Yesterday, Joe Biden met Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time since the Israeli Prime Minister took power last December. Netanyahu wasn’t invited to The White House. The meeting took place at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York, which was seen by some as a rebuke of Israel’s government over its proposed judicial overhaul.
This is par for the course. Publicly, the Biden administration often indicates they are feeling some slight displeasure over Israel’s extreme right government, but this alleged anxiety has never added up to action.
Before their talk, Biden assured reporters that the special relationship remained as strong as ever. “Today, we’re going to discuss some of the hard issues,” he explained. “And that is upholding democratic values that lie at the heart of our partnership, including checks and balances in our systems, and preserving the path to a negotiated two-state solution, and ensuring that Iran never, never acquires a nuclear weapon.”
“Because even where we have some differences,” he continued, “my commitment to Israel…is ironclad. I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world that’s secure. I think Israel is essential.”
Biden is currently pushing two initiatives that would deliver a couple of massive political wins for Netanyahu.
First, Israel’s entry into the visa waiver program. In order to be included, the country has launched a pilot program that’s allegedly supposed to make travel easier for Palestinian-Americans. However, human rights groups have consistently pointed out that these reforms are having very little impact. Earlier this month, 15 Senators (including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Dick Durbin) wrote to Secretary of State Blinken urging him to block Israel from obtaining a waiver. Their letter explains that the country is not meeting the meager commitments of the pilot program and that it continues to impede travel for Palestinians with American citizenship.
Here’s Mondoweiss Palestine News Director Yumna Patel writing about her recent experiences with the changes last month:
When I saw the details of the pilot program, my skepticism was, unsurprisingly, confirmed.
One would expect that Israel treating American citizens equally, regardless of race or ethnicity (the entire premise of this trial period), would translate into some pretty basic and clear regulations. Something like “all Palestinian Americans, regardless of where in the Palestinian territory they come from, are free to travel in and out of Israel visa-free for a period of X days.”
But of course, as expected, the new regulations came full of footnotes, qualifications, caveats, and more. Different rules applied to Americans with different statuses and backgrounds: there were going to be special rules for those without Palestinian IDs, those with West Bank IDs, those with Gaza IDs, and so on. At the end of the day, Israel was still going to reserve the right to deny anyone entry based on “security concerns.” The regulations (like other “pilot programs” greenlit by the U.S. before it) are intentionally vague, the processes are opaque, and thousands of Americans and Palestinians were still left scratching their heads as to how these new laws would apply to them.
So, in short, Israel was still differentiating based on people’s backgrounds and where they were from. The exact opposite of what this entire program was meant to achieve. And yet, the U.S. has continued to applaud Israel for its efforts and celebrate the pilot program and the alleged “loosening of restrictions.”
Essentially, we were being thrown some crumbs, while Israel’s boot stayed firmly on our necks.
The official date for Israel’s official entry into the program is later this month.
The other big objective for the Biden administration is a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the cynical endgame of Trump’s Abraham Accords.
Early this week, there was a report (from an alleged source in Netanyahu’s office) that Saudi Arabia was pulling out of the talks because Israel refused to make the necessary concessions on Palestine. U.S. and Israeli officials quickly denied the claim and insisted that negotiations were ongoing. “The Palestinian issue will not be an obstacle to peace,” said Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen.
“If you and I 10 years ago were talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia, I think we’d look at each other like, ‘Who’s been drinking what?” joked Biden yesterday.”
“Maybe Irish whiskey,” replied Netanyahu. “I think that under your leadership, Mr. President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And I think such a peace would go a long way for us to advance the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, achieve reconciliation between the Islamic world and the Jewish state, and advance a genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
In an interview aired on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that a deal is getting closer every day. MBS says his country wants a nuclear weapon if Iran gets one. He also wants a defense pact with the United States. That means the U.S. would be compelled to intervene if Saudi Arabia suffers an external attack like it did in 2019.
So Biden is pushing for a visa waiver despite Israel’s repressive, racist travel regulations and a pact that makes the U.S. military security guards for a repressive royal family looking to obtain a bomb. What does Netanyahu possibly have to complain about?
At the meeting, Biden said he hoped to see the Prime Minister in Washington by the end of the year, indicating there would be a White House invite after all. A senior Israeli official told Axios that the meeting was like “a conversation between old friends, not a typical exchange between world leaders armed with talking points.” Any prior disagreements are merely water under the bridge.
New Poll on Israel
There’s some interesting new polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The Americans who were surveyed see Israel as a partner, but fewer of them believe that the country shares values with the United States:
About 4 in 10 Americans said the country is a partner that the U.S. should collaborate with, but they also said the country doesn’t share our values. Just about 3 out of 10 said Israel is an ally that shares U.S. interests.
The lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) usually ignores polls on Dem attitudes toward Israel, or they find a creative way to interpret the data. It’s the latter this time. In this poll, 32% of Democrats say the U.S. supports Israel too much, and 62% say the U.S. supports them the right amount. “By 2 to 1, Democrats say U.S. support for Israel is about right or too little,” declares the organization on Twitter. They even made a little bar graph image to drive home the point.
This survey paints a rosier picture than many polls that have come before it on this issue, but even with this possible outlier, there’s stuff that DMFI has to ignore.
For instance, just 25% of Democrats think Israel is an ally with shared values, and roughly 2 in 10 Americans say Israel is either a U.S. rival or even an adversary. The poll also says Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to back an independent Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. Just 11% of Democrats said they sympathize with Israel in the conflict. That number is just 13% for Palestinians. The majority of those polled said they don’t sympathize with either side, which isn’t exactly the narrative that DMFI has based its entire existence around.
By the way, you can download DMFI’s bar graph image (or wield it during online arguments) at the org’s new “Social Media Shareables” page. You can also obtain a slide show explaining why calling Israel’s founding a “Nakba” is dangerous or a series of cartoons where two women talk about the issue.
“Isn’t the situation between Israel and Palestinians just awful? They need to free Palestine!” says one woman. “It is,” the other responds. “Palestinians deserve to live in peace alongside Israel in a Palestinian state. But did you know Hamas is one of the biggest roadblocks to peace?”
Amazing stuff.
Odds & Ends
???????? Daniel Marans has a piece at HuffPost on why Democratic candidates back Israel. He cites the case of Isaiah Martin, a 25-year-old running for the 18th congressional seat in Texas:
Martin said on his campaign website that he would support a broadly worded, pro-Israel resolution — the last of 26 bills he promised to back in Congress. Progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a critic of Israeli policies, joined ardent Israel allies in co-sponsoring the resolution, H.Res.92, in February in a failed effort to preserve Omar’s seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Left-wing critics jumped on Martin for bothering to outline his stance on the resolution while being comparatively quiet on climate change, arguing Martin does not speak for the progressive values of Generation Z. Martin responded by taking down the “issues” page of his website.
Martin’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. And the kerfuffle did not stop him from raising more than $230,000 in the first week of his campaign. It did, however, highlight how more conservative pro-Israel groups’ aggressive spending against progressive candidates in the 2022 election cycle, has made Israel an issue of paramount importance for Democratic candidates and activists, even if it is rarely a top issue for voters.
DMFI shared the article and tweeted, “This ignores the reality that candidates support Israel because Israel is our ally, because that alliance benefits the U.S., because Israel is the only country in the area that shares our values, & because constituents want electeds to support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Martin retweeted the DMFI take and wrote, “Israel is our only democratic ally in the region and has every right to exist freely and securely — I’m unapologetic about how I feel about that and will not waver off my stance. My commitment to this is ironclad.”
???? ’60 Minutes’ says Israeli pilots who kill Palestinian children are ‘moral’ defenders of ‘democracy’
???? Palestine Writes responds to racist attacks
???? Democratic Rep. Gottheimer calls on universities to censor Israel critics
???????? Report: IHRA definition having harmful impact on UK schools
Listen to them discuss equity, identity, and the Palestinian experience.
???????? ‘Hawks hurl lies over Iran prisoner swap but can’t hide this truth’
???? Biden meets Netanyahu in New York, declaring U.S. support ‘ironclad’
???? ADL says anti-Zionist activism has nearly doubled across U.S. campuses
???? AIPAC’s only incumbent targets so far for 2024 are progressive members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Akela Lacy writes about it at The Intercept:
The CBC’s silence on the electoral challenges reflects the divide among Democrats on Israel — with progressives increasingly willing to buck Capitol Hill orthodoxies and speak up for Palestinian rights — and fundraising dynamics among caucus members. AIPAC has endorsed more than half of CBC members. The AIPAC-backed members of the caucus, some 31 lawmakers, have received a previously unreported total of at least $3.6 million from AIPAC since February 2022, according to Federal Election Commission records.
???? Alex Kane has a great piece on Biden/Netanyahu at Jewish Currents:
In interviews for this piece, more than 30 policy experts, scholars, former US officials, and human rights advocates painted a portrait of a Biden administration intent on sidelining the Israeli–Palestinian issue and defaulting to maintenance of a bygone US–Israel alliance—even as Netanyahu’s current government has exploded the terms of the relationship, attacking democratic institutions and stepping up violence against Palestinians. (Many of these sources requested anonymity to protect their relationships with administration officials or to report on off-the-record meetings and conversations.) “The fundamental objective of the Biden administration in the Middle East is to calm things down,” said Indyk. Dylan Williams, senior vice president for policy and strategy at the liberal Zionist lobby J Street, said that although the Biden administration has “paid some lipservice to Israeli–Palestinian conflict issues” in its efforts to secure new normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries—especially Saudi Arabia—the president has still “broken from decades of American proactivity.” Biden “seems much more comfortable with a conflict management approach,” he said. “Unfortunately, realities on the ground are outpacing the administration.”
???? Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen speaking to American Jewish Committee leadership in New York: “I want to tell you, Israel will always be your first home or your second home. It’s up to you.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan, held up a photo of Mahsa Amini during Ebrahim Raisi’s speech at the UN. Mehdi Hasan on Twitter: “I’m guessing America’s Ambassador to the United Nations won’t be holding up a photo of Shireen Abu Akleh during Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech.”
Murtaza Hussain: “This is a great example of how human rights discourse is rendered utterly cynical by political actors. If this gentlemen is concerned with human rights, he should hold a picture of Shireen Abu Akhleh in front of himself.”
Ariel Gold: “This is literally the man who had me deported and banned from Israel for peacefully advocating there for equal rights for Palestinians. He called me ‘an extreme activist’ but somehow now is adopting protest tactics and wants the world to applaud.”
Stay safe out there,
Michael
“we’re going to discuss some of the hard issues,” he explained. “And that is upholding democratic values that lie at the heart of our partnership”
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The door is wide open for a campaign for equality in one state. Could be a game changer.