Haaretz recently reported that Israel is sending a clear message to Saudi Arabia when it comes to a potential normalization agreement: it has to be done while Biden is in office. If the Democrats don’t control The White House in 18 months the whole thing will probably fall apart.
Why? Because if a Republican wins it will presumably be Trump and Democrats aren’t going to trust a deal that he’s involved in. “There is a chance to recruit enough Republicans to support a deal under a Biden administration, due to their support for Israel,” a source involved in talks told the paper. “It will be much harder to convince Democrats to support such a deal, if the three people most identified with it are Donald Trump, Mohammed bin Salman, and Bibi Netanyahu.”
Let’s step back and think about this. The majority of Democrats might be poised to back a plan where two of the main players are Mohammed bin Salman and Benjamin Netanyahu. The human rights abuses of these leaders are not deal breakers for an agreement that will undoubtedly be framed as a peace deal. Let’s recall what Saudi Arabia is reportedly asking for. A “defensive” pact, advanced weaponry, support for their nuclear program. At the site Mitchell Plitnick covers the efforts and notes some of the possible consequences.
“Saudi Arabia has demonstrated that it will not hesitate to turn to devastating military force to defend its perceived interests, and the result has been the utter devastation of the poorest country in the region, Yemen,” he writes. “The United States was a willing partner in that effort, but the Saudis resisted later U.S. efforts to draw down the war. Granting that country access to a much higher level of U.S. weaponry than it already has will only embolden an already aggressive Saudi regime. Plus, it will create great pressure on Saudi rivals in the region (Iran, obviously, but also the UAE) to upgrade their own capabilities in response.”
When he was running for president Biden claimed that he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and other atrocities, but that was a lie.
This whole thing might fall apart if Trump is elected again, but that would boil down to a PR calculation. The reality is that most Democrats support the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, which brokered massive arms deals and purposely isolated the Palestinians. The two major parties have joined forces to expand the deals. Recent polling shows that most residents of Gulf countries oppose normalization with Israel but, like public opinion in the United States, this doesn’t actually matter to lawmakers.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently declared he wants to take Trump’s vision even further. “As president, I want to achieve the Abraham Accords 2.0 and bring in Saudi Arabia, Oman and Indonesia,” he says. “It would be good for everyone.”
When he says “everyone,” he is actually referring to governments and weapons companies.
The press is virtually nowhere to be found on all this. James North has a piece on the New York Times uncritically promoting the plan without mentioning the Crown Prince’s crimes.
At a recent State Department briefing Al Quds‘ Said Arikat asked spokesperson Matthew Miller why The White House established an envoy position to push a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but hasn’t set one up to further Israel-Palestinian negotiations. Here’s some of that exchange:
Miller: I don’t think you should read into – I don’t think you should read in – I don’t think you should read into anything about relative prioritization based on the appointment of a special envoy. There are senior officials in this building and senior officials at the White House who are actively engaged in pressing for a two-state solution and who raise it directly with senior leaders in Israel, including the prime minister.
Arikat: So when was the last time that the United States actually tried to broker some sort of talks even, peace talks, between the Palestinians and the Israelis and so on?…
Miller:.. It is an issue that we have raised repeatedly in our conversations with leaders in Israel as well as our conversations with leaders of the Palestinian Authority.
Arikat: But the truth is, I mean, there are envoys. There’s Andrew Miller – today had met with the Palestinians, went to Palestinian towns, and so on. But there is no effort to reignite, if you wish, or restart peace talks. You agree with me, right?
Miller: Said, it is our policy that we continue to press both the Israeli prime minister and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority for. It is also an issue that has come up in the context of normalization. I don’t know if you – if you followed the press conference when the Secretary traveled to Saudi Arabia. The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia made clear that one of the things that they were interested in, in the context of normalization, was seeing some progress on issues between Israel and the Palestinian people.
Secretary of State Blinken has said the same thing. That any deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia “should advance the well-being of the Palestinian people.” However, it’s impossible to take that suggestion seriously based on the track record of the United States government on this issue.
Miller’s response to Arikat gives away the game. He admits there’s no envoy working to improve things for Palestine but says there are people in the government talking about a hypothetical two-state solution around the clock. We know what that means: absolutely nothing.
Bowman challenged over Israel
Who is Michael Gerald? It’s easy to forget about the Baptist pastor. He launched a primary challenge against Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) during the midterms, but dropped out of the race after just a few weeks.
Now he’s back, having filed his paperwork for another run. No surprise that the big issue is Israel here. He calls himself a “fierce supporter” of the country. He thinks that Bowman is “viscerally anti-Israel.”
A couple of weeks ago Jewish Insider ran a piece in which pro-Israel voters were lamenting the lack of a viable candidate to run against Bowman. The consensus pick was former state legislator George Latimer, but there was some concern that other candidates could chip away at his potential vote total if they ran.
The big takeaway from that piece is that AIPAC met with Latimer to encourage him to run. The lobbying group consistently attacks Bowman on Twitter, but they sat out the district last election cycle. Bowman won his 2022 primary with 54% of the vote. That’s certainly not a romp, and you’ll recall that Rep. Ilhan Omar only narrowly prevailed in her primary race. AIPAC didn’t back Omar’s challenger publicly, but the good ol’ Federal Election Commission filings are eventually released, and it turned out that AIPAC had spent $350,000 trying to defeat her.
On one hand you have the potential of pro-Israel lobbying groups getting involved in the fight, but you also have pressure on Bowman from the left. He’s made strong statements on the treatment of Palestinians, he backs McCollum’s bill, he opposed a resolution commemorating the anniversary of Israel, voted against Abraham Accords expansion, has fought for accountability on the Shireen Abu Akleh killing, skipped Herzog’s speech in Congress, and was one of the only House members to vote against the recent resolution denying apartheid.
This is great stuff when graded on the curve of U.S. politics, but he also voted for Iron Dome funding, opposes the BDS movement, and got into a sizable rift with DSA after visiting Israel on a J Street trip in 2021.
Gerald is a critic of the current Israeli government and Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, but he says New York’s 16th district should not be following “one small faction that seems to be anti-Israel.” He wants to get the seat back to the Democratic’s mainstream. This will be an interesting one to watch, regardless of the outcome.
Odds & Ends
✝️ The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has declared that “many of the laws, policies and practices of the State of Israel meet the definition of apartheid as defined in international law.”
Jeff Wright at the site:
The resolution, Compelled to Witness: Answering the Cry of Our Palestinian Siblings—citing reports from B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and a 2022 Pastoral Letter written by leaders of the denomination—affirms “that many of the laws, policies and practices of the State of Israel meet the definition of apartheid as defined in international law.”
Attended by over 3,000 persons, the assembly also asserted that “the continued oppression of the Palestinian people is a matter of theological urgency and represents a sin in violation of the message of the Biblical prophets and the Gospel.”
Daniel Mitchell, a youth from the primary submitting congregation, introduced the resolution by describing his recent pilgrimage to Palestine/Israel. Referencing an Israeli military raid on the Dheisheh refugee camp this past January, he said, “As I slept in a hotel in Bethlehem only a few miles away, Israeli forces fired live ammunition at teenagers, hitting and killing 15-year-old Adam Ayyad. Devastatingly, Adam’s story is not unique. In the first 200 days of 2023, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed, including 29 children.”
????️ The Drop the ADL coalition published a piece on the ADL’s connection to Biden’s antisemitism strategy:
The White House plan supercharges the ADL and a new astroturf, billionaire-backed sector of dozens of groups modeled on the ADL. These include groups like StandWithUs, Amcha, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center who are actively engaged in attacks on BIPOC organizers, educators, elected officials, and progressive Jewish groups. Their right-wing work is not limited to advocacy for Israel; they pursue right-wing policy through the major institutions of everyday life. Targeting public education, for instance, they are trying to derail ethnic studies and attacking Critical Race Theory. Targeting social media, for instance, they mobilize trolls to silence Palestinian accounts of Israeli ethnic cleansing. While social justice movements advocate against repressive policing and surveillance, the ADL and its allies advocate for more. To portray these attacks as “antiracist”, they frequently claim they are aligned with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and smear their opponents as “antisemites.”
???? Tablet Magazine has published some dueling opinion pieces on whether the United States should cut military aid to Israel. One installment is penned by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who insists that the government should continue to send Israel more than $3.8 billion a year. “The provocative proposal to end U.S. aid to Israel is, quite simply, a solution in search of a problem,” he writes.
Tablet probably should have included an editor’s note informing readers that Torres’s number-one contributor is AIPAC.
???? War enthusiast Max Boot has become the latest mainstream pundit to suggest it might be time to rethink military aid to Israel. Boot offers all the usual caveats about his admiration for the country before lightly suggesting aid be cut a little. He even mentions that he defended the invasion of Lebanon at his bar mitzvah.
There’s some references to settlement expansion and the racism of the new government, but the bulk of his complaints are very Max Boot. He worries about Netanyahu increasing subsidies for ultra-Orthodox schools because they “produce graduates..unwilling to either serve in the military or pursue careers in business.” He criticizes Israel for not lending more support to the Ukraine effort. He’s angry that Israel leadership might meet with China before they meet with The White House.
Boot’s big issues are the supposed deterioration of Israel’s democratic values and a potential rift in its relationship with the United States. That’s the thing with this recent boom of pieces on the topic. Cutting aid is presented as a hypothetical thought exercise to reign Netanyahu in, but there’s no discussion about the United States funding daily brutalities against the Palestinian people. He ends with an amazing punchline: “Like many Americans, I simply cannot support it as unreservedly as I once did.”
???? On July 28 activists dropped off a petition to Christina Aguilera’s management agency, Roc Nation, calling on her to cancel an upcoming show in Israel. “From featuring queer and trans people in your music videos, to fighting for marriage equality – we know you value using your platform to uplift others and challenge the status quo,” it reads. “Whatever the intentions may be, this performance will be promoted as an endorsement of the Israeli government and a blow to the Palestinian-led freedom movement. It will be seen as tacitly condoning the violence and oppression the Israeli government commits against Palestinians every day.”
???? The DSA Is at a Crossroads Over Palestine
???????? What are the priorities of the House Minority Leader? For Hakeem Jeffries, one of them is visiting Israel. This week he announced that he’s leading a congressional delegation to the country in a few days. That will be his second trip of 2023 and his 7th since entering Congress a decade ago. “Understand something,” he told the crowd at a recent event. “I’m from Brooklyn where we consider Jerusalem to be the 6th borough. So I’m just starting to catch up.”
It’s not the first time he’s used this line.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
One must wonder where Biden’s vaunted empathy is. This empathy appears not to exist for Palestinians, who are non-European and often darker and brown like me.