Loading ...A New Wave of Democrats Tests the Party’s Blanket Support for Israel
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
BY: CATIE EDMONDSON
WASHINGTON — One Democratic House candidate has pledged that she will vote against bills that include aid to Israel, denouncing what she saw as the “injustice” of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Another wrote that “Israel has hypnotized the world” with its “evil doings.”
Still another helped write a scathing book on relations between the United States and Israel, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive political star expected to win a House seat in New York, condemned the “occupation of Palestine.”
A cluster of activist Democrats — most of them young, most of them cruising toward House seats this fall — has dared to breach what has been an almost inviolable orthodoxy in both political parties, strong support for Israel, raising the specter of a crack in the Democratic Party that Republicans could use to attract Jewish supporters.
Surging support for the Palestinian cause has already strained relations between liberal parties and Jewish voters in Europe. In Britain, the Labour Party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been accused of anti-Semitismfor a pro-Palestinian stand that has veered into statements that many see as outright bigotry. Across the United States, movements to force colleges and universities to boycott, divest investments from and place sanctions on Israel have divided some progressive students from their Jewish peers.
Now some Democrats are testing the boundaries of what has been the politically acceptable position on Israel in the mainstream parties. They include Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American Muslim running for an open House seat in Minneapolis; Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American Muslim running in Detroit; Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, running in a heavily Democratic district in the Bronx and Queens; and Leslie Cockburn, co-author of “Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship,” who is running in a Republican-leaning district in Virginia. None of them would comment for this article.
They have not made their views on Israel a central issue of their campaigns, but they also have not held back. Ms. Tlaib, in an August interview with the liberal magazine In These Times, endorsed a one-state solution that could jeopardize Israel’s status as a Jewish state.
Ms. Omar, who had criticized Israel’s “evil doings” in 2012, was accused on Twitter of anti-Semitism after her campaign got underway. “Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews,” she responded.
Against a backdrop of a White House that has taken a series of measures explicitly targeting Palestinians — moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, slashing aid and most recently, closing the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington — the group’s stances are at odds with several prominent pro-Israel party leaders, setting up an interparty conflict often waged over generational lines. Republicans have already lobbed charges of anti-Semitism.
“I do worry that there are some on the extreme left of our party who adopt slogans” that are creating tensions, said Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and a pro-Israel voice in the party.
Others dismissed the newcomers as a fringe, with little influence. “We’re talking about a handful of people; they’re certainly not going to move Congress’s wall-to-wall support for Israel,” said Ron Halber, the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. “Could it turn into a ripple? Perhaps. You have a unique combination of forces right now.”
His greater concern, he said, is that President’s Trump’s friendly relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is getting Israel’s narrative “caught up in the anti-Trump fervor, which is not fair to Israel.”
Running on platforms that emphasize opposing discrimination against marginalized groups, candidates have introduced the Palestinian issue as what they call a larger commitment to social justice.
“It’s a position consistent with all their other values,” said Dima Khalidi, the director of Palestine Legal, a Palestinian rights group. “You cannot take positions on social justice issues, on the border wall, on immigration rights, without addressing the injustices of the Israeli occupation.”
Ms. Tlaib said in a television interview that she would “absolutely” slash military aid to Israel, adding, “I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice.”
Pro-Israel groups like StandWithUs are concerned that anti-Israel views, promoted and masked by “human rights language,” will find “a landing space in our political system,” said Peggy Shapiro, the group’s Midwest executive director.
“On the far right it’s easier to spot,” Ms. Shapiro said of hateful language. “On the far left we have a more complicated challenge because misinformation is often expressed in the language of social justice, and it makes it easier to mislead well-meaning people.”
Party leaders and Democrats supportive of Israel have largely remained silent on the issue. Neither Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate minority leader, nor Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, responded to requests for comment.
Representative Gene Green, a centrist Democrat from Texas, conceded that “the last few years it’s been a little tougher” to find members of his party as supportive of Israel as he is. But he attributed Ms. Omar’s and Ms. Tlaib’s comments to a zeal to represent their districts, which he noted have large communities of Middle Eastern immigrants.
“Democrats, we have broad stripes,” Mr. Green said, adding that he expected that within the party “you’ll still see support for Israel.”
But those candidates’ leanings appear to align with a broader consensus among Democratic voters. Two years ago, Democrats were more likely to sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians by a 14 percentage point gap, according to a Pew Research Center poll. In January, the same poll showed that gap had shrunk to two points.
Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, accused Democratic leaders of failing to push back against “hostile” remarks from Democratic candidates.
“That involves policing and enforcing their own and making clear that these views are outside the mainstream,” he said. “So far they haven’t done that.”
But Republicans are not averse to exploiting the Democratic divisions.
The Republican Jewish Coalition purchased a $530,000 ad campaign in June accusing Scott Wallace, a Democrat running in Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District, of anti-Semitism. Mr. Wallace ran an organization that dispensed more than $330,000 in grants to boycott, divestment and sanctions groups; Mr. Wallace has disavowed the movement and said he did not exercise authority over those funds.
The Republican Party of Virginia has laid into Ms. Cockburn, calling her a “virulent anti-Semite,” a charge she hotly contests.
In California, Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican under indictment on charges of campaign finance violations, is trying to tar his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, with a grandfather who masterminded the 1972 terrorist attack on Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich. Israeli commandos killed Mr. Campa-Najjar’s grandfather long before Mr. Campa-Najjar was born.
The liberal Jewish group J Street condemned that effort on Wednesday as “one of most ugly, racist campaign ads we’ve ever seen.”
Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for Florida governor, has accused his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, of having ties to anti-Israel groups, citing financial support he received during his primary race from Dream Defenders, an organization that backs boycotts, divestment and sanctions, and a speech Mr. Gillum gave two years ago at a Muslim advocacy event welcoming the Council on American-Islamic Relations to Tallahassee. Mr. Gillum denies supporting the boycott-and-divest movement.
“Anyone trying to use Israel as a political wedge and football doesn’t have Israel’s best interest at heart and should be ashamed of themselves,” said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, calling the accusation “revolting.”
Republicans say they will continue to push the issue.
“The fact that this is allowed to metastasize in the Democratic Party without any real pushback,” Mr. Brooks said, his voice trailing off. “It used to be one of the third rails of politics, especially in the Democratic Party.”