The pending crisis for the Israel lobby

As Israel experiences its greatest crisis in 50 years, the American Israel lobby has risen to the occasion. Jewish organizations have consolidated their support for the Israeli military, with even liberals like J Street joining the cry that there must not be a ceasefire.

Jews who heard their parents’ stories about the crises for Israel in 1948 and 1967 and 1973 are demonstrating that they will show up for the Jewish state in its hour of need, politically in the West.

And surely that organized Zionist community has been successful so far in traditional methods: in getting Biden to fly to Israel and stand by Netanyahu’s war cabinet and invoke the Holocaust; in pressing the mainstream media to humanize the October 7 Jewish victims, and not the faceless Palestinian ones; and in organizing campaigns to cancel and demonize Palestinian supporters in Jewish forums and media ones too.

But despite the lobby’s best efforts, there is a new political map in the U.S., and the lobby is approaching a crisis. Today, it is up against foes it has never had before and that, in the long run, will defeat it.

Three forces have announced themselves: 1. the establishment is wobbly; even pro-Israel voices (Peggy Noonan, Richard Haass, Thomas Friedman) are expressing deep fears about what Israel has become and its absence of a vision for a future beside massacring Palestinians; 2. the Jewish community on which the lobby depends is fracturing, with brave strong young people labeling apartheid and genocide; 3. the intersectional politics of the left have brought a diverse coalition to challenge Israeli racism in ways that were marginalized in the past. That coalition is exerting a groundswell that is now scaring Democrats about losing Michigan.

The modern Israel lobby was born during Israel’s two great crises of 1967 and 1973. Earlier Zionist lobbies had played a crucial role in 1917 and 1947-48 in creating Western official support for Israel’s existence, licensing ethnic cleansing, and getting Israel nukes. But in ’67 and ’73, post-war and boomer Jews who had taken Israel’s existence for granted were called to the great cause of their lives. They built powerful institutions over the coming years to ensure that there would never be any daylight between the U.S. government and Israel, even as Israel took more and more land and set up an apartheid system. (And yes, they worked with the Christian Zionist lobby, but I am focused here on Democrats.)

For 50 years, those organizations and individuals shaped our discourse of Israel and Palestine, dominated U.S. policymaking, granted Israel immunity for every human rights violation it has committed, and managed to equate all Jewish organizational life with Zionism. As the ADL said the other day about anti-Zionist Jews calling for a ceasefire, “Although they claim to do so, these far-left radical organizations do not represent the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community.” The lobby’s wealth and influence are legendary, if not often discussed in the press.

The lobby used campaign contributions and the antisemitism charge to silence criticism of Israel inside the mainstream, and cause politicians to defer to Israel even as Israel destroyed a U.S. policy, the two-state solution. The examples of politicians who said they cared about  Palestinian human rights and then walked their sympathy back are legion, but they include Barack Obama and Joe Biden (who once lectured Menachem Begin about settlements as a young senator before he got wise.). As for presidents who stood up for Palestinian sovereignty—George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were one-termers.  

We see these tools being picked up again today in Israel’s war with Hamas. Donors have threatened to divest from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard because the schools weren’t critical enough of Palestinian solidarity events and statements. The Wexner Foundation has pulled its money from Harvard over Palestinian advocacy. Joe Biden had Democratic megadonor Haim Saban into the White House for three hours last month– and in recent days Sarah Leah Whitson and Robert Naiman have identified Biden’s election needs as a factor in his slavish support of Israel. Other writers are scared to touch the issue. But many Democrats are corrupted this way. Those protests of Sen. Fetterman’s refusal to call for ceasefire—it is reported that he gave Democratic Majority for Israel his Middle East policy position in 2022 to revise, in order that it would support him and not his rival. Those protests of Hakeem Jeffries’s support for Israel? He was there in August leading a train of 22 first-year Democrats, and sat with Netanyahu and the head of AIPAC. (And Jeffries received over $430,000 from pro-Israel donors in 2022, per Open Secrets).   

Pro-Israel talking points dominate the media coverage. NBC Nightly News focuses almost exclusively on the humanity of the Israeli victims of Oct 7. Two nights ago, it ran a cheerleading story about an Israeli American returned to serve in the Israeli Navy in the hour of need, with the Israeli flag waving as the piece ended. The destruction of Gaza ala Sarajevo or Stalingrad with civilian deaths in the 1000s hardly registers (and yes, I think some on the left overlook Hamas’s war crimes). We are seeing numerous cancellations of those with pro-Palestinian views, even an editor who praised the Onion for its moral clarity about Palestinian dehumanization. On PBS earlier this week, those supporting Palestinians on campus were cast visually as jihadists. I have heard old Jewish friends of mine in the mainstream media in recent days, surely influenced by the lobby’s claims, say that Joe Biden is taking the “morally clear” stance in siding with Israel against the “evil” Hamas; and that Gaza is not occupied, and there were refugees when the U.S. attacked terrorists in Fallujah too.

But even as the Israel lobby doubles down in the establishment and among elite influencers from Harvard to Jamie Raskin (and Bernie Sanders too), it is actually hemorrhaging traditional support.

Israel is pursuing what many on the left argue– compellingly– is a genocide, and you can see opposition emerge in three communities.  

The establishment

First, there are the establishment types, policymakers, and reporters who are afraid of what Israel is undertaking.

Tom Friedman has warned about “incoherent” Israeli plans. “Israel is about to make a terrible mistake.” Peggy Noonan cautioned Israel in the Wall Street Journal that it was developing a “bloody-minded” reputation in world opinion: “It is hard to see how a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza would make Israel’s position stronger. It will more likely bleed the country and deplete it, even as it produces an untold number of innocent casualties and a refugee crisis. It will make Israel look bloody-minded in the eyes of the world.”

The eyes of the world are open: CNN is beginning to show images of widespread massacres in Gaza. While on BBC, Jeremy Bowen said Tuesday that Israel has now killed 5,000 people, 65 percent of whom are women and children. “Even Israelis are aware that the legitimacy of what they’re doing is being reduced with every civilian they kill,” Bowen said – even with its allies. Amna Nawaz at the PBS News Hour did a superb interview Tuesday night with Netanyahu spokesperson Mark Regev, pressing him about what percentage of the dead are civilians – and showing that they number in the thousands. Regev’s coldness left a viewer shaken.

Richard Haass, the former Council on Foreign Relations president, warned in the WSJ that Israel’s actions could “cause the U.S. reputational damage with much of the so called Global South.” Then he said something I’ve never heard from an establishment pundit: the U.S. must “work to develop an Israeli partner” for the peace process. i.e., Israel destroyed the two-state solution.  

The Jewish divide

Jews are no longer united, and the anti-Zionist Jews are finally getting some mainstream airtime.

Joy Reid expressed admiration for Stefanie Fox of Jewish Voice for Peace on air the other night. The bravery and courage of IfNotNow and JVP’s ceasefire demonstrations and arrests fill me with pride in their values. These are my people, and I love them. There is one in my own family.

Their argument is clear and undeniable — You cannot assure Jewish safety by establishing a military apartheid state for Jews that deals out terror.

This awakening will produce war inside the lobby’s base. Remember that J Street had to crush a young Jew who supported BDS last year after I reported what she said. She retracted her statement. J Street is going to have a much bigger uprising over its support for ongoing Israeli military brutality (it is led by an official whose father was a member of the Irgun– “He was a terrorist,” Jeremy Ben-Ami said). And I can just imagine the therapy sessions when the children of leading Jewish writers try to process the fact that their dad was a prison guard for Palestinians, or helped Joan Peters write “Of Time Immemorial” saying there were no Palestinians, or advocated for the Iraq war because the U.S. had to invade the “heart of the Arab world and smash something” in order to convince Arabs that suicide bombers in Tel Aviv must not be supported.

I’d stress that these non-and-anti-Zionist Jews act with an awareness of Jewish power. Their t-shirts saying “Not in My Name” and “Jews for Cease Fire” are recognitions of the fact that Jewish organizations have great influence over Middle East policy in Washington. That influence has been wielded through unanimity. The lobby has spoken with one voice– as the voice of Jews– so these Jews are trying to undermine the power of the lobby. They have also been unapologetic about condemning Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.

They are such a threat that the ADL has said they don’t represent the Jewish community and said anti-Zionists are creating a “prelude to genocide” of the Jewish people. The lobby is terrified of young Jews.

The intersectional left

The most important threat to the lobby is the intersectional left.

At a speaking engagement at the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia on Sunday, I likened the Hamas attack of October 7 to the Nat Turner revolt of 1831 that targeted white families in Virginia and for which Turner, an enslaved person, was executed.

Afterward, one of the few African-Americans in my largely white older audience told me she’d been studying the issue since October 7 – and come to the same understanding, This was like Nat Turner. She went on to say, Palestinians are oppressed and Black people must be on their side, given our own story. She knows that Dream Defenders and BLM got there ahead of her, and still there is a new movement inside her community. She pointed out that when Cherelle Parker, the Democrat who is sure to be elected Philadelphia’s mayor in November, posted her support for Israel on Instagram last week, black constituents on that platform overwhelmingly rose to condemn her for taking the wrong side against Palestinians subject to genocide. She scrolled through comments showing me the anger. “You just lost 200,000 votes.”

This same anger is evident in the largest demonstrations at Harvard in years, led by a pro-Palestinian coalition, and in the fact that Mazin Qumsiyeh in Bethlehem reports that he has gotten 55 interview requests, he has never been in such demand to tell the Palestinian story, and that he sees a “global uprising” on behalf of Palestinian humanity that Palestinians have long beseeched the enlightened world to initiate. Elie Mystal wrote a great piece about this at the Nation — Joe Biden could lose in 2024 because he is alienating brown and black voters in swing states.

It took that young woman only two weeks to figure out what was going on in Palestine. The issue is not complicated; and the greatest threat to the lobby is open discussion of the issue in the Democratic base.

The lobby was famously a nightflower that operates best in darkness. When people learn the facts, they will bring it down.

Thanks to Fred Nagel and Donald Johnson and James North.