The Shift: Ramaswamy immediately backs down on cutting US aid to Israel

As soon as GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said the United States should cut military aid to Israel, you knew it was only a matter of time before the statement would be walked back.

Sure, he said that it shouldn’t happen until 2028. Yes, he prefaced the idea with profuse praise for Israel. However, it doesn’t matter how many caveats you slap onto such a sentiment. If you suggest cutting military aid to the United States’ closest ally, you’re going to face political backlash. Especially if you’re a Republican.

At the first GOP debate former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley went at Ramaswamy over the comment, claiming that Israel is protecting the United States from the threat of Iran. “It’s not that Israel needs America, it’s that America needs Israel,” she said.

Ramaswamy didn’t only get it from members of his own party. He was also attacked from the right by Democrats across social media. “If Vivek Ramaswamy had it his way, the United States would turn its back on our closest ally, and the only functional democracy, in the Middle East,” tweeted Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA). “Support for Israel’s security must be a cornerstone of U.S foreign policy.”

Ramaswamy stood firm in the immediate aftermath of the debate. He told Fox News that it “would be a mark of success if we ever got to a point in our relationship with Israel if Israel never needed the United States’ aid.”

“I’ve traveled to Israel, I have business partners in Israel,” he told viewers. “The reality is this- by the end of my first term, our relationship with Israel will be stronger than it ever has been because I will treat it as a true friendship, not just a transactional relationship.”

It’s not every day you see a GOP candidate grilled by Sean Hannity, but with Israel all bets are off. “Do you understand the importance of the strategic alliances, the intelligence sharing in an area of the world where we have a lot of enemies, which by the way boggles my mind that we look for the lifeblood of our economy and the world’s economy from that very same region of the world,” blathered Hannity. “We have more natural resources here… but you do understand how important that alliance is and how important the intelligence factor is and how important it is with Iran especially seeking nukes.”

A week later Ramaswamy was singing a much different tune. In an interview with Israel Hayom he assured everyone that “we will not cut aid as long as Israel tells us so.”

I do not think the Israeli government will not say, “Stop sending us $3.8 billion” anytime soon.

Plus, Ramaswamy now says that’s not even that much money when you think about it. “The reality is that the three billion in aid that we give to Israel is a tiny drop in the bucket for the U.S. military budget.”

Furthermore, the idea of cutting aid (an idea that he embraced days ago) can now safely be dismissed as ridiculous. “And so, in a certain way, it would be silly for us to want to skimp or cut that when in fact, it’s not just in Israel’s interest, but that’s in our own interest, even nationally, in building our industrial base,” he concluded.

This brief saga has produced a multitude of notable moments, but I’d like to single out a tweet from CNN Political Commentator and former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. He shared an article summarizing the candidate’s original comments and wrote, “Just worth noting that Vivek Ramaswamy⁩ is not a serious person.”

Ramaswamy thinks abortion is murder and he claims climate change is a hoax. He wants to defund the Department of Education and rails against a fictitious entity called the “modern woke-industrial complex.” Does any of this make him unserious to Kinzinger? No, the thing that makes him silly and unimportant is the modest suggestion that the United States shouldn’t continue to give Israel billions.

Biden chose to ‘smother Netanyahu with love’ during deadly attack on Gaza

Franklin Foer’s The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future will be released next week.

The Forward’s Jacob Kornbluh obtained a copy and wrote about the book’s chapter on Israel.

While Israel attacked Gaza during May 2021 (killing more than 243 Palestinians, including at least 66 children) Biden told his staff that he would hold off on urging restraint for fear of alienating Netanyahu. The chapter title summarizes his strategy: “Hug Bibi Tight.”

Here’s Kornbluh:

In one of their phone conversations, after Israel bombed a 12-story building in Gaza City that served as a home base for journalists, including some working for the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, Biden withheld criticism, and instead asked Netanyahu to help him understand his strategy. “Biden spent more than an hour conducting his inquiry in the spirit of friendship,” Foer writes. “But he was also trying to expose the shortcomings in Bibi’s thinking.”

Foer added that Netanyahu “inadvertently” admitted he had no defined objective in ending the airstrikes, “but Biden held his tongue.”

Netanyahu evidently agreed to a ceasefire once the White House expressed skepticism. Foer writes that Netanyahu told Biden he needed to accomplish more with the bombings but the President told him, “Hey, man, we are out of runway here. It’s over.” 

In his memoir, Netanyahu says Biden told him, “Bibi, I gotta tell you, I’m coming under a lot of pressure back here,” and he was. Across the world thousands of people poured into the streets to protest the attacks, and (in a tremendously rare turn of events) Biden even faced some pressure from fellow Democrats. Rep. Rashida Tlaib even confronted him about the destruction on the tarmac in Detroit.

Odds & Ends

???????? Once again a group of congressional Democrats has visited Israel on a trip organized by AIPAC to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This one was led by Rep. Lucy McBath of Georgia. “It’s very important for us, and I view this meeting as an important building block in this relationship,” said Netanyahu. “I’d like to have the opportunity to hear you. Perhaps you’ll have an opportunity to hear me. I think the support that we have received from you for the State of Israel is vitally important. So I want to thank you and I mean that from the heart and the mind.”

???????? Democrats Demand Subpoena on Jared Kushner’s Shady Saudi Connections

???????? Biden has nominated former US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew as his ambassador to Israel.

???? US delegation heading to Saudi Arabia amid Biden normalization push. From the Times of Israel:

A delegation of top American officials is slated to travel to Riyadh this week to meet with Saudi counterparts in order to discuss a potential normalization agreement between the Gulf kingdom and Israel, a US official and a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

The visit by White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf will come just over a month after US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Saudi Arabia with the same objective, pointing to Washington’s continued determination to broker an elusive deal. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Riyadh on the same mission in June.

☎️ Here’s Blinken on Twitter regarding a conversation with Abbas: “I had an important conversation with Palestinian Authority President Abbas. I reiterated our support for advancing the freedom, security, and prosperity of the Palestinian people and for a two-state solution. I also stressed our concern over the violence in the West Bank.”

And here’s Blinken on his conversation with Netanyahu: “Today I had an important call with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to reaffirm our bilateral partnership and U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.  I also reiterated continued U.S. support for expanding Israel’s regional integration.”

Easy to spot the difference here.

???? Saudi-Israeli romance? It’s complicated

✉️ The Illinois Coalition for Human Rights writes to state legislature members visiting Israel on an Israel lobby junket: 

This trip to Israel is a blatant propaganda trip to give comfort and a feeling of normalcy regarding Israel’s current government under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, the most right-wing, extremist and racist leadership coalition since Israel’s inception.  International opposition to Israeli apartheid is at an all-time high, following the widespread pogroms against Palestinians throughout the West Bank. 

Whether or not it is your intention, your official visit is providing political cover for the right-wing Israeli government officials and their settler proxies. Although you are interspersing a few meetings with Palestinians in the midst of your meetings with the Israeli officials, this trip clearly sends the message that for Illinois, it is business as usual for Israel.  

???? Biden won’t ‘lie on the barbed wire’ for Israeli protesters, Barak says

????️ The lobbying group Democratic Majority for Israel praises the Lew nomination

???? More than 200 New Yorkers showed up for the first town hall on the Not On Our Dime! Act.

Stay safe out there,

Michael