[News] Democratic Party leaders fully embrace Netanyahu's Israel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democratic-party-leaders-fully-embrace-netanyahus-israel>
Democratic Party leaders fully embrace Netanyahu's Israel
August 10, 2023
------------------------------
[image: Congressman Hakeem Jeffries looks on as Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu speaks]

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries says of serial liar and apartheid
denier Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister: “I take him at his
word.” (via X, formerly known as Twitter
<https://twitter.com/MJPlitnick/status/1688657025830359042>)

Two dozen
<https://jewishinsider.com/2023/08/hakeem-jeffries-house-democrats-israel-trip/>
congressional Democrats are visiting Israel and the occupied
<https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/137075> West Bank
<https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1688304078726615040> this week.

With their presence and silence, they are lending their support to the
anti-Palestinian racism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
his openly fascist
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/fascism-grips-israel-yet-us-clings-two-state-fantasy>
governing partners.

Early in the trip, the delegation posed for a photograph alongside
Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs.
The smiling photo-op points to a profound and ongoing problem with
anti-Palestinianism within the Democratic Party.

The current enthusiastic visit
<https://twitter.com/elgindy_/status/1689244129547710464> to Netanyahu
and Itamar
Ben-Gvir’s Israel
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-praises-settler-who-killed-palestinian-in-clash-should-get-medal-of-honor/>
highlights the willingness of congressional Democrats to embrace and fund
racism
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ben-gvir-praises-settlers-who-killed-teen-heroes>
in a way that would have been unthinkable in the late 1980s with apartheid
South Africa.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is heading the delegation,
supported Israel’s ethnocratic system
<https://twitter.com/AIPAC/status/1688517574391209989> in a statement
quickly promoted by AIPAC.

“We reiterate our ironclad commitment to the safety and security of Israel
and to the existence of Israel as a prosperous and Jewish democratic state.”

This is like Jeffries, a New Yorker, visiting Jim Crow or racially
disenfranchised
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/>
and gerrymandered
<https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-redistricting-congress-republicans-a5dae9808fbfa9ff66b427b99928130d>
North Carolina and praising it as a “white and democratic state” – whether
in 1950 or 2023.

It’s a troubling endorsement of Israeli apartheid. And his comment about
“shared democratic values” exposes as a lie the Democrats’ claims to be
serious about battling racial discrimination.
Jeffries also repeated <https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-753978>
casual anti-Arab racism
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democrats-will-keep-israel-policies-leaders-change>
he has employed previously.

“The two things that bind our countries together relate to shared
democratic values and shared strategic interests related to the very tough
neighborhood Israel lives in.”

Notably, the metaphor of a “tough” or “dangerous neighborhood” itself has
racist overtones. This terminology is often used to justify or excuse
police brutality
<http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/dangerous-neighborhood-trope-wars-overseas-linked-police-brutality-home/>
in predominantly Black urban areas in the United States long deprived of
public and private investment due to government segregation policies
<https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america>
.

When used in the context of Israel, it serves in a similar manner to
normalize and justify US support for Israel’s brutality against
Palestinians and aggression against neighboring countries.

Jeffries added <https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-753978>, “The
need to ensure we maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge will still be
with us, regardless of where Israel lands in terms of the judicial reform
effort.”

Jeffries has tolerated Israel’s denial of equal rights for Palestinians for
many years, funding it all along. Now he has indicated his support for
Israel will continue even as Israel’s anti-democratic practices turn inward
as right-wing extremists seek to remake the judiciary.

The overhaul of a judiciary that already provides a legal fig leaf to most
of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians will make the expansionist country
not just even more anti-Palestinian, but more likely to deny or limit the
rights of dissenting Israeli Jews as well.

The insistence on continuing to finance the Israeli military puts Jeffries,
and by extension much of the Democratic Party, fully in league with
Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and self-described “fascist homophobe” Bezalel Smotrich
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-08-09/ty-article-opinion/the-kahanist-economics-of-israels-fanatical-finance-minister/00000189-d6a3-d9d6-a9fd-d7a737b60000>
– even as they claim to disagree with some of their policies.

With a few exceptions
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/07/democratic-senator-chris-van-hollen-asks-biden-stop-israeli-government-racists>,
anti-Palestinian racism unites Democrats across the racial lines of an
increasingly diverse party. For most, it’s not so much bigotry that
motivates them, but political self-interest and a willingness to promote
policies they know will entrench the racial discrimination faced by
Palestinians.

In other words, while many right-wing Christian Zionists in the Republican
Party support Israel unconditionally as a matter of true faith, Democrats
support Israel largely for cynical and unprincipled reasons. It’s hard to
decide which is worse, but the fact is that the dire consequences are the
same for Palestinians.
New generation of anti-Palestinians

Predictably
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democrats-will-keep-israel-policies-leaders-change>,
the new generation of Democratic leadership is proving every bit as
willfully pro-Israel as its predecessors.

Indeed, Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild signaled
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/us-will-fund-israel-whether-its-democracy-or-not>
in March that financial support would continue no matter what.

“I believe the Biden administration has either signaled or actually said
that they will not condition aid to Israel on what happens with the
judicial system there. I think that’s the current Biden administration
position on it.”

She added, “I would not be among the defectors. I would continue to vote
for support for Israel.”

Israel, then, can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of many congressional
Democrats. The support for funding Israel’s apartheid war on Palestinians
is nothing new, but the willingness to fund Israel as even its ethnocratic
Jim Crow-style “democracy” intended
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-passes-law-entrenching-apartheid>
for Jews only breaks apart is something of a surprise.

These Democrats may try to convince themselves that they’re standing with
Israel rather than racist demagogues and war criminals, but they’re fooling
themselves. Their spinelessness is bound to lead to an even more dangerous
place, one with predictably ugly consequences as Palestinians are further
dispossessed and as more Israeli Jews get a taste – albeit a much smaller
one – of the authoritarianism Israel has always reserved for Palestinians.
In denial

Netanyahu denied
<https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/event-congress070823> Israel’s
apartheid reality – recognized
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/what-makes-amnestys-apartheid-report-different/34771>
by numerous Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights
organizations – in his remarks to the congressional delegation.

“I wanted to thank you for your position on antisemitism, for your position
on the mendacious attack on Israel as an apartheid state, for your support
for Israel’s security and for supporting the President’s effort to expand
the peace.”

He also plugged a Saudi-Israeli deal which would presumably require Saudi
Arabia to normalize Israeli apartheid.

According to Netanyahu, “There is a physical infrastructure element that
exists in a Saudi-Israeli peace that has been there but has been defied by
politics.”

“Politics” is a striking euphemism for Israel’s ethnic cleansing and
occupation of Palestinians which has dampened
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-saudis-have-called-their-israeli-wedding/37561>
Saudi Arabia’s enthusiasm to fully embrace Israel, notwithstanding
indications
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/saudi-arabia-israel-united-states.html>
that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is very open to that possibility.
No bottom

AIPAC’s affiliated “educational” organization, the American Israel
Education Foundation <https://www.aiefdn.org/>, is coordinating the trip.

Gila Milstein, spouse <https://www.milsteinff.org/who-we-are/> of Adam
Milstein, is an AIEF board member
<https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521623781/202242249349302104/full>.
The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation
<https://www.milsteinff.org/supported-organizations/american-israel-education-foundation-aief/>
provides financial support <https://www.milsteinff.org/who-we-support/> to
AIEF as well as a raft of other anti-Palestinian organizations.

Adam Milstein is an anti-Palestinian activist
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/us-donors-fund-killers-palestinian-american-grandfather/36831>,
convicted tax evader
<https://theintercept.com/2019/03/25/adam-milstein-israel-bds/>, and spreader
of anti-Semitism
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/new-pro-israel-group-claims-criticism-george-soros-isnt-anti-semitic>
directed at George Soros, another pro-Israel donor who is a longtime
supporter of Democratic candidates and some liberal causes.

That sort of anti-Palestinian sentiment combined with ugly attacks on
liberal Jews with whom Adam Milstein disagrees is very much in keeping with
Israel’s direction.

Congressional Democrats are here to finance Israel during its attacks on
both groups.

I had figured they would only be supportive of funding the attacks on
Palestinians. But they came for the anti-Palestinianism and stayed for the
attacks on protesting Israeli Jews, many of whom had no qualms about
discriminating against Palestinians.
Quite frankly, I underestimated how compelling congressional Democrats
would find an Israel that was not just an apartheid state but a right-wing
authoritarian state for Israeli Jews as well.

All the “Jewish democratic state” rhetoric was evidently just convenient
propaganda. There’s no bottom to what Democrats will accept when it comes
to Israel.

Bad for dissenting Israeli Jews, it will be far worse for Palestinians.

While the Democrats have always enthusiastically funded Israel’s crimes,
the current visit will allay any Israeli fears that party leaders will soon
translate into policy their base’s growing support for Palestinian rights.
Nor are they prepared to stop the funding because of anti-democratic moves
against Israeli Jews.

Netanyahu can be assured that the Democrats will continue to fund whatever
brutality Israel perpetrates against Palestinians in the days ahead. The
Democrats will fully own the horrifying consequences of their support.

These consequences may have been expedited on Monday when Jeffries accepted
Netanyahu’s contention that Israel is a “liberal democracy” and stated his
belief that Netanyahu “doesn’t condone violence, no matter where it
originates.”

Jeffries, who sees right through Donald Trump’s lies, added with breathtaking
complicity <https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1688616001032572928> –
he’s too plugged-in to be termed naive – “I take him at his word.”
The burden is now on grassroots Democrats, already in favor
<https://globalaffairs.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Final%20Israel%20Brief.pdf>
of conditioning
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/the-democratic-consensus-on-israeli-is-beginning-to-fracture-but-leadership-is-not-budging-on-issue/>
military aid to Israel, to vote out the anti-Palestinian politicians. That
effort to vote out deniers of Israeli apartheid will be more difficult
with AIPAC
PAC <https://www.aipacpac.org/about> funding Democratic challengers to
candidates and incumbents raising concerns about Israel’s actions.

Voters are likely to become ever more disillusioned with a Democratic
primary process in which conservative pro-Israel PACs successfully defeat
progressive candidates
<https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/11/american-israel-public-affairs-committee-backed-candidates-won-midterm-races-following-big-spending-by-groups-super-pac/>
willing to stand up for Palestinian rights.
The visiting Democrats are sending a clear message
<https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-754090> that they are
unwilling to put limits on how far Israel can pitch into racism and
authoritarianism and still receive US military aid.

Palestinians, whether under occupation, dispossession or both, won’t be the
least bit surprised. They’ve been eyewitnesses to the Democratic Party’s
complicity and hypocrisy for decades.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230812/b9ed914f/attachment.htm>