In recent installments of The Shift, we’ve talked about how many Democratic lawmakers are altering their public rhetoric on U.S. aid to Israel, especially ones who face reelection campaigns or have presidential aspirations.
Chief among these is former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has repeatedly declared that the United States need not gift Israel weapons.
“No more U.S. military … financial assistance by the taxpayers for Israel,” Emanuel recently declared on Bill Maher’s show. “You’re a country, like all other allies of ours, Japan, South Korea, the Brits, the Germans. You’re going to pay full price. You can buy what you want, but you have to abide by the laws”
“No more U.S. taxpayer support. It’s not where Israel was 20 years ago — and I was in the room when we — President Obama … largest assistance was under President Obama,” he added. “We did the funding for the Iron Dome. But here, the days of taxpayers subsidizing Israel militarily, that’s over.”
Under this new arrangement, Israel will remain an ally. The U.S. will continue to offer diplomatic support for occupation, apartheid, and genocide. It will also continue to receive U.S. weapons. It will just have to start paying for them, rather than get them for free. This new agreement is easily spun as a great boon for the U.S. economy, which Israel will be helping.
So, it’s basically business as usual.
However, the rebranding has been embraced by the media without much further analysis. “Rahm Emanuel moves to the left on Israel” declares a recent NBC News headline.
In an email to supporters on the recent Bernie Sanders resolutions and the future of military aid, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Zionist group J Street, assures supporters that Democratic support for Israel will persevere.
“So, what happened in the Senate last week isn’t Democrats turning on Israel,” reads the email. “Rather, it’s Democrats refusing to ignore the contradiction between supporting Israel and supporting a permanent occupation.”
On what planet is this a contradiction?
In the same email, Ben-Ami laments the fact that Israel’s violence against Palestinians is damaging its brand.
“Because a system built on denying another people freedom and self-determination is not just deeply immoral – it also doesn’t produce security,” he writes. “It produces recurring violence – and it leads to growing opposition to Israel, in the United States and around the world.”
Expect more of this stuff in the coming months, as pro-Israel politicians and organizations attempt to curate their stance to the current moment while avoiding any significant changes.
New York Zionists, pissed
Let’s turn to Scarsdale, New York where school leaders are investigating “unacceptable antisemitic conduct” at the town’s high school.
“Tensions are mounting in the Scarsdale school community after a troubling incident at the high school ignited outrage, concern, and renewed calls for accountability,” declares a report from a local ABC affiliate.
Rep. George Latimer (D-NY), who ousted Jamaal Bowman from New York’s 16th district seat with the help of $15 million in AIPAC money, put out a grave statement addressing the situation.
“I am deeply disturbed by the reports of antisemitic incidents at Scarsdale High School,” he wrote. “These reports demand a thorough investigation, and every individual responsible must be held fully accountable.
“At a time when the Jewish community is facing heightened threats and hostility, students deserve to feel safe in their schools – places meant for learning, growth, and community,” he continued. “No student should have to walk into their classroom in fear of the next antisemitic act.”
So, what was this antisemitic act?
After the school’s Israeli Culture Club received administrative approval to promote an event celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, students ripped down the flyers and stuck them in a boys’ bathroom urinal.
In a letter to the community, Superintendent Drew Patrick, said that putting “Israelfest” ads in plumbing fixture “places our collective sense of community in jeopardy.”
A petition calling for the guilty students to face “meaningful disciplinary action” is currently circulating.
In his own letter to the community, Scarsdale High School Principal Kenneth Bonamo assured parents that officials are “currently interviewing students and reviewing camera footage to identify those involved.”
“Denigrating the club’s efforts in this way is wholly inconsistent with our values, both as a matter of basic fairness to support appropriate and approved student activities and because these actions constitute antisemitism,” he declared.
However, Bonamo’s letter contains a brief aside that effectively disproves this claim. He acknowledges that the school had received “concerns that the unlabeled map in the flyer seems to include disputed territories as part of the State of Israel.”
“This is a core conflict in this debate, one that is worthy of exploration in civil discourse, but responding in this way is still not appropriate,” he added.
In other words, some students were angry that the school was greenlighting an event that celebrated an ethno-religious state carrying out a genocide. The flyers did not end up doused in urine as the result of antisemitism.
This pseudo-controversy was further amplified after the 17-year-old daughter of a school-board member posted a picture of the soaked leaflets with the caption, “Keep up the good work” and multiple fire emojis.
Parents are now calling for her dad’s resignation because his “household is implicated in supporting these acts.” He has had to release an apology, as has the daughter.
“I foolishly posted that angry, obnoxious meme about Scarsdale High School,” reads a statement from the daughter, that was submitted to the New York Post. “Realizing my mistake, I quickly took it down because I know it was offensive and inappropriate and I wish I had never posted it.”
“Nothing about that represents my values or those of my family,” the teen added. “I’m sorry I did it and have learned a real lesson from the response.”
A message was clearly sent here. Israel has grown incredibly unpopular around the world, but if you’re a student who criticizes the country, you will be targeted and forced to repent.
In a semi-related story, Latimer recently announced that he would not be holding any town hall meetings where his constituents are able to ask him as questions, as he believes the political culture has grown too “toxic” for such events.
Odds & Ends
🎬 How the Media Sold the Genocide in Gaza
🇵🇸 Palestinian asylum-seeker finally released
皿 ‘I’ve become stronger:’ Leqaa Kordia on life after ICE detention
🇮🇱 Ending aid isn’t enough — we need sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel now
⚖️ Truthout: Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages
♱ Responsible Statecraft: Catholics finally splitting with Trump over Iran war and Israel
🏷️ Jewish Currents: In Democratic Primaries, Leading Candidates Oppose Selling Iron Dome Interceptors to Israel
🇮🇷 Drop Site: Trump’s Erratic Behavior May Tank Negotiations, Iran Says, Warning of “Significantly Greater Costs” to the U.S. if War Resumes
⛽ Common Dreams: Trump Invokes Wartime Law to Fulfill ‘Wish List for Oil, Gas, and Coal Industries’
🗳️ Al Jazeera: Democrats up in Virginia, but US voters may pay price for redistricting war
⬟ The Intercept: Pentagon Erases Wounded U.S. Troops From Iran War Casualty List: “Definition of a Cover-up”
🚢 Zeteo: Trump’s Omnishambles Deepens With Dire Strait News
🪖 The Nation: Palestine and the Iran War
An addition to Odds & Ends: the Guardian has just reviewed Omer Bartov’s new book “Israel: What Went Wrong?“. The entire review is worth reading but here I’m selectively quoting:
The book, which was published on Tuesday, is a detailed account of how Israel was transformed from a hopeful nation that in its founding document promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex” into one intent on what he bluntly terms “settler colonialism and ethno-nationalism”…..The problem arose, from his perspective, after Israel declared its independence in 1948. “When the state decides that it’s not going to be a normal state, it’s not going to have a constitution, it’s not going to define its borders, it’s not going to try and have a normal relationship with its own Palestinian citizens, it’s not going to at least try and make a gesture of compensation and reconciliation with the people that it evicted – when it does that, then its nature changes,” he said….Additionally, the charge of antisemitism has grown hollow, Bartov said, due to its flagrant “weaponization” as “a tool to shut people up” as the state wreaks destruction on its neighbors. “Having claimed to be the definitive answer to antisemitism,” he writes in What Went Wrong?, “Israel is now the best excuse for antisemites everywhere, a nation whose addiction to violence and oppression, reliance on great powers and financial clout, and constant harping on the horrors of the Holocaust as an excuse for untethered violence against Palestinians are making even some of its erstwhile supporters shrink from it in discomfort, or horror and disgust.”
What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became’ | Israel | The Guardian
I have been following the Scarsdale tempest in a teapot ( or urinal) on the local TV news and it is ludicrous. Not a single thing on TV citing anything about the flyer depicting the WB as part of Israel. Nobody is asking why the school allowed a flyer to endorse apartheid, because that is what this was, or else the people who made the flyer were too ignorant to understand the implications of the map. The principal understands, but he thinks it is okay to put flyers in school property that advocate for annexing the WB. Apparently there are no Palestinians with relatives in the WB ( let alone Gaza) in his school or if there are, he doesn’t care.
Instead, there has been a lot of hysteria and pontification about antisemitism and hate and of course not a word about the intentions behind that map. I could believe that someone who put a map of Israel in a urinal might be motivated by antisemitism, but it seems more likely they have some knowledge of Israel’s human rights record and know exactly what that map with its WB inclusion represents and it isn’t peace and harmony and rainbows and puppy dogs.
As a compromise, though, the school should have a Palestine festival. They can use exactly the same map.
The students at Scarsdale High need to promote an event acknowledging the Nakba and see what happens. “Palestine Fest” event. Watch the hypocrisy go sky high.
Rahm Emmanuel trying to cut off the onslaught to cut all U.S. ties to the apartheid genocidal state of Israel. The Boycott Divest Sanction movement.
Rahm Emmanuel still pushing a Jewish, Democratic Israeli state.
He acts like he was some kind of early justice activist in this clip. Stating that he kept bringing up the violence perpetrated by Israeli land thieves (settlers) in 2009. Rahm “I did not need 20 years to get there.” As if he has been out on front lines calling for justice. What a scam artist.
https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/rahm-emanuel-on-impact-of-us-politics-around-the-globe/677767
Dear Rahm Norman Finkelstein has been out on front lines of this issues since mid 80’s. Edward Said birthed the front lines in the 70’s. Vanessa Redgrave and many others out on front lines back then.
What took you so long Rahm. Your still making excuses for the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel.
https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/rahm-emanuel-on-impact-of-us-politics-around-the-globe/677767
“It’s Israel stupid” Former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson with Judge Napolitino
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5boxXBUJQ
Representative Latimer appears to be a coward. Maybe he needs to be replaced by someone with the courage to meet the voters who elected him.