<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-top-anchor"></div>
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" dir="ltr" lang="en">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democratic-party-leaders-fully-embrace-netanyahus-israel">electronicintifada.net</a>
<div class="gmail-domain-border"></div>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Democratic Party leaders fully embrace Netanyahu's Israel</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits"></div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">August 10, 2023<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<span><img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2023-08/090823-netanyahu-jeffries.jpg?itok=WGfDRdWC×tamp=1691631185" alt="Congressman Hakeem Jeffries looks on as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="395" height="259"></span><p><font size="1">House
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries says of serial liar and apartheid
denier Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister: “I take him at
his word.” (<a href="https://twitter.com/MJPlitnick/status/1688657025830359042">via X, formerly known as Twitter</a>)</font></p><p><a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2023/08/hakeem-jeffries-house-democrats-israel-trip/">Two dozen</a> congressional Democrats are visiting Israel and the <a href="https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/137075">occupied</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1688304078726615040">West Bank</a> this week.</p>
<p>With their presence and silence, they are lending their support to
the anti-Palestinian racism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and his <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/fascism-grips-israel-yet-us-clings-two-state-fantasy">openly fascist</a> governing partners.</p>
<p>Early in the trip, the delegation posed for a photograph alongside
Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs.
</p>
The smiling photo-op points to a profound and ongoing problem with anti-Palestinianism within the Democratic Party.
<p>The current <a href="https://twitter.com/elgindy_/status/1689244129547710464">enthusiastic visit</a> to Netanyahu and <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gvir-praises-settler-who-killed-palestinian-in-clash-should-get-medal-of-honor/">Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Israel</a> highlights the willingness of congressional Democrats to embrace and fund <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ben-gvir-praises-settlers-who-killed-teen-heroes">racism</a> in a way that would have been unthinkable in the late 1980s with apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p>House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is heading the delegation, supported Israel’s <a href="https://twitter.com/AIPAC/status/1688517574391209989">ethnocratic system</a> in a statement quickly promoted by AIPAC.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>This is like Jeffries, a New Yorker, visiting Jim Crow or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/">racially disenfranchised</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-redistricting-congress-republicans-a5dae9808fbfa9ff66b427b99928130d">gerrymandered</a> North Carolina and praising it as a “white and democratic state” – whether in 1950 or 2023.</p>
<p>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.
</p>
Jeffries also <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-753978">repeated</a> casual <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democrats-will-keep-israel-policies-leaders-change">anti-Arab racism</a> he has employed previously.
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Notably, the metaphor of a “tough” or “dangerous neighborhood” itself has racist overtones. This terminology is often used to <a href="http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/dangerous-neighborhood-trope-wars-overseas-linked-police-brutality-home/">justify or excuse police brutality</a> in predominantly Black urban areas in the United States long deprived of public and private investment due to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america">government segregation policies</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Jeffries <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-753978">added</a>,
“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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” <a href="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">Bezalel Smotrich</a> – even as they claim to disagree with some of their policies.</p>
<p>With a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/07/democratic-senator-chris-van-hollen-asks-biden-stop-israeli-government-racists">few exceptions</a>,
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>New generation of anti-Palestinians</h2>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democrats-will-keep-israel-policies-leaders-change">Predictably</a>, the new generation of Democratic leadership is proving every bit as willfully pro-Israel as its predecessors.</p>
<p>Indeed, Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/us-will-fund-israel-whether-its-democracy-or-not">signaled</a> in March that financial support would continue no matter what.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>She added, “I would not be among the defectors. I would continue to vote for support for Israel.”</p>
<p>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” <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-passes-law-entrenching-apartheid">intended</a> for Jews only breaks apart is something of a surprise.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>In denial</h2>
<p>Netanyahu <a href="https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/event-congress070823">denied</a> Israel’s apartheid reality – <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/what-makes-amnestys-apartheid-report-different/34771">recognized</a> by numerous Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations – in his remarks to the congressional delegation.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>He also plugged a Saudi-Israeli deal which would presumably require Saudi Arabia to normalize Israeli apartheid.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“Politics” is a striking euphemism for Israel’s ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestinians which has <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-saudis-have-called-their-israeli-wedding/37561">dampened</a> Saudi Arabia’s enthusiasm to fully embrace Israel, notwithstanding <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/saudi-arabia-israel-united-states.html">indications</a> that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is very open to that possibility.</p>
<h2>No bottom</h2>
<p>AIPAC’s affiliated “educational” organization, the <a href="https://www.aiefdn.org/">American Israel Education Foundation</a>, is coordinating the trip.</p>
<p>Gila Milstein, <a href="https://www.milsteinff.org/who-we-are/">spouse</a> of Adam Milstein, is an <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521623781/202242249349302104/full">AIEF board member</a>. The <a href="https://www.milsteinff.org/supported-organizations/american-israel-education-foundation-aief/">Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation</a> provides <a href="https://www.milsteinff.org/who-we-support/">financial support</a> to AIEF as well as a raft of other anti-Palestinian organizations.</p>
<p>Adam Milstein is an <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/us-donors-fund-killers-palestinian-american-grandfather/36831">anti-Palestinian activist</a>, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/25/adam-milstein-israel-bds/">convicted tax evader</a>, and <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/new-pro-israel-group-claims-criticism-george-soros-isnt-anti-semitic">spreader of anti-Semitism</a>
directed at George Soros, another pro-Israel donor who is a longtime
supporter of Democratic candidates and some liberal causes.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Congressional Democrats are here to finance Israel during its attacks on both groups.</p>
<p>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.
</p>
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.
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bad for dissenting Israeli Jews, it will be far worse for Palestinians.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>Jeffries, who sees right through Donald Trump’s lies, added with <a href="https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1688616001032572928">breathtaking complicity</a> – he’s too plugged-in to be termed naive – “I take him at his word.”
</p>
The burden is now on grassroots Democrats, already in <a href="https://globalaffairs.org/sites/default/files/2021-08/Final%20Israel%20Brief.pdf">favor</a> of <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/the-democratic-consensus-on-israeli-is-beginning-to-fracture-but-leadership-is-not-budging-on-issue/">conditioning</a> 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 <a href="https://www.aipacpac.org/about">AIPAC PAC</a> funding Democratic challengers to candidates and incumbents raising concerns about Israel’s actions.
<p>Voters are likely to become ever more disillusioned with a Democratic
primary process in which conservative pro-Israel PACs successfully <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/11/american-israel-public-affairs-committee-backed-candidates-won-midterm-races-following-big-spending-by-groups-super-pac/">defeat progressive candidates</a> willing to stand up for Palestinian rights.
</p>
The visiting Democrats are sending a <a href="https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-754090">clear message</a>
that they are unwilling to put limits on how far Israel can pitch into
racism and authoritarianism and still receive US military aid.
<p>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.</p>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div></div>
</div>
</div>