Republicans demonstrate their terrifying Palestine policy

For well over eight months, we have watched U.S. President Joe Biden and his team of accomplices fund and empower Israel’s genocide in Gaza. During that time, we have also had to endure a constant flow of gaslighting as Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and their colleagues and spokespeople try to convince the public that they would really like Israel to ease its slaughter of Palestinians, but Israel just won’t listen to them.

It’s a monstrous charade. And it’s not just the President and his flunkies. The mainstream of the Democratic Party is marching in lockstep with Biden’s support of genocide. Democratic leaders in Congress even signed on to an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. 

There is a profound sense of disappointment for many Democrats at this performance, although, for close observers of U.S. politics around Palestine, it looks little different from the past four decades of bipartisan anti-Palestinianism.

The shameful performance by Democrats around Gaza can make it easy to forget just how monstrous Republicans are. But, with the GOP in control of the House of Representatives, they always have the opportunity to remind us. They took advantage of that opportunity last week. 

As the House readied their versions of the annual “must-pass” bills to fund the State and Defense Department’s budgets, we got a good reminder of what Republican views of Palestine are. 

These bills—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriation Bill (SFOPS)—regulate what funds are available and what they can and cannot be used for in overseas operations, including diplomacy, the military, humanitarian aid, direct financial support, and other items. 

For House Republicans, this is an opportunity to score points with their constituents. Most Republicans (there are a few exceptions, most of them in the Senate) have little or no interest in foreign affairs, beyond the points they can score with their constituents. They don’t really understand what effect some of their outrageous ideas might have on U.S. interests, beyond the fact that they could not care less about things like justice, peace, or human rights (true of many mainstream Democrats as well). Whether their amendments will become law or not is secondary, if it’s a consideration at all for them, to grandstanding. 

With Democrats in control of both the White House and the Senate, there is no chance that these bills will become law in their current form, though some of the outrageous Republican ideas could make it into the final bill.

But it is important to bear in mind that if Republicans do gain control of Congress in November, this will not change their approach to foreign policy. As a result, while the current House versions of the NDAA and SFOPS bills will not pass the Senate, they do tell us how Congress will behave should Republicans gain control of both houses.

Some of the items in the NDAA and SFOPS bills include:

• A complete ban on using U.S. funds to rebuild or build anew in Gaza
• A ban on any funds being used to facilitate admitting and resettling refugees from Gaza in the United States
• A firm ban on Defense Department contracts and any funding by DoD or State of any entity—business or government—that participates in any boycott of Israel (note, this will affect European countries as it will include territories controlled by Israel, i.e. settlements)
• A permanent ban on construction of any kind of port or pier off the Gaza coastline.
• Ending funding for the Office of Palestinian Affairs in the State Department
• Treating the West Bank and Gaza as two separate units. This has long been a goal of those who wish to frustrate the aspirations for a Palestinian state in favor of a Greater Israel, as noted by Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (whose regular updates and reporting provided much of the information for this article)
• Slashing 15% of the budget for the United Nations and U.N. agencies across the board
• Banning all funding for UNRWA
• Cutting all funding to the World Health Organization, International Court of Justice, and International Criminal Court

That list is not comprehensive, but those are some of the highlights. Detailed summaries of the NDAA and SFOPS paint an even grimmer picture. The bills include several measures to limit the flexibility of the White House to work around congressional diktats, blocking or curtailing the scope of the national security waivers that many anti-Palestinian provisions have included in the past.

Trump vs Biden

For all the differences in rhetoric, Joe Biden was largely continuing Donald Trump’s policy in Palestine and Israel before October 7, 2023, and the ensuing campaign of genocide in Gaza. The rhetoric changed, of course, but the policy and the realities on the ground did not. 

Even when Israel elected its most radical, proto-fascist government ever, Biden’s policy remained unwavering. Palestinians got lip service, at best, Israel escalated its attacks on the West Bank with total impunity, and Biden doggedly pursued a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would have extinguished the last, faint hopes for a diplomatic path to Palestinian freedom.

It’s very hard to see what Trump would have done differently in those years. After October 7, it is inconceivable that Trump would have gone against his own base to rein Israel in. And he certainly would not even consider anything that might threaten the billions of taxpayer dollars that go to U.S. weapons manufacturers to keep the tidal wave of weaponry flowing to Israel. So there is no reason to believe anything would have been materially different from Biden.

The arguments that have been waged around Biden’s complicity in genocide, with Biden supporters claiming Trump would be worse, are pointless. While a case can be made for either of them being worse, they’re both so bad, even relative to other U.S. presidents, it really doesn’t matter. The only thing that does matter is how to change the murderous American policy to one that no longer provides Israel all it needs to maintain its apartheid nature and genocidal efforts. 

But in Congress, Republicans have been leading the fanatical, pro-Israel vendetta against universities, pressing them to abandon academic freedom because serious study and inquiry of the Middle East does not lead to good conclusions for Israel. The House hearings intimidating and threatening university presidents have been the vanguard of the broader effort to make debate on policy toward Palestine and Israel impossible. Without public debate, they hope to nullify the growing demands for a change in policy.

Republicans are demonstrating more plans to stifle that debate. The SFOPS bill, in its clause that cuts U.N. funding, includes a requirement for the Secretary of State to report to Congress on the U.N. and its agencies “taking credible steps to combat anti-Israel bias.” In doing so, the bill requires that the Secretary report on “efforts to combat antisemitism, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance…”

This is a small taste of what we’ve already seen taking shape, where the IHRA definition of antisemitism is used to completely silence criticism of Israel. While this is just one instance of Republicans using the IHRA definition, it’s a direct connection between it and alleged “anti-Israel bias,” which is aimed at eradicating any distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, let alone anti-Zionism.

In the world of Palestine advocacy, it has long been true that the pro-Israel camp draws from both political parties and from a political spectrum spanning the far-right all the way through liberal communities. This hasn’t changed. 

Biden’s legacy as Genocide Joe is secure. But what is perhaps most dangerous is the growing alliance he represents between so-called “moderates” and the far-right on Palestine. His policies have complemented and reinforced the witch-hunt and abuse of the issue of antisemitism by congressional Republicans. More and more, this is forcing moderates and liberals to choose between the side that holds progressive values and opposes genocide and the side of white supremacy, even white nationalism, that embraces it. 

Those decisions are being made every day. We can see it when Biden administration officials resign over his Gaza policy, and we can see the other side when people self-identified as liberals go on the airwaves as apologists for genocide. We can be sure that Republicans are not offering any kind of alternative. Whether one finally does develop will depend at least in part on how many of those moderates and liberals decide they don’t want to be on the side of white nationalism and genocide.