“Why are they spending all of that money on little old me? Inquiring minds want to know,” Democratic candidate for Congress Nina Turner says of “millions” pouring into the Ohio primary from special interests. One obvious source of the money is the pro-Israel crowd, which has embraced Turner’s rival Shontel Brown, who says the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel will help the black community fight “hatred” and “persecution.”
In a lengthy piece portraying Raphael Warnock as a progressive, the NYT leaves out the 180 he did on Israel criticism under pressure from the Israel lobby. To bring attention to Warnock’s collapse would undermine the fallacy that the Israel lobby maintains in the Democratic Party, you can be progressive except on Palestine.
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.”
Israel supporters exult over Joe Biden. He wrote the Democratic Party platform himself, which removes reference to occupation, says Robert Wexler. And Kamala Harris “clearly stands in the Biden wing of the Democratic Party in terms of Israel, so I don’t know what more VP Biden could possibly do to engender the type of confidence that he has built up over four decades of being one of Israel’s strongest, staunchest supporters day in day out in every circumstance. … His pick for vice president is exactly like him in staunchly supporting Israel.”
Israel is “the only differentiator” in issues between challenger Jamaal Bowman and Dem. Party boss Eliot Engel in congressional race in New York. That’s why Israel advocates have rallied behind Engel’s troubled campaign. But amazingly NYT can’t mention the issue in covering hot race.
Dan Shapiro and Michael Koplow say the U.S. made a “moral commitment” to Israel as a democracy against countless threats 71 years ago and the U.S. has a strategic interest in preserving Israel as a democracy, or the morality of the relationship will be undermined. The possibility that we should distance ourselves from Israel because it’s persecuting Palestinians is simply off the table for these liberal Zionists. Though progressive Democrats increasingly feel that way.
Democratic Party lobbyists for Israel worry that Trump isn’t consulting with Israeli leaders and won’t take on Iran. There have been no phone calls between the two recently, says former ambassador Daniel Shapiro. While Michael Koplow says Israel used to have the sense that there was a “larger US umbrella that will prevent things from getting too far out of hand” in Lebanon and Syria, but they don’t feel that way now.