Joe Biden’s trip to Israel, Palestine and Saudi Arabia has been something of a fiasco back home. His fist bump with the murderous Saudi Crown Prince was widely criticized, even by mainstream media, because Biden spent a ton of political capital without much in return; oil prices went up.
He made similar concessions to Israel’s rightwing leadership, saying nothing about the occupation or illegal settlements or the killing of Palestinian-American Shireen Abu Akleh, while he gushed over his Israeli hosts– including a warm meeting with disgraced former PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden could not even push to reopen the consulate serving Palestinians in Jerusalem, lest he offend the Israeli government. Rep. Rashida Tlaib called the visit “ill-conceived.”
But Israelis exulted over the trip, and now Biden has gotten rave reviews from the organized Jewish community.
The American Jewish Committee celebrated the advances in the Saudi-Israel relationship. So did AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League. And the official Jewish Democratic Party organization (the JDCA) cheered the trip, with two former U.S. ambassadors applauding the growing normalization between Israel and the Saudis– and saying not a word about Israel’s killing of Abu Akleh, during more than an hour’s discussion.
The White House has reflected the Israel lobby line. It has tried to salvage victory from the trip by bragging about warming Israel-Saudi relations– “when Jake Sullivan and I gaggled on the plane when the President flew from Israel to Saudi Arabia, that was a historic flight,” Biden’s press secretary said.
The trip has been tough on liberal Zionists. The scholar Dov Waxman said that the trip showed the U.S. has given up any pretense of pushing for a two-state solution. And J Street issued a statement about the trip admitting that it “fell well short” on any measures that would bring about Palestinian freedom. Though J Street grasped at an upside — Biden’s lip service to a two-state solution.
Here are some of the center-right wing celebrations of the trip.
Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, long an advocate for Israel, says that Biden did the Right Thing by kissing up to the Crown Prince. The visit was “necessary.”
Its value is not to be measured by immediate deliverables but in whether the US & the KSA can revive a relationship with a degree of cooperation and trust. Given the stakes, we should hope so.
Former ambassador Martin Indyk told the Jewish Democratic Council that the trip was a great success because Israelis were overjoyed with Biden’s love for them.
“Israelis have a bottomless desire to be loved by U.S. presidents. It doesn’t matter how much else you do for them, it’s the love they want to feel.”
On that same call, Dan Shapiro of the Atlantic Council said Biden bowled Israelis over with “the depth and the breadth and the sweep” of his relationship to the country, and the big win for Israel was normalization — the emergence of a regional coalition of Israel and Arab monarchies, ala ASEAN.
Cameron Brown of AIPAC said that rightwing organization could not have asked for more from Biden.
“If you had been the president’s speechwriter I think you would have been hard pressed to write a better speech [than what Biden gave upon his arrival], for the things we believe in,” he said.
“If you had been the president’s speechwriter I think you would have been hard pressed to write a better speech, for the things we believe in.”
Cameron Brown, Director of AIPAC’s American Israel Education Foundation
In that speech, Biden described the U.S.-Israel relationship as bipartisan and “bone deep.” Then there was the Jerusalem Declaration issued the next day by Biden and Israeli PM Yair Lapid. Brown said the denunciation of BDS as a “terrible thing that both countries have to fight against — I don’t think we could have asked for more.”
The Jerusalem Declaration was also “heartwarming” to center-left Zionists: Yossi Alpher at Americans for Peace Now called the Declaration “a strategically pleasing feature of a visit that also included an awful lot of schmalz and kitsch designed to warm Jewish hearts.”
And designed to militarize the Middle East against Iran. Shapiro and AIPAC’s man Brown both exulted in Israel getting arms deals with Arab countries, and advancing laser weapons systems that even the United States cannot match.
Meanwhile, Brown and Shapiro and Indyk all insulted Palestinians. As I noted, in discussing the trip, neither Shapiro nor Indyk mentioned Shireen Abu Akleh, let alone Israel’s impunity for killing the journalist two months ago, a source of rage to Palestinians that Biden fumblingly tried to address in a Bethlehem appearance with P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas.
While the AIPAC official said Biden’s message was that Palestinians are irrelevant in the “new Middle East.”
“The Palestinians have become increasingly less relevant. The reason that countries want to move forward with Israel is that they’re tired of waiting for the Palestinians to get on board.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida congresswoman, also cheered the Biden trip on the JDCA call and said the message is that American politicians must not quarrel about Israel. This statement by Wasserman Schultz is pretty astounding in its arrogance about Israel’s political rights here:
“It’s important for me to stress that all the progress we have made… is really dependent on our maintaining Israel as outside of American political decision-making. It hurts Israel for us to become political and to try to use it as a strategic weapon to have one side best the other.”
Liberal Zionists were not so cheerful. Here is part of Dov Waxman’s thread saying the U.S. has given up on a two-state solution:
If nothing else, President Biden’s brief visit to Israel and Palestine confirms the fact that the US’ has given up any serious effort to reach a two-state solution…. When Biden came into office, many hoped that he would reverse Trump’s policies and renew US efforts to reach a two-state solution, before it was too late (if it isn’t already too late)… [Biden] has not delivered on most of its promises to the Palestinians (reopening consulate in Jerusalem and PLO office in DC, etc.).The administration preferred to keep the now defunct Bennett-Lapid government in power over pressuring it to make concessions to the Palestinians or holding it accountable for Israeli human rights violations…. Now that it is 100% clear that neither a Democratic or Republican administration will prioritize reaching a two-state solution, let alone pressure Israel to make this happen, the Palestinians will reevaluate their options and growing numbers will turn towards a one-state solution
J Street tried to revive the two-state solution in its comments on the trip:
It’s more than welcome for J Street to see the President reaffirm his commitment to a two-state solution with borders based on the pre-1967 Green Line with land swaps. This effectively rolls back the position taken by the Trump administration and returns the US to alignment with the rest of the world. It was also notable that Israel’s new Prime Minister Yair Lapid stated publicly his belief that a “two-state solution is a guarantee for a strong, democratic Israel.” These are words not heard from an Israeli leader in nearly 14 years.
But J Street lamented Biden’s politeness. “There is no reason to shy away from using the term ‘occupation’ to describe what is happening on the West Bank and in Gaza.”
Of course the left now uses different terms to describe what is happening: apartheid. And by refusing to give any oxygen to the liberal Zionist camp, Biden has made the left that much more relevant. The ADL said the trip has caused a spike in “anti-Zionist rhetoric,” and it has a point. Biden has only fostered the very process Debbie Wasserman Schultz says he beat back: politicization of Israel in the U.S.
h/t Dave Reed, Adam Horowitz, Yumna Patel, Mariam Barghouti, Michael Arria.
https://www.businessinsider.com/presbyterian-church-declares-israel-apartheid-state-2022-7
EXCERPT:
“The Presbyterian Church voted to declare Israel an apartheid state. Jewish organizations are calling the move antisemitic.” By Katherine, Tangalakis-Lippert, the Business Insider,
“In a move Jewish organizations are condemning as antisemitic, the Presbyterian Church USA voted to declare that the actions of the Israeli government against the people of Palestine meets the legal definition of apartheid.
“Commissioners of 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted 266 to 116 in their annual meeting to make public the church’s stance that both affirms the right of Israel to provide security to its borders and criticizes human rights offenses perpetrated against Palestinians.
“‘In 2018, Israel passed a nation-state law, which declares the distinction between Jews and non-Jews fundamental and legitimate, and permits institutional discrimination in land management and development, housing, citizenship, language and culture. This decision among many other practices have confirmed that the policies and practices of Israel constitute apartheid,’ read a letter by Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, stated clerk of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church.
“The clerk’s letter added the Presbyterian Church, which consists of over 1.7 million members, recognizes the legitimacy of the Israeli state but it opposes continuing occupation of Palestine, which it declared to be ‘illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace in the region.’
“Nelson has previously described Israeli policies toward Palestinians as “enslavement,” angering some Jewish organizations. The latest letter has garnered similar reactions, with some accusing the clerk and the Presbyterian Church itself of being antisemitic.”
.
AIPAC states, “The Palestinians have become increasingly less relevant.”? That’s seven million people! Less relevant than what?
This is the language of genocide, and recalls the days when Jews were declared increasingly less relevant in Europe.
If America’s Jews fail to condemn rhetoric like that and stifle it forever, we condemn ourselves to irrelevancy in the Diaspora and realize that for the sake of our children it’s time for us to disappear.