There are horrifying images from Jerusalem last night of a mob of racist Jews saying the city belongs to them and Arabs should burn. The young American Jewish group “IfNotNow” labeled the mob a “pogrom,” in another assertion of moral leadership over community elders who ignore the violence.
Response to Netanyahu’s deal with right wing racist party shows that US Israel lobby is getting tired of fighting for the good Israel. That drumbeat of racism and Jewish supremacy is working on American advocates for Israel. They’re losing their own illusions. What was “dangerous and deeply concerning” two years ago is just more of the same today.
In a shot across Biden’s bow, former Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor warns the incoming president not to restore funding to Palestinian refugee agency and not to reverse Trump’s decisions to leave UNESCO and U.N. Human Rights Council.
Tony Blinken reflects Joe Biden in spinning highly scripted and cagey responses that steer a delicate path around Israel’s clout in Washington while doing nothing to offend the so-called Jewish state. He says, We need to reenter the Iran deal if Iran reenters it, because trashing the deal has made Israel unsafer; We need to leave troops in Syria and check with Israel on all our actions in the Middle East because it’s the anchor of democracy; and we need to call out Israel’s settlement activity as unhelpful but then not do anything about it.
Netanyahu knows that expanding settlements “early” in the Biden administration is “red flag” so he’ll hold off to avoid a “confrontation,” says David Harris of the American Jewish Committee. But he would not avoid that confrontation if Biden has any thought of returning to the Iran deal, predicts the Israel lobbyist.
In what sounded like an audition for secretary of state, Sen. Chris Murphy tells an Israel lobby group Joe Biden will restore a “decision” the two parties made long before Trump came along not to argue about Israel. He said Donald Trump’s “anti-Muslim” actions had the unfortunate effect of making Netanyahu’s policies toward Palestinians look racist to some Democrats, but those days will end under Biden.
US election showed that American Jews and Israeli Jews could not be more different, American Jews dislike Netanyahu two-to-one, and so the Israel lobby is divided forever, because the Jewish community is divided on the Israel question, with many young Jews supporting boycott. And that divide will continue to spur political debate.
Don’t blame the Cubans! Trump’s 43 percent of Florida Jews shows influence of orthodox in Miami and turned the state for him, Israel lobbyist Mark Mellman says. Oh and Joe Biden will use “pressure” and “sanctions” to get a “stronger, better, longer” deal from Iran than President Obama got, Mellman says.
Biden surrogates are giving no oxygen to the progressive criticism of Israel. They are running Biden to Trump’s right on the issue, saying that by removing forces from Syria, Trump left Israel with “no one to rely on” and his politicization of the issue in the U.S. undermines support for “the Jewish state.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s withdrawal last Friday from an October memorial to Yitzhak Rabin is an act of irreverence for an Israeli leader we’ve not seen before at her political level; and the drama has roiled the pro-Israel community. Even the Biden campaign spoke up, an aide saying that AOC’s decision was “problematic” for the Democratic Party.