Joe Biden wants it both ways. He wants Democrats to stop criticizing genocide but he also wants the Israel lobby’s support. Thus, he has a ceasefire plan in one hand, and an invitation to Netanyahu, a war criminal, to speak to Congress in the other.
AIPAC has spent $12 million in just two congressional races. Joe Biden notices even if the media doesn’t.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman says two-thirds of his constituents in NY want a ceasefire, but AIPAC is trying to defeat him because he said we must stand up for the 100,000 Palestinians being killed and wounded by Israel. “[AIPAC’s] number one issue is Israel but they pay to run ads on other issues because they’re an organization that lies to the American people.”
The leading American Jewish groups are stoking anti-Jewish feeling by their own demonstration of anti-Palestinian bigotry: ignoring the famine and massacres of civilians in Gaza that have horrified the world and have led so many to accuse Israel of genocide.
Nine of Biden’s top 25 donors are staunch supporters of Israel. While a clutch of billionaires is working behind the scenes to “help win the war” of public opinion for Israel, the Washington Post reports.
Anti-Palestinian racism is the dominant form of bigotry on the Gaza issue. It determines our policy. All mainstream discussions are tainted by an unconscious assumption that Jewish feelings in the US matter more than Palestinian feelings and for that matter, Jewish feelings matter more than Palestinian lives.
A Pew poll shows that when it comes to Israel, American Jews are much closer to white evangelicals than they are to Democratic Party numbers. Democrats want to cut off military aid. By and large, Jews don’t.
Smearing the protesters of the Gaza genocide: Dana Bash on CNN says it’s OK to criticize Netanyahu, but not the Jewish state, then says these protests “hearken back to the 1930s” and Jews across the U.S. feel unsafe. While her colleague Jake Tapper says that Jewish students are unsafe at Columbia and Tulane; and on the PBS News Hour, David Brooks says that the Columbia University protests against Israel “are hate-filled and bigoted.”
Bob Feldman, who protested at Columbia University in 1968, on the student uprising today, “I would tell these students: people will always remember what you did today . . . and I believe they have accomplished much more in 2024 than we did in 1968.”
The student uprisings against Israeli genocide are a stunning new force in U.S., representing a mass movement that demands that our politicians cease to sideline Palestinian human rights. “Edward Said once said, ‘thank God for the students.’ I just want to echo those words from this tortured place,” Susan Abulhawa said from Gaza.