On Israel the gap between Dem lawmakers and Dem voters is growing wider

Photo: A photo of House Democrats posing with Israeli soldiers at an Iron Dome battery shared via the AIPAC Twitter account on Feb. 23, 2022

Democratic Voters and Israel

“Progressive except Palestine” is a popular refrain and it usually checks out. Last week the Congressional Progressive Caucus ditched Nina Turner, who they had endorsed in Ohio’s 11th District during a special election last year. Turner lost to Shontel Brown, a staunchly pro-Israel centrist who received support and a bunch of money from lobbying groups like Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI). As a congresswoman Brown aligns with Biden’s agenda most of the time, except she’s one of the Democrats currently working to undermine a rebooted Iran Deal and she cites Israel as one of the reasons for her apprehension.

Turner’s running for the Democratic nomination again, but this time the Progressive Caucus is backing Brown. Brown’s been talking up her commitment to Israel on the campaign trail. “I think having had the opportunity to go to Israel has given me a unique perspective,” she told the Cleveland Jewish News recently. “The strong, stark contrast between me and my opponent is that I’m a pro-U.S. (and) Israel candidate who understands the vulnerability to Israel, but also understand that (the partnership) is important to affect our democracy, our shared democracy.”

Turner promotes a more progressive agenda than Brown domestically and differs quite a bit on Israel. She’s expressed support for Palestinians on social media and supports conditioning military aid. Before the election last year she said, “I don’t believe any taxpayer money should be going toward entrenching the occupation of the Palestinian territories, settlement expansion, the detention of children or annexation.”

Brown was quick to cite Israel during her victory speech last year. “When you see a person who has a firecracker that’s been dropped by a drone near the Gaza Strip, and you are within a few feet of a bomb shelter, you can appreciate the vulnerability of a state,” she told her supporters. Just a few months before Brown’s win Israel killed over 200 Palestinians in Gaza, 60 of them children. “If Shontel Brown had crossed into Gaza (which, to be clear, Israel would never let her do) she would have heard what it’s like when one of the most powerful militaries in the world regularly drops bombs on 2 million people who’ve been locked under brutal siege for 15 years,” tweeted JVP’s Beth Miller.

The Progressive Caucus is chaired by Pramila Jayapal, who certainly isn’t the worst House member when it comes to Palestine. She’s criticized the forced displacement in Sheikh Jarrah, addressed the power imbalance in the region, and supported some good legislation. For instance, she’s a cosponsor of Rep. Betty McCollum’s Defending the Human Rights of Palestinian Children and Families Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act (H.R. 2590). Nonetheless, the group went with Brown.

In North Carolina, the Progressive Caucus of state’s Democratic Party is revoking its endorsement of State Senator Valerie Foushee because she accepted a donation from AIPAC. Progress of a kind, one might think, until they look at the details on this one. The caucus’s big gripe has nothing to do with AIPAC’s mission, they’re upset that the lobbying group is backing Republicans who refused to vote for the certification of President Biden. In their statement rescinding support for Foushee the caucus makes it clear that they have no issues with apartheid. In fact, they support it. “The damage done by the January 6 insurrectionists cannot be ‘overcome’ by AIPAC’s support of Israel,” it reads.

Back to Brown. This week DMFI dropped its first TV ad in support of the incumbent. It highlights her support for the Biden administration’s domestic agenda, but it does not mention Israel or foreign policy once. So here’s a lobbying group devoted to Israel that consistently insists Democrats are in line with them politically, but they don’t dare mention the reason for their existence in the commercials they bankroll. Why? Because, despite the prevailing mainstream narrative, it’s clearly not a winning issue with the Democratic base. This week we also saw a new study from Shibley Telhami, who directs the Critical Issues Poll at the University of Maryland. The polling shows that the gap between Democratic lawmakers and their constituents is growing. Less than 1% of Democratic voters identify Israel as first or second choice among the two top US allies. Dem voters rank it behind 8 other countries: U.K., Canada, Germany, Mexico, France, Japan, China, and South Korea.

These numbers won’t be surprising for anyone who has followed polling on these issues. A few years ago Telhami published a poll that showed Democratic voters actually have a positive view of BDS. Among Democrats who had heard of the movement, 77% agreed with the idea that BDS is “a legitimate, peaceful way of opposing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.” Last year Data for Progress reported found that 72% of Democrats support Rep. Betty McCollum’s legislation to protect Palestinian children from detention. DMFI CEO Mark Mellman has presumably seen stats like these. After all, he’s not just a strategic advisor for Yair Lapid, he’s also a renowned pollster.

Democrats growing sympathy for the Palestinian cause and the increased violence against Palestinians hasn’t changed policy in any sizable way. Just 13% of the House supports McCollum’s bill and progressives continue to back politicians like Brown.

Princeton and Tufts

What happened at Princeton last week? The school’s student government voted on a resolution calling on the university to stop using Caterpillar machinery. The company is a long-standing supplier of the Israeli army and they use its bulldozers to destroy Palestinian homes. The school’s newspaper reported that the measure was on the verge of passing. The group Princeton for Palestine made an Instagram post celebrating a victory, but quickly deleted it. Then a number of pro-Israel sites began running articles claiming that the resolution had been rejected. Zionists celebrated the results on social media.

When we published last week’s newsletter it was unclear what had actually happened, but now we have results: 52% for and 47% against. So it’s a BDS victory, right? Well, that remains to be seen. The vote has yet to be certified because it’s being challenged by a group of students. At Jewish Currents Isaac Scher has a good summary of the opposition, but essentially the students are claiming that voters were misled about how absentee ballots would be tallied and that this miscommunication impacted how they campaigned against the measure.

Despite the fact that the results have not been certified, The Daily Princetonian‘s Paige Cromley published an incredible report detailing how an off-campus group called the Israel War Room (IWR) spent almost $1000 promoting a Facebook post that erroneously declared that the referendum had been defeated. IWR, which has thousands of followers across multiple social media platforms, says that its mission is to “fact check lies and give context to expose misleading narratives about Israel.” They’re not the only propaganda outfit to intervene in the vote. Cromley breaks down the details:

From March 31 to April 5, IWR spent over $200 on a sponsored Facebook post, which asked viewers to demand University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 denounce the referendum. Alums for Campus Fairness also funded ads opposing the referendum, spending around $1,000.

Since April 12, a Facebook page, Sanctuary Space, has been running a Facebook ad against the referendum that cost $100-199. BDS is BS ran an ad after voting had closed that referred to Princeton’s “campus-wide BDS referendum that targets Caterpillar tractors in Israel.”

StopAntisemitism, a group that claims to be “dedicated to exposing groups and individuals that espouse incitement towards the Jewish people,” posted an Instagram story and post that stated “Princeton students reject antisemitic BDS referendum.” A screenshot of the Instagram story seen by the ‘Prince’ mentioned the USG Chief Elections Officer by name and contained his image. 

Now onto Tufts University, where the SJP chapter has launched an interesting BDS campaign. They’re asking students to sign a pledge committing to boycott Israeli products (like Sabra hummus and Pillsbury items) on campus. They’re also asking people to refrain from joining pro-Israel clubs at the school, including Tufts’s J Street chapter.

I asked some of the students whether the inclusion of J Street marked a shift in strategy, as it’s regarded as a progressive group despite its commitment to liberal Zionism. “One thing we can agree on is that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism,” a student named Ava told me. “You can critique Israel and as a Jewish person you can have a strong moral and political stance against Israel. With that being said, I think the reason the discourse has shifted is that liberal Zionists, even if they’re anti-occupation and the framework they use to talk about the issue might sound more humane than anti-Palestinian or Islamophobic rhetoric, they’re still not acknowledging the fundamental cause of Palestinian resistance. It’s not just the occupation, it’s also the colonization of historic Palestine going back even before 1948.”

The effort is predictably facing backlash from pro-Israel groups at Tufts, but it’s also facing criticism from the administration. The school’s director of media relations called the campaign “divisive and harmful” and said it ostracizes students. This isn’t the first time that Tufts has targeted SJP over its activism. Two years ago students passed a referendum calling on the university to stop participating in the program that sends U.S. police to Israel to be trained by the IDF. Tufts ignored the vote and criticized the Office for Campus Life after they gave SJP an award for their organizing.

Odds & Ends

?? William Hartung is in Forbes calling for an end to the war on Yemen:

The administration’s record on Yemen has been disappointing, to put it mildly. When he was on the campaign trail, President Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and pledged to stop the flow of U.S. arms to the regime. And in his first foreign policy speech, the president said that he would “end support for offensive operations in Yemen” along with “relevant arms sales.” Instead, his administration sold over $1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia in its first year in office, and it has refused to use all of the leverage at its disposal to end Saudi attacks on Yemen. In fact, Saudi air strikes have increased during Biden’s tenure, including a an attack on a migrant detention center earlier this year that killed 90 people and wounded over 200.

?? Obviously not a lot of U.S. lawmakers making statements about Israel’s assault on Palestinian worshippers but Rep. Marie Newman’s (D-IL) tweet on the subject stands out:

During the holiest time for Muslims, Jews, and Christians around the world, we must pray for peace and understanding.I wholly condemn the violence perpetrated against more than 150 Palestinians worshiping at Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem.

?? Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is leading a group of Democrats in calling for the United States to join the International Criminal Court. Last week she introduced a resolution on the issue. “We are in the company of countries such as Iran, Sudan, China, and, yes, Russia as one of several nations that have refused to sign onto this bedrock of international law,” Omar wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “If we oppose investigations into countries, like our own, that haven’t joined the ICC, how can we support an investigation into Russia, another country that hasn’t joined the court?”

? The Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace put out a Passover statement.

?️  Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) son is running to become a House member in New Jersey. On Israel Bob Menendez Jr. takes after his father. “There’s been somewhat of a — how should I phrase it? — inconsistent approach to foreign policy through the last several administrations, and I think that’s left our allies in an uncomfortable position,” he told the Jewish Insider recently. “You have to start by being very clear in your support for your allies, and I think being supportive of Israel is one of the most important actions any member of Congress can take.”

⚾ In The Nation Robert Ross writes about how Jackie Robinson was one of the first Americans to advocate for BDS strategies, taking up a pioneering role in the fight against South African apartheid:

Soon after South African police gunned down 72 unarmed Black men, women, and children in Sharpeville in March 1960, Robinson served as chairman for an “Emergency Action Conference on South Africa.” Robinson opened the conference with a speech in which he connected the movement to end racism in the US with campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. “I see the struggle against race supremacy and racial inequality as world-wide,” Robinson said to the crowd of about 200 people gathered at the Carnegie International Center in New York. “The fight against Jim Crow here is part of the same struggle in South Africa, and if I were in South Africa, I would hope to be numbered among those either threatened with or actually in prison for opposing the apartheid policy being followed by the government there.”

To combat apartheid in South Africa, Robinson and his fellow conference organizers put forward 24 actions the crowd of labor union members, clergy, and civil rights leaders could take. Chief among them were resolutions to boycott, divest, and sanction South Africa. Robinson, in particular, led a workshop entitled “Contacts with South Africa: Tourists, Athletes, Artists,” in which attendees agreed to “withhold their participation in tours and programs in South Africa until such time as South Africa abandons her racist policies.” Conference participants also resolved to launch a consumer boycott of all South African products. The labor unions that cosponsored the conference agreed to “study the possibility of an industrial boycott of South African goods through refusing to unload ships from South Africa.” Investors were urged to consider selling their stock of companies doing business in South Africa if they were unwilling or unsuccessful in pressuring the government to end apartheid. The conference attendees resolved to ask the US government to prohibit the importation of goods from South Africa and to stop purchasing gold and other strategic minerals from the country.

?? At TomDispatch Alfred McCoy offers a suggestion for ending the war in Ukraine:

Following the failure of both Washington’s pressure on China and Western sanctions against Russia to stop the war, the international courts have become the sole peaceful means left to still the conflict. While the law often remains an effective means to mediate conflict domestically, the critical question of enforcing judgements has long robbed the international courts of their promise for promoting peace—a problem painfully evident in Ukraine today.

? Dua Lipa took a public stand against ethnic cleansing on Palestine last year and refused to back down when smeared by pro-Israel groups. She’s also a PUMA brand ambassador and the company is directly connected to Israeli apartheid. Fans are now calling on her to pressure PUMA on the issue.

Stay safe out there,
Michael