From the BBC:
“Israel-Gaza: The Democrats'
'tectonic' shift on the conflict”
The latest clashes between Israel
and the Palestinians has revealed exactly how much the political centre of
gravity in the Democratic Party has moved on the conflict in recent years. "The
shift is dramatic; it's tectonic," says pollster John Zogby, who has
tracked US views on the Middle East for decades. In particular, younger
generations are considerably more sympathetic to the Palestinians - and that
age gap has been on full display with the Democratic Party. While President Joe
Biden has expressed a more traditional view, repeatedly emphasising that Israel
has the right to defend itself against Hamas rocket attacks, he's finding himself
out of step in a party that is now at least as concerned with the conditions on
the ground for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank - and Israeli
policies viewed as contributing to their plight.
Democratic diversity in
Congress To track the shift within the Democratic Party on Israel and the
Palestinians, one can start by looking at that most representative US political
institution, Congress. In the national legislature, US foreign policy
sympathies have tended to tilt historically toward Israel's perspective in
Middle East conflicts - in part because of the preferences of both Jewish
voters (a key Democratic constituency) and evangelicals (important for
Republicans). As the US Congress has become an increasingly diverse
body, however, that has had some serious consequences for US policy toward
Israel. In 2021, a record 23% of members of the House and Senate were people of
black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander or Native American heritage, according
to a Pew Foundation study. Two decades earlier, that number was 11%. In
1945, it was 1%. A diversity of backgrounds has led to a wider diversity
of viewpoints and a diffusion of power. The influential group of young liberal
congresswomen, known informally as "The Squad", includes
Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Somalian refugee Ilhan Omar
of Minnesota, for instance. The most prominent member of this group,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, won her congressional seat by ousting a
senior member of the Democratic congressional leadership, Joe Crowley, who consistently
sided with Israel in past conflicts in the occupied territories. Overall,
the party - and its voters - look a lot more like the Puerto Rican descended
31-year-old Ocasio-Cortez than the 59-year-old Crowley - and that is making a
difference. "There is a non-white population, particularly among
Democrats, who are very sensitive to the treatment of fellow non-whites,"
Zogby said during a recording of the BBC podcast Americast. "They see
Israel as an aggressor." They don't know Israel's early history and
odds-defying triumph over adversity, he says. "They know post-Intifada;
they know the various wars, the asymmetrical bombing that have taken place, the
innocent civilians that have been killed."
The Bernie factor If the
growing diversity in Congress is in part the result of the left-wing
progressive movement that elected politicians like Ocasio-Cortez, that
progressive movement owes a considerable debt to one man, Vermont
Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders. Early in his career,Sanders - who
was raised Jewish and spent time in Israel in the 1960s - was generally
sympathetic toward Israel's policies. By the time he first ran for president in
2016, however, he was expressing more support for Palestinian concerns - a view
that set him apart from the rest of the Democratic field. In a primary
debate with Hillary Clinton, held during a March 2016 outbreak of Hamas rocket
attacks on Israel, Sanders spoke directly about the plight of Palestinians -
their high unemployment, "decimated houses, decimated healthcare,
decimated schools". As noted by the Guardian's Ed Pilkington at the
time, this broke an "unwritten rule" that talking about Palestinian
suffering was a losing issue for politicians seeking higher office. Sanders
lost both his presidential bids, of course. The popularity of his expressed
views, however, opened the door for down-ballot Democrats to take up the issue
- as they also took up other parts of his progressive platform, including
expanded healthcare, free college education, a higher minimum wage and
environmental reform. Since then, Sanders has hardened his condemnations
of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he called a "desperate,
racist authoritarian". And last week, he penned an opinion column in the
New York times that, while pulling no punches, no longer seems a fringe
Democratic view. "The fact of the matter is that Israel remains the
one sovereign authority in the land of Israel and Palestine," Sanders
wrote, "and rather than preparing for peace and justice, it has been
entrenching its unequal and undemocratic control."
Palestinian lives matter In
that Times column, Sanders concludes by heralding the rise of "a new
generation of activists" in the US. "We saw these activists in
American streets last summer in the wake of the murder of George Floyd,"
he writes. "We see them in Israel. We see them in the Palestinian
territories." His final words lift a direct line from the Black
Lives Matter movement: "Palestinian lives matter". Sanders is
noting what has become obvious during clashes between Israel forces and
Palestinians over the past two weeks. Americans who found their political voice
during last summer's activism in US cities are now turning their focus, and
their rhetoric, on what they see as similar unchecked oppression in the Middle
East. "St Louis sent me here to save lives," Congresswoman
Cori Bush of St Louis - who unseated a long-time Democratic politician in a
primary last year - said on the floor of the House on Thursday. "That
means we oppose our money going to fund militarised policing, occupation and
systems of violent oppression and trauma. We are anti-war, we are
anti-occupation, and we are anti-apartheid. Period." That has translated
into growing calls to cut off US military aid to Israel - or at least use the
threat of doing so to pressure Netanyahu to move away from his aggressive
policies in the occupied territories. The "defund the police"
slogan now has a foreign policy companion: "defund the Israeli
military".
Donald and Bibi Complicating
matters for Israel's traditional backers in the Democratic Party is that US
policy toward the Jewish state, like almost everything in national politics,
has become increasingly polarised on partisan lines. That, in no small
part, has been helped along by long-time Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who
has forged closer ties with the American right over recent years. Obama-era
Democrats have not forgotten Netanyahu's address to a joint session of Congress
in 2015 at the invitation of Republicans, during which he made an unsuccessful
attempt to torpedo congressional approval of the administration's signature
diplomatic initiative, the Iran nuclear agreement. Meanwhile, Donald
Trump spent four years trumpeting his close relationship with Netanyahu and
Israel's political right. He cut off humanitarian aid to the Palestinian
authority, moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and bypassed the
Palestinians in his Middle East diplomatic negotiations. That one-two
political punch from Trump and Netanyahu was more than enough to have even some
centrist Democrats rethinking their views on the Palestinian situation. That
trend could continue, in part because, Zogby says, Trump's efforts to cater to
Israeli interests haven't translated into shifting support among Jewish voters
for Republican candidates. "That is wishful thinking on their
part," Zogby says. "American Jews are fundamentally a liberal to
progressive voting entity." If Democrats can satisfy their
progressive base without alienating their traditional Jewish voters, it becomes
a much more comfortable political move.
Old-school Biden If the
Israel debate among Democrats in Washington is changing, the direction from the
White House has only just begun to reflect that. Biden and his top
officials were slow to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas - lagging
behind even traditional Israel backers like Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer. They repeatedly blocked a UN Security Council resolution that
also endorsed a ceasefire. The readouts of Biden's calls with Netanyahu have
repeatedly noted that the president has emphasised Israel's right to
self-defence, without little hint of criticism. There's been no talk of
putting conditions on US military aid to Israel - and, in fact, before the most
recent outbreak of violence, Biden authorised the sale of $735m (£518m) in arms
to the Jewish state, much to the dismay of his party's progressives. During the
2020 presidential primary, he said calls to add conditions to US aid to Israel
by Sanders and others were "bizarre". The risk for Biden on
this issue is clear, however. The president needs the backing of left-wing
progressives in his coalition if he wants to pass his legislative agenda,
including an ambitious infrastructure and social safety-net package.
Up until now, that support has
been there. But if the Democratic left believes Biden is turning his back on
what they view as Israel's gross human rights abuses, they could abandon him.
"We've seen a steady growth in support for Palestinians, but it's
never really been a high-intensity issue," Zogby says. "It's becoming
that. It's becoming a major wedge issue, particularly among Democrats, driven
by non-white voters and younger voters, by progressives in general." That
this might happen in a foreign policy area, the Middle East, that has been a
low priority for Biden so far in his presidency would be particularly stinging
- and it's one of the reasons why Israel's advocates in the Democratic Party
are concerned that Biden's support, which has been largely unwavering over
decades of public service, may end up shaky. Politician can only stay
out of step with their political base for so long.
^ This shift only shows how delusional
and ignorant people are. They would rather support Internationally-Recognized
Terrorists (the US is one of the 30+ countries to deem them as such) that suppress
their own people and call for the complete destruction of Israel and the Jews then
support Israel. Part of it is ignorance in that they don’t know what is
happening in The Middle East, in Gaza or in Israel and part of it is Anti-Semitism.
Most of the media focused on Gaza and were overly pro-Palestinian/Hamas in their
coverage of the latest war and giving a tainted view. You expect the Palestinian
media to focus on the Palestinians and the Israeli media to focus on the Israelis,
but International Media should show both sides while also making it clear that
Hamas is an Internationally-Recognized Terrorist Organization and so that is a major
factor that needs to be taken into account when you look at the “suffering” of Gaza
– since the Palestinians in Gaza voted them into office in 2006 and have kept
them in power. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.