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Pro-Israel advocacy faces change

WASHINGTON — When a Jewish Democratic congressman initiated a letter last week demanding increased assistance for the Palestinians following the latest Israel-Gaza war, he laid bare a shift in how some Democrats relate to Israel.

Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Israeli protesters scuffle outside the White House, Sept. 15, 2020. (Win McNamee/Getty)

The letter spearheaded by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland was asking a Republican lawmaker to stop blocking aid to the Palestinians. Raskin secured the signatures of congressional leaders and pro-Israel stalwarts.

He did so without the input of Israel lobby AIPAC. That would have been unimaginable 15 years ago.

The Democratic Party is no longer a unified front of unquestioning support for Israel. Some lawmakers who would blame only the Arab side when conflicts broke out are now questioning Israel, too.

Most Democrats remain solidly behind Israel, says Rep. Kathy Manning, D-NC. She says the other group numbers fewer than a dozen Democrats in Congress.

Mark Mellman, president of the Democratic Majority for Israel, said his group draws support not just from party veterans, but from progressives of color.

“Support for Israel cuts across the leadership,” he said, “but it also is among younger members and older members and black and Latino and white members, and that’s great.”

The latest war between Israel and Hamas brought a shift to the front and disturbed the pro-Israel community.

In a statement to its membership, AIPAC warned about “anti-Israel” arguments making inroads into Congress.

“An anti-Israel campaign is underway to demonize Israel, cast Israel as morally equivalent to Hamas, and challenge the vital security aid we fight for each year to ensure Israel has the resources to defend itself,” AIPAC’s president, Betsey Berns Korn, said in a message on May 20, as the war wound down.

“This moment highlights a fight that will define our work for years to come.”

Lawmakers flouted two taboos that AIPAC had effectively policed for decades:

• In recent weeks, some of Israel’s friends in the Democratic caucus questioned Israel’s choices before and during the Gaza War. For years, lawmakers who wanted to earn the pro-Israel label almost always avoided public criticism of Israel, especially during wartime.

• In the final days of the war, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont attempted to kill a major precision-guided missiles deal with Israel. They failed. In the recent past, no lawmaker — even the few openly critical of Israel — would touch defense assistance.

The Jewish caucus in Congress has split into factions. Some members represent a vocal section of the Jewish community that is critical of Israeli policies. Others remain loyal to pro-Israel policies.

While Republicans steadfastly supported the Israeli government throughout the recent crisis, some skepticism of Israel among Democrats was on display throughout the fighting.

• A few Democrats in Congress have accused Israel of apartheid.

• At the height of the war, on May 13, Democrats heatedly debated on the House floor who was at fault for the Israel-Hamas clash.

• Over 500 alumni of President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign wrote him a letter last month urging him to consider limiting defense assistance to Israel and pressure the country to ease conditions for the Palestinians.

Biden has defended Israel’s conduct during the war and steadfastly says he will not touch aid.

There are 25 Jewish Democrats in the House: During the war, 12 joined to write a letter, as Jews, calling for an immediate ceasefire, something AIPAC would never countenance.

On the flip side, four Jewish lawmakers called for an end to anti-Semitic rhetoric and referred to party colleagues who liken Israeli practices to apartheid without naming them. There was no overlap between the signers of the two letters.

Some of Israel’s best friends in the Democratic Party called for a ceasefire, including Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Chris Coons of Delaware, as well as Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York. They lacerated Hamas, but also criticized Israel.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-NY, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, considered delaying the sale of missiles to Israel.

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, called Menendez, Coons and Meeks “staunch supporters of Israel.”

She said they are “voicing not only their support of Israel’s right to self-defense against attacks launched by a terrorist organization, but also their support for Palestinian rights and safety and for the administration’s efforts to bring about a cease-fire.”

Rep. Kathy Manning, D-NC, said the minority of Democrats who were hypercritical of Israel was small, fewer than a dozen lawmakers.

“The vast majority of members and also including Democratic members are still largely supportive of Israel, and it comes from the top,” she said, referring to Biden and supportive remarks from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker.

Manning, before her election in 2020, was the first woman to chair the Jewish Federations of North America. She was one of the four Jewish Democratic House members who wrote the letter saying that using terms like “apartheid” and “terrorist” to describe Israel is anti-Semitic.

Leaders like Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, have criticized the lawmakers who have targeted Israel, but also criticized AIPAC for “twisting words” during the war for taking Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman, to task for accusing Israel of terrorism.

Abraham Foxman, the retired national director of the ADL, said the Jewish community should resist giving oxygen to extremists in both parties. The majorities in both parties remain pro-Israel, he said, and the community should reinforce that tendency.

“We should spend time embracing those who support us rather than engage our energies with ‘the Squad,’” he said, referring to the small cadre of progressives led by Ocasio-Cortez.

Soifer, the Jewish Democratic Council of America leader, said the pro-Israel community was adjusting.

“There’s a new pro-Israel paradigm in the Democratic Party that rejects the false dichotomy of the past,” she said. “The overwhelming majority of Democrats strongly support Israel’s security and right to self-defense against Hamas terrorist attacks while also supporting Palestinians’ safety and human rights.”

A red line, Soifer said, remained defense assistance to Israel.

“This is certainly not the time to threaten US military support for Israel,” she said, referring to the bid by Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders to nix the sale of precision-guided missiles.

J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said defense assistance deserved scrutiny. Not every arms transfer to Israel is merited, he said.

Jeremy Burton, who directs Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, also said it is possible for an official to be pro-Israel and criticize Israel. But what disturbed him more, he said, was a shift among progressives during the impassioned May 13 debate.

“They were being pro-Palestinian without being pro-Israel,” he said. “That’s the shift.”

Congress members like Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Cori Bush of Missouri expressed support exclusively for the Palestinians.

It’s a shift some progressive lawmakers with closer ties to the pro-Israel movement have noticed.

“The way forward is for responsible progressives to speak about the moral case for why Israel has the right to exist, just like we speak about the Palestinian case and the moral case for Palestinian rights,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told the Washington Post last week.

Interviews with more than a dozen pro-Israel officials, lawmakers and congressional staffers said the shift long predated May’s fighting.

Among the causes they cited are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s embrace of Republicans, the unquestioning support for Israel from the deeply polarizing President Donald Trump, generations of Americans who have never seen Israel as anything but an economic and military powerhouse, and a social media universe that drives the discourse into polarizing simplifications.

Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., said acrimony and disagreement among pro-Israel groups created space for hostile groups to make their case.

“The grassroots in the pro-Israel movement is somewhat fractured,” said Schneider, a longtime pro-Israel volunteer and Jewish organizational leader before his election.

He referred to J Street which now has the allegiance of at least half of the Democratic caucus in both chambers.

“We’ve seen that with battle lines drawn between AIPAC supporters and J Street supporters,” said Schneider, who said he worked with both groups. “I think because of the disagreements within the pro-Israel community there have been opportunities for those who are antagonistic to Israel to make inroads.”

Burton, the Boston JCRC director, blamed polarization and the magnification of the extremes via social media.

“There is a fundamental brokenness in America’s ability to deal with holding the center, engaging in differences, reaching compromise, having bipartisanship on foreign policy, writ large,” he said.

Last year’s summer of racial tension in the US accelerated a tendency on the left to identify Israel with racism and harsh policing of people of color. The Black Lives Matter movement tweeted that it “stands in solidarity” with the Palestinians.

Bush, an anti-racism activist serving her first term in Congress, tweeted that she identified with Palestinians “as someone who has been brutalized by police.”

Younger Democrats have never known Israel as anything other than powerful, Schneider said.

“I’m of a certain generation that grew up understanding the challenges Israel faces, I watched Israel face the existential threat of the Yom Kippur War” in 1973,” he said.

“For people who don’t have that benefit, who see Israel as strong, whether that is young Jews today, or members of Congress who haven’t been in Congress for a decade or longer, the message is getting complex and the nuance is getting lost.”

Pro-Israel Democrats may also hesitate to take on what they see as unfair Israel criticism within the party because of the pressure to present a united front against Trumpism, said a former Obama administration official.

Netanyahu has been indelibly identified with the GOP since 2015, when he accepted an invitation from a Republican leader to speak to Congress to deflect then-President Barack Obama’s Iran nucler agreement. A number of Democrats boycotted the speech.

Netanyahu’s perceived partisanship intensified after Trump’s election: Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights, defunded Palestinians, quit the Iran nuclear deal and fashioned a peace plan that would have suspended Israeli settlements for four years to give Palestinians time to plan their own state.

Netanyahu paid it back, calling Trump the most pro-Israel president ever.

While Democrats have been in turmoil over Israel, Republicans have stood steadfastly by its government. Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, takes to Twitter citing Democratic criticism of Israel, adding, “There is only one pro-Israel party!!”

That’s not tenable for AIPAC, which is committed to bipartisanship, said Steve Rosen, the lobby’s former foreign policy director.

“Because AIPAC’s function is to deliver majorities on pro-Israel legislation and resolutions and the like, and to deter or defeat problematic ones, it has to muster majorities.”

Jewish voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic — another reason that AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups are not about to align with one party or the other.

Some Republicans, meanwhile, are not as amenable to AIPAC’s policies as they once were; they are heeding activists and influencers to AIPAC’s right. The late Sheldon Adelson, a major GOP funder, broke with AIPAC in 2007 over its embrace of the two-state outcome.

In 2012, AIPAC headed off a bid to remove the two-state outcome from the Republican Party platform. In 2016, the proposal sailed through. Evangelicals are usually more hawkish on Israel than the Jewish majority.

A senior official at a pro-Israel organization said “old codgers” would find all of this familiar: The American media and political spheres cast Israel as Goliath during and after the 1982 Lebanon War. The US punished Israel by suspending defense assistance.

In 1982, Israel was being raked over the coals both in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Today, Biden has made abundantly clear that he will not touch assistance to Israel.

“There is no shift in my commitment and the commitment to the security of Israel, period. No shift. Not at all,” Biden said on May 21, when he was asked about Democrats like Tlaib pressing him to be more confrontational with Israel.

“Until the region says, unequivocally, they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace.”

The visibility of Israel critics in social media exaggerates their influence, the official said.

“He made as strong a statement as any president has made from the White House, just a few days ago in support of Israel,” the official said of Biden. “So I think it’s important to have all that context because I think it’s lost in the Twitterfied world we live in.”




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