et. al., when next they hasbara on about: “Why does The Left always come after Israel but not China or Russia or Venezuela all of which violate human rights as badly or worse than Israel?”
This whataboutery is a pathetic attempt to smear critics with the now-defunct charge of evidence-free antisemitism while simultaneously waving a shiny thing. This tactic simply does not work anymore and organized Zionism knows this. Wexler’s article is evidence of that.
His admission that Israel’s relationship with the US is not at all like any other country’s, to wit that it is: “unique, multifaceted and evolving” and that it is “deeply meshed into the U.S. economy in dozens of states”, is proof positive that Zionism has been forced to admit this truth publicly if for no other reasons than that to continue to repeat it makes them look foolish and it creates openings for devastating responses from Others. For sure, China would like to be, but is not, “deeply meshed into the U.S. economy in dozens of states”. As would Russia. And Venezuela. But they aren’t and therefore the crimes of those countries do not reflect on the moral identity of the US and Americans citizens. Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations do reflect on America’s moral identity by virtue of the unique quality of political intimacy Wexler references which, BTW, average Americans find unseemly, insulting and off-putting and this should be pointed out again and again to Zionists.
Progressive criticism of Zionism is not (only) about what Israel does to the Palestinians day-in-and-day-out, but also and perhaps even primarily the Progressive insurrection is about what Zionism does to the Constitution and political life in the US. Every day.
(cont.)
Settlements; expanding settlements; Palestinian displacement. Tell it like it is: Ethnic Cleansing! The denial of Palestinians to live and travel in “Israeli-conquered” areas of Palestine.
2 of 2
And yes, it is “evolving”, but not in a good way. For example, Zionism shares much more than mere “theological overtones” with the American evangelical movement. Indeed, it strengthens the Christian Right politically, financially and electorially which any secular American should be furious about especially since Israelis fume whenever the idea of Americans getting involved in Israeli politics is raised. Goose-Gander, I say.
When Zionists like Robert Wexler bandy about references to US/Israel’s “shared values” does he mean that in both countries the police have systematic violent/hostile attitudes towards minorities? Or maybe he means that both countries surveille their citizens regularly? Or that both regularly violate indigenous land rights (including water rights) and use them as toxic dumps and seize them and pass through them with pipelines, military bases, roads, etc., at will? Or perhaps he means that women are exploited at alarming rates sexually, economically, culturally in both countries? Or maybe he means that both countries shamelessly manipulate the electoral process to favor some groups and subvert others? So many shared values!
Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to ask these questions or to fail to ask them?
View 47 posters on US Aid to Israel/Palestine here:
https://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/us-aidto-israelto-palestine
“Israel kills ‘innocent civilians’ in West Bank and Gaza– liberal Zionist admits in ‘NYT’ Liberal zionist.
Can someone please enlighten me.WTF does zionism have to do with liberalism.
As is well known to anyone who has 2 brain cells , there is no such animal as a liberal zionist.never was and never will be.
The politics in 3 polities is what makes the 2 state solution seem impossible: israel, the us and Palestine. ( If by a 2 state solution one means the Beilin abd rabbo “agreement”). If USA had a sustained: i mean 10 to 15 year sustained, 2 state “offensive, ( when it can barely sustain more than a 10 to 15 month ” offensive”. ) Israel’s centrists would have to see the loss of USA support as a serious threat rather than a mere passing phase for them to see the need to undo such a deeply seated deeply felt connection for a very risky adventure. Both democrats and republicans would have to agree for the pressure to be truly sustained or else the Democratic party would have to become utterly predominant and the squad would have to be much stronger and that seems 20 or more years into the future.