The struggle for Palestine is inextricably linked to the struggle against the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. Recent moves by Gulf monarchies to normalize with Israel will only make their rule more unpopular and empower the BDS movement.
One of Joe Biden’s political achievements this year is that he has taken what seemed to be a big issue for Trump– Israel — out of the campaign. The Israel lobby trusts Biden because he promises to use American force overseas and try to end the politicization of the Israel issue here. Biden and Harris have actually run against their own Democratic base on Palestinian rights.
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.”
Former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren says Joe Biden “deeply supports Israel,”
but he warns US Jews of “major policy differences” between Biden and Israel, on Palestine and Iran, and Iran threatens Israel’s children’s future. If Biden gets in, Israel is prepared to deal with him as it did with Obama.
Angry that foreign policy isn’t in the last debate, Donald Trump believes his record, including Israel normalization deals and breaking the Iran deal, are a political asset. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris appear to agree, avoiding the topic entirely.
At 30 years old, Joe Biden told Israeli PM Golda Meir “there is no debate in the Senate about the ME [Middle East] because the Senators are ‘afraid’ to say things that Jewish voters will dislike,” according to an Israeli document. The report shows Biden twice angrily took on Israeli prime ministers over illegal settlements, when he was young. Though his surrogates have sought to deny this.
U.S. Jewish support for Biden (70 percent) is similar to Palestinian support for Biden in Israel (78 percent). But Israeli Jews? They love Trump. Dems don’t want you to know these numbers because they show that our close ally is a rightwing ethnically-discriminatory state.
Israel is at the top of Trump’s foreign policy brags in his rally speeches. He suggests he won the Nobel Prize for making peace where other presidents left “blood all over the sand” and gives a shoutout to evangelicals. But polling says he has only 27 percent of Jewish voters.
Following the decision by the U.S. Council of of Muslim Organizations to remove Emgage from its membership, Hatem Fariz recounts the organziation’s history of reneging on assurances and breaking promises.
Nearly 70 percent of Palestinians say US policy will be the same or worse under a President Biden, and just 21 percent think he will improve matters. A new survey shows widespread rejection of Israel’s normalization deals, 90 percent calling the Gulf States’ recognition “betrayal,” “abandonment,” “insult” or “sadness,” while only 1 percent used words like “joy.”