A New York Times Op-Ed featuring liberal Zionist leaders calls to end military aid to Israel as the country passes a law gutting its judiciary. This is the moment people working to end U.S. aid to Israel have been waiting for.
Many experts have said Israel/Palestine is a one-state reality characterized by apartheid, but the establishment finally seems ready to listen, maybe because the two-state solution is so farcical no one is buying.
Longtime Israel lobbyist Martin Indyk says Joe Biden’s rebuke of Benjamin Netanyahu last month will have dramatic consequences on the Israeli leader’s ability to influence US politics.
Biden’s trip to the Middle East was a fiasco but the Israel lobby loved it. Former ambassadors Dan Shapiro and Martin Indyk celebrate the trip as a breakthrough and manage not to mention Israel’s killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an hour’s talk. While an AIPAC officials says of the speech Biden gave when he arrived, “you would have been hard pressed to write a better speech, for the things we believe in.”
The two-state solution is a mantra inside the Democratic Party and the liberal Establishment but Foreign Affairs dares to ask how many experts think it’s viable and finds that only Israel supporters do so, and as a matter of hope over actual facts on the ground. So daring to ask this verboten question is itself a breakthrough, as Israel lobbyist Robert Satloff indicates. “I am very disappointed that Foreign Affairs is asking this question, which can only contribute to misinformation on an issue that is ultimately all about leadership.”
A leading U.S. Israel lobby group honors Netanyahu in a morning meeting then throws him under the bus in the afternoon– its CEO saying that a Naftali Bennett government would make it easier to sell Israel to the Democratic Party.
The Human Rights Watch report accusing Israel of apartheid has gotten far more attention than similar reports in recent years. And it’s gotten an incensed vitriolic response from the right-wing Israel lobby. While the liberal Zionist lobby has tried to argue that the report is about the occupation. HRW’s finding was far more wide-reaching than just the occupation.
The Israel lobby expects that Joe Biden will name a Zionist Jew as ambassador to Israel, continuing a tradition that Bill Clinton began 25 years ago. But as Dems call for greater diversity in ambassadorial appointments, this is one post that would benefit from a nod that does not seem loaded on one side of a conflict.
Netanyahu’s reported historic meeting with the Saudi crown prince this morning in Saudi Arabia at the behest of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a power move. The Saudi monarchy gets Israel lobby on its side to counter Biden’s human rights objections. Israel gets Saudi ally to help tie Biden’s hands against reentering Iran deal as posing a threat to peace in the Middle East.
It would be fair to say that a major earthquake has been happening in the Zionist camp this past week, with Peter Beinart’s essay that he no longer believes in a Jewish state, and J Street and the peace processors are doing all they can to wish the desertion away.