A new ad for Shontel Brown in Ohio from Democratic Majority for Israel leaves out the organization’s full name and any mention of Israel. That’s because Democratic voters aren’t very supportive of Israel. Though establishment Democrats, including many Israel advocates, have flocked to Brown to try and prevent the growth of the Squad in Congress with the likely addition of Nina Turner.
This year has been a slog, but from the Squad to BDS victories there have also been things to celebrate in 2020.
Israel has become a big issue in Georgia Senate runoff race. Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock runs away from previous Israel-critical statements. He has now “condemned” BDS and indicated he would never condition aid to Israel for human rights abuses. The AIPAC-linked group DMFI has now endorsed Warnock for Senate.
“We got to make sure that we stand by Israel and their right to defend themselves.” The newly anointed chair of House Foreign Affairs also assails Palestinians for “fighting” in grotesque commentary that is oblivious to the fact that Israel just murdered a child protester.
On Thursday, Democrats elected Rep. Gregory Meeks to chair the House Foreign Relations Committee beating Texas’ Joaquin Castro by a vote of 148-78. Castro’s candidacy was seen as a long shot but earned progressive support as a result of calling for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, ending U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen, conditioning military aid to Israel, and saying he would bring Palestinian voices to the table if elected.
Ending US military funding must be a crucial pillar among the broad array of progressive movements demanding change. The intersecting struggles against climate change and militarism is an important point of collaboration for the Palestine movement in the push against a Biden administration.
“My pro-Palestinian stance began to chafe,” Lysander Ohrstrom writes of her former friendship with Ivanka Trump. “Since 2007, I’ve worn a necklace with my name written in Arabic, and Ivanka grew increasingly irritated by it. Sometimes, she would randomly say, “I hate that thing… It just screams ‘terrorist.'”
Columbia undergraduates voted by 61 to 27 percent to divest from companies profiting from Israeli apartheid, and school president Lee Bollinger dismissed the vote as no guide for investment. Bollinger’s statement reminds Rashid Khalidi of what Trump said during the first debate, when he refused to say that he would respect the result of a democratic vote on November 3, thereby confirming his contempt for the democratic process.
When progressive insurgent Jamaal Bowman beat incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th district…
The Democratic Party successfully sent the message in its convention that Biden won’t be a troublemaker like Obama on Palestinian human rights, thereby pleasing big donors. But the news from congressional races is that the Democratic base cares deeply about the issue.