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.
Donald Trump’s decision to abandon former Kurdish allies in Syria has been a shock to Israel and its US lobby. Israel thought it had a very special place in Trump’s worldview, but the withdrawal appears to gives Iran far more leeway. We are on our own against Iran, several Israeli officials and Israel supporters conclude fearfully. War is more likely than ever, one expert concludes.
American Jews who condemned Israel’s slaughter of Gaza protesters don’t understand that Judaism is now the Jewish state and it won’t survive if Palestinian refugees are allowed to return, which is why no Israeli Jews questioned the slaughter, Daniel Gordis writes, urging American Jews to stick by Israel to stay Jewish.
The New York Times wants Netanyahu out because “elements of the Democratic Party have grown increasingly suspicious of Israel, if not hostile,” and replacing Netanyahu “may halt this dangerous shift.” Palestinian human rights are no account here. Though Israel’s politics have only shifted right, Israel-watchers say.
Watching the election results on Israeli TV this week was to see Zionism in all its racist glory. The Palestinian parties were big winners Tuesday, finishing third with 13 seats, and the experts all declare, No governing coalition can include Arabs!
Donald Trump’s charge that four congresswomen are Israel haters is a political tactic aimed at taking pro-Israel donors away from the Democratic Party. Liberals set the table for Trump’s racist comments by roundly condemning Rep. Ilhan Omar as anti-semitic, when she was addressing an important issue in US politics: the role of the Israel lobby in setting foreign policy in the Middle East.
After White House officials joined a grotesque settlers’ celebration in occupied Jerusalem, Zionists have raised an issue rarely raised in the U.S.: Why are there so many religious Zionist Jews on the Trump negotiation team? Palestinians feel “under assault” and “surrounded” by Trump’s team, says Yaakov Katz, editor of the Jerusalem Post.
If there’s any consensus from the political chaos in Israel, it’s that the Trump peace plan will get kicked down the road again for months, right into the U.S. election season, so it may disappear entirely. Several Israel observers say the plan is over. They warn that Trump will be even more of a presence in Netanyahu’s next campaign, but the prime minister is badly wounded by his failure to make a government.
American liberal Zionists and rightwing Zionists wrote opposing letters to Trump this week over Netanyahu’s plans to annex West Bank settlements. The open squabbling is a result of Trump’s extreme support for Israel and also the 52-year-long occupation, which has at last brought a crisis to the Jewish establishment’s consensus, that to be Jewish means to support Israel.