“The United States has no better friend in the world than Israel,” President Obama once said. But rank-and-file Democrats don’t agree. They put Israel at 9th on a list of America’s most important allies, way behind Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, and China among others.
The Biden administration’s opposition to Israeli settlements really is a joke. After second husband Doug Emhoff tweeted a photo of the vice president serving wine from an illegal Israeli settlement at her seder Friday night, the VP’s spokesperson tweeted: “The wine served at the Seder was in no way intended to be an expression of policy.”
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton acknowledges the contradiction between democracy and a Jewish state: “If you actually had a true one state where Palestinians and Israelis had equal rights– a democracy, right?– then demographically the Palestinians are probably going to take over the Israelis in relatively short order, they would outvote them, and that means you would really lose the concept of a Jewish state. For everybody who advocates for a Jewish state and the right for the Jewish people to have a Jewish state in the world, it’s hard to see how that works under a truly democratic single state as one would be necessarily constructed here. And that’s something that people don’t like to talk about frankly.”
American Jews overwhelmingly support the renewal of the Iran deal, and very few American Jews consider Israel a political priority, according to a new survey of American Jewish voters.
In an impressive appearance before a Pittsburgh pro-Israel group, Summer Lee, a progressive running for Congress, refused to back down on Palestinian rights. She supported conditioning aid to Israel over home demolitions and child detention. She did not rule out the idea that Israel is an apartheid state. She attacked the claim that Israel had a right to defend itself by storming the al-Aqsa mosque last year. And while she did not endorse the BDS campaign, she likened it to the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. as a vital effort to change government’s conduct.
The ideals of pluralism, human rights, and international law have suddenly been elevated in mainstream discourse. Now, we hope the glaring contradictions in U.S. foreign policy become clear: justifying the bombings of urban neighborhoods in Gaza and Yemen while condemning the same conduct in the Ukraine. We’ve told that story every way we know how since Mondoweiss’s inception. Please give today to help keep us at the forefront at this exciting moment when we may be able to shift the public understanding of what’s at stake.
If you support war crimes investigation of Putin, you need to demand accountability of Americans and their allies — George Bush for the Iraq catastrophe and Israel’s Gantz for bombing Gaza “back to the Stone Age,” as he bragged. But no one in our official culture cares about the ample American and Israeli track record of alleged war crimes. No, they shut such investigations down. The only consequences to Bush for the “unprovoked” war against Iraq — just what they say about Putin now — was he got shoes thrown at him.
This week we saw what happens when the United States puts even mild political pressure on Israel.
“Train stations overflowing with terrified families fleeing their homes; nights sheltering in basements and cellars; mornings sitting through the rubble in your homes — these are not memories of the past,” Biden said of Ukraine. He meant World War II, but such horrors have regularly unfolded in the Middle East at the hands of America or its allies.
In a highwater mark of mainstream opposition to the unending Israeli occupation, 50 members of Congress have signed a letter to Secretary of State Blinken urging him to try to stop Israel’s demolition of 38 Palestinian houses in al-Walaja, a village in the occupied West Bank, because the demolitions will undermine “Palestinian dignity” and “long-term Israeli security.” The demolitions are also an issue in a Michigan congressional race between two Democrats, with Rep. Andy Levin calling them “unjust.”