Israeli President Isaac Herzog upcoming trip to Washington is highlighting the growing rift within the Democratic party over Israel, and the fissures were on display this past weekend after the Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair had to walk back comments referring to Israel as a racist country.
On Saturday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) asserted that Israel is a “racist state” as part of a panel at the annual Netroots Nation conference on Saturday.
“As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible,” Jayapal told a group of protesters who disrupted the event chanting “Free Palestine.”
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who was also on the panel, has been targeted by local activists over the fact she has not signed onto HR 2590, Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) historic bill to end U.S. support for Israel’s detention of Palestinian children.
By Sunday, Jayapal was walking back the statement and released a statement clarifying her comments.
“I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist,” reads the statement. “I do, however, believe that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies and that there are extreme racists driving that policy within the leadership of the current government.”
“I in no way intended to deny the deep pain and hurt of Israelis and their Jewish Diaspora community that still reels from the trauma of pogroms and persecution, the Holocaust, and continuing anti-Semitism and hate violence that is rampant today,” she added.
Pro-Israel groups and lawmakers had immediately smeared Jayapal for her comments Saturday. “Israel is a U.S. ally with an open, free and diverse society comprised of Jews, Muslims, Christians and people from across the world who vote and participate in its democracy as equal citizens,” tweeted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “Rep Jayapal should be embracing our democratic ally as a model, not demonizing it.”
“I’ve been fighting to make it clear that Jayapal is a racist congresswoman,” wrote former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu put out a statement expressing their commitment to Israel. It doesn’t address Jayapal directly, but takes aim at her comments.
“Israel is not a racist state,” it reads. “As a Jewish and Democratic nation, Israel was founded 75 years ago on the principle of complete equality of social and political rights for all of its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex, as codified in its Declaration of Independence.”
A group of Jewish Democrats, including Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and Brad Schneider (D-IL) is also circulating a letter condemning Jayapal. “We will never allow anti-Zionist voices that embolden antisemitism to hijack the Democratic Party and country,” it declares.
The day after Jayapal released the statement Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) (the only Palestinian member of Congress) tweeted, “The Israeli government is committing the crime of apartheid according to the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and BTselem (the largest human rights organization in Israel). Apartheid is a racist system of oppression.”
Herzog boycott
The Jayapal controversy comes amid a wider rift over Israel developing within the Democratic party. This week Israeli President Isaac Herzog is traveling to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, and several Democrats have already announced they will be skipping the speech.
“The Israeli government is responsible for enforcing an apartheid state and rampantly abusing the rights of Palestinians,” tweeted Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) last week. “Congress should not be giving a platform to the President of a country that shows no respect for human rights. I will not be attending his joint address.”
“There is no way in hell I am attending the joint session address from a President whose country has banned me and denied Rashida Tlaib the ability to see her grandma,” wrote Rep. Ilhan Omar in a Twitter thread.
“Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address comes on behalf of the most right wing government in Israel’s history, at a time when the government is openly promising to ‘crush’ Palestinian hopes of statehood—essentially putting a nail in the coffin of peace and a two-state solution,” she continued.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) also announced that wouldn’t be attending. “I don’t think Israel has gone far enough in protecting and uplifting Palestinian rights and Palestinian lives,” said Bowman.
While some progressive Democrats vowed to skip the speech, pro-Israel members of the party asserted their support for the visit. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he looked forward to welcoming Herzog with “open arms” and called him a “force for good in Israeli society.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) called Omar’s thread a “political stunt” that damages the U.S.-Israel relationship” and weakens “America’s security at home and abroad.”
“I think it’s terrible,” Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) told Jewish Insider. “I think they ought to listen to what he has to say. If you’re not willing to listen to the president, who is trying to achieve the right thing for his country — why close yourself off?”
The boycott was also condemned by pro-Israel groups. “I’m proud to be traveling to DC next week to join bipartisan Congressional leaders in welcoming Pres. Isaac Herzog who has tirelessly championed Israel’s democracy, advanced peace with its neighbors & promoted a strong US-Israel alliance,” tweeted Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “Boycotting his address is not a protest against Israeli gov’t policies – it’s an affront to the Jewish state, its democratic institutions & its people.”
While the majority of Democratic lawmakers remain strong supporters of Israel, the voters who elect them have notably shifted in the opposite direction. A University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll from earlier this year found that 44% of Democrats effectively agree with Jayapal’s initial assertion and believe that Israel is a “state with segregation similar to apartheid.”
A Gallup poll from March found that 56% of Democrats view Israel favorably, a huge drop from 63% in 2022. That same survey showed 49% of Democrats sympathize with Palestinians, compared to just 38% who said they sympathize with Israelis. It was the first time that more Democrats have sympathized with Palestinians than Israelis since Gallup began conducting the annual poll in 2001.
Fifty-eight Democratic lawmakers boycotted Netanyahu’s 2015 address to Congress amid the Obama administration’s push for an Iran nuclear deal.
Katherine M. Clark is my representative. Her cowardice on this issue shows how much she has been corrupted by power and money.
Hakeem Jeffries is even worse. There’s a special place in hell for him.
Backtracking has a worse impact even than silence, I fear. I think that the founding principle of Israel attributes rights to people on the basis of being Jewish, which is in part a matter of ancestry, which at least raises at least some of the some of the same problems as attributing rights on the basis of ancestral characteristics known as ‘racial’
Michelle Goldberg had this essay in today’s New York Times, which I think hits the nail on the head:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/opinion/israel-racist-state-pramila-jayapal.html
The Hysterical Overreaction to Jayapal’s ‘Racist State’ Gaffe…It’s telling that Democratic House leaders referred in their statement to Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which pledges that Israel will “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex.” We can argue about whether that promise was ever compatible with a political project that, in creating a national home for one oppressed and stateless people, made refugees of another. What’s important today, however, is that Israel’s leadership no longer even appears to aspire to this founding ideal….Today, there are nearly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinian Arabs living in Israel and the occupied territories. For Palestinians living under occupation, there is no pretense of equal rights: They are subject to regular land seizures and home demolitions and constant restrictions on their freedom of movement. But even Palestinian citizens of Israel face legal as well as social discrimination. Israel’s Palestinian citizens, for example, cannot obtain citizenship for spouses who are from the West Bank or Gaza, dooming thousands of couples to live separately….Israel’s most die-hard backers, Jayapal told me, are “feeling that they’ve lost credibility because the Netanyahu government’s policies are so racist, and they want to silence any discussion of any criticism.” She’s right. If Israel’s champions are truly worried about the fallout from accusations of racism, they might act to make them seem less credible.
…and Peter Beinart has this to say in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/democrat-aoc-boycott-israel-isaac-herzog
Why progressives like AOC are right to boycott Israeli President Isaac Herzog…For Democratic leaders like Joe Biden, Herzog embodies the good Israel. Unfortunately, they are wrong…For Democratic leaders, he [ Herzog ] embodies the good Israel….the harsh reality is that if you stop comparing Herzog to the Israeli right and instead evaluate his commitment to the principles of equality and non-discrimination that Democrats claim to cherish, he doesn’t look very good at all…Herzog spent his time as head of Israel’s Labor party looking fearfully over his right shoulder, trying to reassure Jewish Israelis that he could dehumanize Palestinians too. In 2015, he issued a campaign video in which veterans of the Israeli military claimed that he “understands the Arab mentality” and “has seen Arabs in all kinds of situations”, including “in the crosshairs”. In 2016, Herzog said Labor needed to ditch its reputation as “Arab lovers”. When his remarks drew criticism, he doubled down, vowing that he would never “prefer the interests of the Palestinians”, who constitute 20% of Israel’s citizens and roughly 50% of the people under Israeli control….even when Herzog has argued for territorial withdrawal, he’s often done so in the language of Jewish supremacy…
Lily white politically appointed former Ambassador and current Jewish supremacist David Friedman telling PoC Indian born elected US Representative Pramila Jayapal that “I’m not racist, you’re racist!” Is peak 2023 Hasbara!
Rep. Jayapal should not have backed down on this. I understand her desire to clarify her statements, but in doing so she opened the door to being steamrolled and strong armed by her dishonest critics, and having her very legitimate criticisms unduly undermined.
She’s not wrong. Israel IS a racist state. Period. The very notion of an entire state founded and based purely on ethic character alone was, is, and will always be the textbook definition of racist. Not even the Holocaust, ESPECIALLY NOT the Holocaust, justifies such a state founded on such ethnic supremacist ideology.
Sure, not everyone in Israel or those who support Israel is racist, far from it, but that doesn’t mean that the very nature, founding principles, basic laws, and actions of the state (and those who vote for and enable it) are not racist. And those non-racist Israelis and supporters aren’t the ones that are going to be upset by this label, because they are the minority that is most acutely aware of the racist nature of the state at virtually every level. So backtracking and “clarifying” her statement serves absolutely no one but her dishonest detractors.
She should have gone to the mats on this one and made these scumbags and stooges in Congress come out of their dark money holes and into public view, rather than kowtowing to behind the scenes pressure and hidden from the public and media view. Because now all the media coverage is of a politician “walking back her statements” rather than coverage and a healthy discussion of the validity of her statement.
It’s an amateur move and she’s been played for an idiot by the most basic low effort sleight of hand move from the pro-Israel establishment. Now no one in the general public or mainstream media will take anything else she says on the matter seriously, no matter how right she is, because they all know she’ll buckle like a belt and walk it back the minute things hotter than room temperature. She’s lost the public trust.
Her supporters would have actually appreciated her sticking to her principles and backed her play on this issue. Instead now she just looks like just another soft, iffy, easily manipulated and bullied politician that flows with the currents of political, financial, and big donor influence. Rather than a representative of, by, and for the people.
The GOP gets a lot wrong in US politics, but they get this one thing right. Never give an inch on an issue you truly believe in, especially if you are correct, because you’ll lose not just the middle but your base too. Your supporters will always appreciate you fighting for them and their values no matter how right (or wrong) you are. Who now is going to stick with her when she faces a well funded AIPAC backed primary challenger?