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February 5, 2023
Key Takeaways:
- Historians and Jewish leaders in Israel and the U.S. are concerned that Israel's new government threatens to fundamentally change the U.S.-Israel relationship--and they want those who support Israel in America to speak out.
- I joined more than 180 signatories calling for critical and necessary debate about Israeli policies in a letter spelling out when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to Israel and the West Bank proved that the Biden administration is doing all it can to work with the Israeli partners it has, not the partners it wishes it had.
- Republicans removed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. McCarthy's rationale for removing her was baseless, and Jewish members opposed Omar's removal 26-2, seeing Kevin McCarthy as filled with more hot air than a Chinese spy balloon.
- Rep. Omar nevertheless co-sponsored a resolution recognizing Israel as America’s legitimate and democratic ally and condemning "antisemitism masquerading as anti-Israel sentiment." As of this writing, the resolution has 32 Democratic co-sponsors and zero Republican co-sponsors.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
The major threat to U.S.- Israel relations is not on college campuses or fringe political groups with no influence on U.S. policy, but the actions and policies of Israel's new government. On January 25, 134 historians of Jewish and Israeli history accused Netanyahu’s new government of “endangering the very existence of the State of Israel and the Israeli nation.”
The U.S.-Israel relationship is grounded in shared values. To the extent Israel's government is perceived not to share those values, strains will emerge in the relationship. The answer for those of us who love Israel and who support a strong U.S.-Israel alliance is not to deny those realities or to knee-jerkingly conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism or animus toward Israel, but to join with the many Israelis who share our concerns and our Zionist vision of a Jewish, democratic State of Israel.
For these reasons, I was one of 169 Jewish American leaders (now more than 180) who signed a statement on February 1 calling for critical and necessary debate about Israeli policies. The statement lays out parameters for respectful and principled debate about Israeli policies – especially as they apply to Palestinians within Israel and in the occupied territories – and delineates guidelines for determining when debate involves legitimate policy-based criticism versus when it crosses the line into antisemitism.
The signatories come from different parts of the political spectrum and different streams of Judaism, but all share "a love for Israel and a steadfast support for its security and well-being" and an understanding that "there is no contradiction between combating antisemitism and criticizing the deeply troubling policies of the new Israeli government. Those who employ accusations of antisemitism as a political weapon poison the debate, and they weaken our ability to fight real antisemitism and effectively advocate for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship."
The day after we published our letter, Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi, and Daniel Gordis published an open letter to Israel’s friends in North America stating that Netanyahu's "judicial reform" (their scare quotes) would result in a "dramatic alteration that would bring Israel’s governing system closer not to the US and Canada but to Hungary and Turkey." They write from Jerusalem that "when an Israeli government strays beyond what your commitments to liberal democracy can abide, you have both the right and the responsibility to speak up."
Daniel Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller describe Israel's new government as "a democratically elected extremist coalition led by a very skillful and willful prime minister whose primary goal isn’t stopping Iran from getting a bomb or normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia but finding a way to escape his ongoing corruption trial...This virtually ensures rising tensions with the United States, unless of course some deus ex machina intrudes, such as war with Iran, a third intifada, or the collapse of the government and its replacement by a more centrist coalition."
Amir Tibon outlined the biggest lies that Netanyahu told Jake Tapper on CNN, but not to be outdone, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk laid out even more untruths from Bibi. Why do I point this out? Because successful pro-Israel advocacy requires credibility, and the gullible within the pro-Israel community who repeat Bibi's misinformation do neither themselves nor us any favors.
Could these experts from across national, political, and religious spectrums be wrong? Might they be full of hot air? Possibly. But as Bibi himself used to say when accused of crying wolf with regard to Iran, what people forget is that at the end of the story of the boy who cried wolf there really was a wolf.
The Biden administration is doing all it can to work with the Israeli partners it has, not the partners it wishes it had. In his meetings last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sounded the same refrain.
Blinken condemned the horrific terrorist attack outside a synagogue in Neve Yaakov and the subsequent attack on an Israeli father and son. Blinken reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He urged all sides to "prevent further escalation in violence and restore calm. That’s the only way that we can create conditions in which people’s sense of security will start to improve and fear can start to recede."
Blinken reiterated the administration's commitment to a two-state solution and its opposition to "anything that puts that goal further from reach, including but not limited to settlement expansion, legalization of illegal outposts, a move towards annexation of the West Bank, disruption to the historic status quo on Jerusalem’s holy sites, demolitions and evictions, and incitement and acquiescence to violence."
Blinken noted that the U.S. is bolstering its aid to the Palestinians, continuing "to work to broaden and deepen the circle of peace between Israel and its neighbors," and working with Israel to "deepen our cooperation to confront and counter the Iranian regime’s destabilizing actions in the region and beyond."
Alon Pinkus wrote that by listing the core democratic values that both countries share, Blinken was "essentially enumerating what the United States is concerned about"--the risk that Israel's government would depart from those values. Pinkus notes that Blinken would not have to lay out what we mean by shared democratic values following a trip to France or Canada.
Blinken did not word this as overt criticism. That's not his or Biden's style. But true friends of Israel will ignore his warning at the peril of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Republicans removed Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC). No Democrats supported her removal. Jewish House members opposed her removal 26-2. That should tell you something. If your response is that 26 of the 28 Jewish House members are Democrats, well, that should tell you something too.
Yet the party without the Jews, the party that Jewish Americans overwhelmingly vote against and don't trust to fight antisemitism, thinks it knows better than the party supported by the vast majority of Jewish Americans. With friends like these...
Greg Sargent writes that Republicans have manufactured a bunch of fig-leaf justifications for removing Omar, but as he documents, none withstand scrutiny. Many Democrats spoke against McCarthy's drive to remove Rep. Omar from her committee. Those most worth reading include this thread from former Rep. John Yarmouth (D-KY), this statement from HFAC Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-NY), and this statement from Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN). Watch this one-minute clip from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and this 30-second clip from Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).
On the House floor, Phillips made the same point I made in my January 15 newsletter: Jewish members voted to maintain Omar's committee assignment because "we believe in the human capacity to learn from mistakes, to make amends, and that atonement should be rewarded."
The Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), the only national voice of Jewish Democrats, stood "with House Democrats in strongly opposing this unjust act of political retribution." Abe Silberstein called out Republicans for their hypocrisy, noting not only that "Omar deleted the tweets [from four years ago] two days after writing them and apologized," but that "if House Republicans were truly concerned about antisemitism, they would be dealing with their own members’ remarks."
The White House called Omar's removal a "political stunt," noting that Omar "is a highly respected member of Congress," that "she has apologized for her comment she made in the past," and that "she has been vocal about condemning antisemitism as well as affirming our strong alliance and important partnership with Israel."
Knowing that she was certain to lose the House vote, Omar nevertheless joined 31 Democratic colleagues in cosponsoring H. Res. 92, a resolution recognizing Israel as America’s legitimate and democratic ally and condemning "antisemitism masquerading as anti-Israel sentiment."
But the resolution also condemns "the perpetuation of antisemitic tropes, including claims of dual loyalty, control, and other conspiracy theories antithetical to American values," so it will be interesting to see how many Republicans co-sponsor it or whether McCarthy will allow a floor vote given that dual loyalty is one of Trump's favorite tropes and that McCarthy himself used, and never apologized for, the control trope.
Correction. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts. In last week's newsletter, I incorrectly identified the Video Clip of the Week as George Santos on Jimmy Kimmel. It was Jimmy Fallon. Thanks to the careful readers who brought the error to my attention.
In Case You Missed It:
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Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) introduced legislation to reform democracy by establishing 12 at-large senators to be elected through a nationwide system of ranked-choice voting; adding approximately 138 additional members of the House; and changing the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and creating a 13-judge multi-circuit panel to hear cases where the United States or a federal agency is a party.
- Politics with Dana and Steve (Dana is "Dana Gordon" and "Steve" is yours truly), the leading national Jewish political organization in the Chicago area, added its name to this letter demanding that Elon Musk take meaningful, quantifiable steps to reduce antisemitism and hate on Twitter.
Tweets of the Week. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Trisha Rich, and Steve Sheffey. (It goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: If you have a Twitter account, show your appreciation for these Tweets of the Week every week by retweeting them!)
Twitter Thread of the Week. Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) (the Omar resolution was not the only absurd vote put to the House by Republicans on Thursday).
Video Clip of the Week. A restored and uncensored clip from Animal Crackers (if you think you know this routine by heart, think again).
Upcoming Event. Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania (DJOP) presents a free event on Zoom: "US-Israel relations: The View from Jerusalem and DC" on Sunday, March 19, at 10:00 am CT moderated by Jill Zipin with panelists Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA), Nimrod Novik (former senior advisor on foreign policy to the late Shimon Peres and currently a member of the Executive Committee of Commanders for Israel’s Security), DJOP Board member Martin Raffel (previously senior vice president and director of the Task Force on Israel, World Jewry & International Human Rights at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs), and Steve Sheffey (me). RSVP here to get the link.
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