Early this week, the influential rightwing American group, the Conservative Political Action Committee, held a convention in Budapest, Hungary, in a salute to the bigoted authoritarian leader Viktor Orban. And the gathering was justly condemned on the Democratic side and by Jewish groups. Senator Brian Schatz wrote:
It would be great, if not a huge accomplishment, for everyone in the American Jewish community to jointly condemn the right wing antisemitic conference held in Hungary, and if there are American Jewish organizations who decline to condemn the conference, they should explain why.
One liberal Republican called the gathering “fascistpalooza.” WNYC’s Brian Lehrer denounced American conservatives for “flocking” to a leader who has promoted “replacement theory,” the belief that minorities in the west are seeking to “replace” whites. While NPR’s Mara Liasson said Hungary is “no longer a democracy,” and Republicans don’t care. “[T]here’s been a rethinking of authoritarian leaders. The Republican Party used to be almost reflexively against them, but Donald Trump really changed that.”
But what about Democrats who flock to Israel for political advantage. Shouldn’t they experience some of the same scrutiny?
Nearly 80 Congresspeople have visited the country in recent months, about half Democrats, to impress pro-Israel groups back home; and President Biden is expected to go to Israel next month, surely because of the campaign contributions pro-Israel groups will make to Democrats in the midterm elections.
Israel’s claim to be a democracy is highly questionable: millions of Palestinians under Israeli rule have lesser rights or no rights at all. Just in the last year several human rights organizations have reached the conclusion that Israel is an “apartheid” state— everyone from Harvard Law School’s human rights clinic to Amnesty International.
Israeli leaders opened the door to the apartheid reports by passing a basic law in 2018 stating that Jews have higher land rights and language rights and “the exclusive right of self-determination” in the land.
Racist rhetoric is a feature of Israeli politics. Israel’s current prime minister bragged of killing Arabs with his bare hands. Its last prime minister warned that Arabs were coming to the polls in droves. The defense minister ran for prime minister by crowing that he had bombed Gaza back to the stone age.
All these leaders have openly defied the U.S. over U.S. policy by saying there will never be a Palestinian state. The Israeli government has continued building settlements for hundreds of thousands of Jews on Palestinian land without consequences; and “the forced displacement” of Palestinians is official policy, with Israeli leaders openly commenting about Palestinian birthrates and Palestinians being “an enemy from within.” This week a lawmaker who was formerly foreign minister taunted Palestinians that if they fly the Palestinian flag they should reexperience “your Nakba”– the period during the creation of Israel in which 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes, never allowed to return.
Really how different are any of these threats from the hateful rhetoric of replacement theory?
Ethno-nationalists hold sway in Israeli political culture. Lately Israel has defied international calls for accountability over the killing of a Palestinian-American journalist in the occupied West Bank because the government is afraid of rightwing reaction if it were to pursue any investigation of the matter. The rightwing prime minister is already labeled a “traitor” and a “terrorist” by the right wing because he hasn’t gone far enough in taking over the West Bank. Remember that a centrist prime minister was killed for wanting to give up lands in the West Bank, 27 years ago.
If Hungary should be isolated for its leaders’ bigotry, so should Israel. And American politicians should be ashamed to go there.
Of course, no one with any clout will try to stop Joe Biden from going to Israel this summer, bearing gifts. There is talk that Biden will seek to advance a process of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, in line with the deals that Donald Trump struck by bribing Arab monarchies.
All these deals have done nothing to address the violations of Palestinian human rights, the source of the conflict. Everything else is a distraction.
Just this week the European Parliament President visited Israel and vowed to strengthen ties with the country while offering meaningless bromides to the Palestinians. “Make no mistake, ‘strengthening’ the ‘partnership’ between @EU states and the murderous apartheid regime means killing more Palestinians,” the Palestinian writer Ali Abunimah observed.
How long will it take our media and politicians to accept this reality? A long time. There are, of course, strong forces in our society working hard to preserve Israel’s dream-castle reputation in liberal, Democratic circles.
“been a rethinking of authoritarian leaders. The Republican Party used to be almost reflexively against them, but Donald Trump really changed that”
False. The mainstream likes to pretend that Trump changed everything, but America often favored dictators so long as they were our allies.
Will we have to wait for the second coming to see on the table a plausible agreement?
“Really how different are any of these threats from the hateful rhetoric of replacement theory?”
Very different indeed.
Replacement theorists are saying “if we are not careful, we will be replaced by foreign immigrants in our own countries.”
Katz is saying “Foreign immigrants replaced you in part of your own country. We, their descendants, will replace you in the rest of it.”
But I agree that he is giving ammunition to the replacement theorists.
I don’t think that Bennett ever bragged of killing Palestinians with his own hands. What he said is bad enough no need to embellish it.