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March 3, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- It's been 149 days since Hamas murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 240 more in Israel on October 7; 134 hostages remain still in Gaza. Any ceasefire must be conditioned on their release.
- We are on the brink of regional conflagration or regional peace in the Middle East. Peace is possible if we press for the parties to the conflict to accept President Biden's proposal for a new post-October 7 order and if we press Congress to accept that we cannot pretend October 7 never happened and continue policies that do not protect Israel's security or secure its future as a Jewish, democratic state.
- Settlement expansion is not the cause of the conflict but settlement expansion is an obstacle to solving the conflict, as is settler violence in the West Bank. Opposing settlement expansion means opposing the current government of Israel and supporting the State of Israel. The Biden administration is demonstrating how to support Israel's safety and security while paving the path to eventual peace.
- The Biden administration blocked a UN Security Council statement supported by all other 14 members of the Security Council blaming Israel for the deaths of 100 Palestinians who died trying to access aid deliveries.
- The record is clear that Democrats are better than Republicans on antisemitism and Israel. We could put our hands over our ears and shout "la la la" when we are told the facts about the parties. Facing up to reality and voting accordingly might be a better approach.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and our March 19 event with Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA).
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Hi Steve,
If you accept that Hamas had no legal or moral justification for kidnapping 240 people on October 7, then Hamas has no legal or moral justification for continuing to hold them. Israel cannot be expected to stop fighting, withdraw from Gaza, and leave all 134 hostages in Gaza indefinitely. But we could have a ceasefire right now if Hamas released all 134 hostages, all denied Red Cross access and medicine.
Laura Rozen reports that Israel has basically agreed to a six-week hostage release/ceasefire deal that would "free the most vulnerable Israeli hostages and enable a vast amount of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza" but Hamas has not (yet) agreed.
We are on the brink of regional conflagration or regional peace. Hamas's brutal terrorism and the murder of more Jews on October 7 than on any single day since the Holocaust has radicalized much of Israel's population. Unchecked settler violence--more than 800 documented cases of settler violence since October 7--is radicalizing Palestinians in the West Bank. Hamas and certain elements within Israel's government envision one state from the river to the sea; they differ on who will run that one state.
Six members of Congress recently returned from Israel and the Palestinian territories. Their February 29 statement summarizes what they saw and conversations they had with thought leaders and experts on the ground. It outlines the changes that are needed and can be realistically achieved if we are willing to push hard for a regional deal that includes a two-state solution.
Other House Democrats wrote this February 29 letter. There is no contradiction between supporting Israel's safety and security, humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and a two-state solution. These goals are synchronous and it is appropriate for the U.S. to criticize any party whose words or deeds conflict with these goals.
David Grossman, 2018 recipient of Israel's Prize for literature, wrote an op-ed on March 1 that describes better than anything I've yet read about where Israel is and the mood in Israel. He describes the choices Israel confronts, the stakes for Israel and the Palestinians, and concludes that "it seems we had to go through hell itself in order to get to the place from which one can see, on an exceptionally bright day, the distant edge of heaven."
But how do we get there? Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak writes, in what could be a companion piece to the Grossman op-ed, that Israel needs new elections to replace Netanyahu and elect a government that will take seriously the Biden administration's "proposal for a new postwar regional order that would end Hamas’s ability to threaten Israel and rule Gaza, place control of the territory in the hands of a 'revitalized' Palestinian Authority (with the assistance of Arab governments), normalize Israeli-Saudi relations, and establish a formal U.S.-Saudi defense alliance. All this would be conditioned on Israel agreeing to a political process with the long-term goal of a two-state solution, with the backing of Arab governments friendly with the United States and opposed to Iran and its partners and proxies. The vision is of a process that would eventually produce a strong and secure Israel living side by side, behind agreed and secure borders, with a viable, demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza."
Barak, one of the most decorated soldiers in Israel's history and a former Minister of Defense, describes in detail the factors that could help or hinder this effort. I know I give you a lot to read. But if you read the Grossman and Barak op-eds you'll be much smarter.
Settlements are not the cause of the conflict, but settlement expansion is an obstacle to peace. On February 23, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that "it’s been longstanding U.S. policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace. They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion. And in our judgement, this only weakens – it doesn’t strengthen – Israel’s security."
For decades, this has been U.S. policy. For decades, Israel has disagreed. And for decades, the U.S. has supported Israel's safety and security.
On February 28, State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller explained that "we provide security assistance to Israel because we support Israel’s legitimate right to ensure that the attacks of October 7th never happen again; to ensure Israel’s legitimate right to protect itself from a terrorist organization, Hizballah, that exists to the north of Israel and continues to attack Israel and that is committed to the destruction of Israel. So that is true. It is also true that there are things that the Government of Israel does with which we disagree and we express our disagreements.
"But that doesn’t change our fundamental commitment to Israel’s security ... and that’s why we take the actions to support their right to defend themself consistent with humanitarian law. But that does not mean that we agree with everything that they do."
Nor should we. We don't agree with everything our government does--or that any country does.
Democrats are better than Republicans on antisemitism and Israel. It would be nice to believe, and I wish it were still the case, that both parties could be counted on to oppose antisemitism and to support Israel. But wishing will not make it so. Republicans must learn the only way they can learn--through defeats at the polls--that welcoming antisemitism and opposing military aid to Israel is not the path to electoral success.
JDCA Chair Ron Klein describes the key differences between today's Democratic and Republican parties: "The dangerous antisemitism on the far right has been fueled by Trump, who has legitimized hate and dangerous threats to our democracy within the GOP. Meanwhile, any anti-Israel and antisemitism sentiment on the far left is opposed and actively countered by President Biden and every leader in the Democratic Party."
On Israel, Klein writes that "President Biden entered office with a longer and stronger record on Israel than any president. His proposed $14.3 billion emergency aid package to Israel is unprecedented, and after October 7, he became the first sitting president to visit Israel during wartime. He has vetoed three one-sided U.N. resolutions critical of Israel since October 7. He introduced and is implementing the first U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. Republicans in Congress, on the other hand, continue to block security and humanitarian assistance for Israel and Ukraine."
The facts speak for themselves.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I omitted a word. "The GOP is lost cause" should have been "The GOP is a lost cause."
In Case You Missed It:
- You didn't miss anything on the emergency aid for Israel and Ukraine that President Biden requested on October 20 because Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has yet to call the compromise package passed by the Senate for an up or down vote.
- Noah Feldman writes about the new antisemitism. You know those books that use words that don't contain the letter "e" and you don't notice unless someone points it out? Feldman wrote a great article explaining antisemitism and amazingly, you might not even notice that the article does not mention the IHRA definition--probably because its inclusion would have shed no additional insight on the subject. Then again, maybe Feldman's goal was to clarify, not politicize.
- Accounts vary regarding the deaths of 100 Palestinians on February 29 in a stampede to access aid trucks, but as the co-presidents of the Shalom Hartman Institute made clear, "the State of Israel is responsible and must take responsibility for the deaths of the more than 100 residents of Gaza who died tragically today as they desperately sought food for themselves and their families ... There is an important moral difference between the tragic but inevitable killing of civilians in wartime, especially those used as human shields by the enemy, and events like the one that transpired today, the senseless violent deaths of civilians simply seeking the food that they are entitled to as human beings." The Biden administration blocked a UN Security Council statement supported by all other 14 members of the Security Council blaming Israel for the incident.
- Not The Onion: It's true--the ADL is honoring Jared Kushner at its annual conference March 6-7. Kushnir will receive the ADL Champion Award, which "recognizes bold leaders from the government, nonprofit or private sectors who utilize their platform to champion policies or initiatives that meaningfully advance the fight against antisemitism and hate." The ADL ended that sentence with a period, not a laughter emoji. Lucky for Kushner that the ADL did not view as disqualifying his silence while serving in an administration led by a president who characterized as "very fine people' marchers carrying tiki-torches while chanting "Jews will not replace us." But this "silence is complicity" jazz is so 1900s, right?
In case you forgot: Donald Trump's Iran policy was a disaster. On February 28, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) documented that Trump's Iran policy "was a complete, total failure by every available metric ... [Iran] got closer to a nuclear weapon, their proxies didn't get any weaker, U.S. troops came under attack in a way that they were not prior to Trump's presidency, and our coalition, that had been carefully built around the nuclear agreement, ready to be used to go after Iran's ballistic missile program or their support for proxies, had vanished.” This matters because Trump is running for president again.
Tweets of the Week. T'ruah with some advice for the ADL and Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D-CA) questioning of Hunter Biden during his hearing.
Twitter Thread of the Week. Simon Rosenberg's morning after Michigan thread. Taking a deeper dive into the numbers, David Schraub notes that proponents of the "uncommitted" campaign in Michigan expended a lot of effort to win only 2.5% more than the baseline 10% that would have voted "uncommitted" had proponents done nothing and that "managing to overperform doing nothing by 2.5% really doesn't demonstrate much in the way of serious political muscle."
Video Clips of the Week. Marc Ribler's Story Road with Stevie Van Zandt celebrating...Dick Cavett. And Richard Lewis.
Sermon of the Week. Rabbi Sharon Brous.
Upcoming Event. Please join Dana Gordon, Steve Sheffey, Jill Zipin, and
Democratic Jewish Outreach PA PAC for a Zoom fundraiser for Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at 4:30 PM ET. RSVP here to get the Zoom link. This will be a close race. Holding this seat is key to holding the Democratic Senate majority.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
I hope you enjoyed today's newsletter. Donations are welcome (this takes time to write and costs money to send). If you'd like to chip in, click here and fill in the amount of your choice. If you see something that says "Save your info and create a PayPal account," click the button to the right and it will go away. You don't need a PayPal account. Or you can Venmo @Steven-Sheffey (last four phone digits are 9479). You can send a check too.
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