Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently gave some remarks at an event organized by the group USA for Israeli Democracy.
His message was essentially, “Jewish people in the United States shouldn’t be afraid to criticize the Israel’s current government,” but he made a point to mention the detrimental impact of AIPAC.
“I’m a critic of AIPAC in a way,” he explained. “AIPAC made it a rule to broadcast unison support for the government.” He says he has been trying to pressure the group to shift on this issue for years.
This gets at a subject that I’ve written about in recent issues of the newsletter. The idea that AIPAC is becoming something of a liability for supporters of Israel. First, Democratic presidential candidates beginning skipping their annual conference, then their critics began associating them with Trump and the Capitol insurrection when they backed a bunch of January 6th Republicans. Now they are being associated with Netanyahu because they refuse to back the protest movement in Israel or criticize the government.
AIPAC knows its brand is diminishing. In a recent installment of The Shift I suggested that, despite operating with a tiny budget in comparison, AIPAC sees liberal Zionist groups like J Street as an existential threat. They show you can criticize Israel (within a certain limit) and still get elected.
Cleveland Jewish News has an editorial line that’s basically the exact opposite of Mondoweiss’s, but a columnist at the site reaches similar conclusions in a recent op-ed. Former Washington lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield and consultant says that, “There’s nothing wrong with raising money to help elect your friends and defeat your opponents, but concealing your true agenda raises serious ethical questions. Especially if you’re working to help people who voted to override the U.S. Constitution and disenfranchise millions of voters.”
Bloomfield says liberal Zionists need to build a bigger tent in order to bring in liberals turned off by Netanyahu and AIPAC.
“Jews and Democrats, especially young voters, who are turned off by AIPAC and its GOP/Likud movement away from democracy and historic values, may find J Street a place to take their activism,” he writes. “Moderate Republicans must be brought in as well. The future of U.S. support for Israel may depend on it.”
There are still a number of Democrats who are backed by AIPAC and need to act like none of this stuff is actually happening. 26 House Democrats traveled to Israel on a trip sponsored by the lobbying group last month and Jewish Insider recently spoke with 7 of them about their takeaways. The prevailing message? Everything is fine! Netanyahu’s judicial reforms and the movement opposing them are simply proof that Israel is a functioning democracy.
“We are reminded that Israel is a democracy that allows people to have different views,” says Rep. Don Davis (D-NC). “That is very much a part of a democratic process… Democracy is obviously running its course.”
AIPAC spent $2.4 million to help secure Davis a victory in last year’s primary, but I digress.
This tension isn’t going away. Nearly 20 U.S. Jewish organizations are circulating an open letter urging congressional members to back a resolution that expresses support for protest movement and condemns Netanyahu reforms. Those include USA for Israeli Democracy and J Street, along with Ameinu, Americans for Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Democratic Council of America, National Council of Jewish Women, New Israel Fund, New York Jewish Agenda, Partners for Progressive Israel, Rabbinical Assembly, Reconstructing Judaism, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, Union for Reform Judaism, and UnXeptable.
It’s already backed by 47 Democrats.
AIPAC is heading into the 2024 elections with a lot of money, but how long can they hold off a reckoning on the Democratic side of the aisle?
Golda Meir Movie
Last week Golda, a new film from director Guy Nattiv, premiered in the United States. Helen Mirren plays the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and the movie tells the story of her trying to navigate the 1973 Arab–Israeli War.
“Golda is a ticking-clock thriller set during the tense 19 days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, faced with the potential of Israel’s complete destruction, must navigate overwhelming odds, a skeptical cabinet, and a complex relationship with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with millions of lives in the balance,” reads the production company’s description. “Her tough leadership and compassion would ultimately decide the fate of her nation and leave her with a controversial legacy around the world.”
“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” Meir once infamously declared. “It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”
Meir oversaw the construction of multiple illegal settlements, and in 1972, her government purposely poisoned the Palestinian village Aqraba in order to build one. Earlier this year Haaretz published a report on freshly unearthed documents detailing this process.
“The first step was dispossessing residents of the nearby Palestinian village of their land under the false pretext of making it a military training zone,” the article explains. “When the Palestinians insisted on cultivating the land, Israeli soldiers sabotaged their tools. Soldiers were later ordered to use vehicles to destroy the crops. A radical solution was employed when this failed: a crop duster spread a toxic chemical. The substance was lethal for animals and dangerous for humans.”
“It was our habit that for anything that has to do with settlements, outposts, land expropriations and so on, we simply do it and do not talk about it, but the main thing, as much as possible, is to talk less,” Meir later explained.
Mirren, who volunteered on an Israeli Kibbutz as a young person, has praised the “extraordinary magical energy” of the country. In a recent interview she criticized the BDS movement. “I’ve met great artists in Israel,” she said. “To abandon those artists didn’t seem the right thing to me. On the contrary, work with the artists of Israel. It’s the artistic community that I believe will carry Israel forward.”
Meir is still viewed as a feminist icon by many in the United States. Earlier this year Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) introduced a bill directing the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins as a tribute to Meir. “Golda Meir’s story is a testament to the progress of the Jewish people, and that of Jewish women in particular,” said Wasserman Schultz in a statement. “As a founder of the State of Israel, she modeled leadership for future generations and was fundamental in strengthening the United States-Israel partnership. I’m proud to sponsor this legislation to cement her place in history.”
Odds & Ends
???? A new letter calls on the band Imagine Dragons to cancel planned concerts in Baku and Tel Aviv over the human rights records of the Azerbaijani and Israeli governments respectively. Signatories include Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, actress Alia Shawkat, and musician Brian Eno:
We condemn all forms of racism and discrimination, including anti-Black racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, sexism and homophobia. Ethical opposition to an unjust political system or policy is both legitimate and necessary. Bigotry, hatred and discrimination targeting any group of humans based on their identity, by contrast, must be ended.
We believe Imagine Dragons share these values. We urge the group to uphold them by canceling the shows in Baku and Tel Aviv, and consistently speaking out for everyone’s safety and everyone’s human rights. Palestinians and Armenians, like all people, deserve to live in freedom, dignity, and safety. It’s not too late for Imagine Dragons to do the right thing. It would be a meaningful contribution towards freedom, justice and equality for all.
????️ I did a Reddit AMA with the group JewsOfConscience.
✍️ The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has established a task force to implement the White House strategy on antisemitism.
???????? What the latest Libya debacle tells us about U.S. and Israeli indifference to Libyan lives
???????? Biden is pushing Saudi normalization for one reason, to please the Israel lobby
???? This week a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed the lawsuit launched by Ben & Jerry’s against its parent company Unilever.
???????? Israeli Tourism Minister Haim Katz recently complained that inclusion into the U.S. visa waiver program will bring an influx of “unwanted” Palestinians. ““I don’t understand why Israel needs this at all, ” he said I am opposed to the mad pursuit of the visa exemption for the U.S., this will oblige us to allow the entry of unwanted parties, Palestinians, who will travel in the country. Who needs this?”
✊ ‘Google has no scruples.’ Employees protest Google Cloud conference over Israel military contract
???????? Palestinian Americans have much to teach by sharing their histories and shaping the future
???? NYC mayor “proud to sit” with apartheid prime minister
???????? Is BRICS big enough for the Saudi-Iran rivalry?
???? Cutting US Aid to Israel Doesn’t Go Nearly Far Enough
Stay safe out there,
Michael
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“The prevailing message? Everything is fine! Netanyahu’s judicial reforms and the movement opposing them are simply proof that Israel is a functioning democracy.
“We are reminded that Israel is a democracy that allows people to have different views,” says Rep. Don Davis (D-NC). “That is very much a part of a democratic process… Democracy is obviously running its course.”
_________________
SO true!
And we have so many excellent examples from our own history that Rep. Don Davis can share with his Zionist handlers to help them paper over the massive, and massively destructive, products a “functioning democracy” can deliver.
Let’s begin at the beginning: at the American Constitutional Convention in 1787 was it a sign of a vibrant, robust democracy that the vote was taken to enslave millions of African-Americans in perpetual human bondage? I imagine Rep. Don Davis would claim that such a vote reflects nothing more than that ”democracy allows people to have different views.”
And let’s not forget the unforgettable Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 whereby Congress voted to allow the citizens of Kansas to decide for themselves the question of whether to be a free or slave state. Surely Rep. Don Davis would assert that the long and destructive communal violence that ensued between “Border Ruffians” and “Jayhawkers” was evidence of little more than a “functioning democracy.”
And when the Confederate States of America moved to secede from the Union and instigate a bloody, four-year long Civil War which left most of the South, including his own state in utter ruin, surely Rep. Don Davis would posit that this was “just democracy obviously running its course.”
Just to bring this list up to date I might mention the current effort of House Speaker McCarthy and his cohort of Republican rabble rousers who are intent on bringing about a total shutdown of the Federal government – echoes of the “Judicial Coup” – unless the Democrats agree to a host of irrational and, IMO, impossible-to-agree-to-demands such as funding the impeachment process of the Biden family and “immediate concessions such as deeper spending cuts, eliminating funding for the prosecution of Mr. Trump and rigid border controls.” (NYT)
(Continued)
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I understand that Rep. Don Davis was likely parroting a script written by AIPAC or one of the other agencies that comprise the Israel apology machine however, he does no favors to either the Israeli or American people when he so blatantly misrepresents the facts on the ground in Israel.
I am not sure if Rep. Don Davis met with any ordinary, mainstream Palestinians during his visit but if he did they could have told him, indeed they would have told him that Israel is not a democracy as far as they are concerned. And that, Rep. Don Davis, should be all you need to correct your comments to read that Israeli democracy “allows Israeli people to have different views.”
To say that Israel is a robust, vibrant “Jewish democracy” is the same as saying that the Confederate States of America was a “robust, vibrant White Supremist democracy.” Square peg, round hole.
Question for Any Zionist: Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to compare contemporary Israel to either the formative United States or the Confederate States of America as pertains to the quality, and equality, of civil and political rights?
View here 607 posters published by the Popular Front for the LIberation of Palestine