AIPAC, Israel and the poisonously ambiguous concept of “two states” - by Vic Rosenthal

...AIPAC hoped to fend off attacks from J Street and similar groups without weakening its support from pro-Israel elements, by employing the time honored method of political triangulation. By adopting some of the ideas of its opponents on the Left, it hopes to bring them into the fold, while its supporters on the Right will have nowhere else to go. But this is a poor strategy because the progressives among the Democrats no longer accept AIPAC’s primary objective, which is support for Israel. It’s not that they think, as the Israeli Left does, that “ending the occupation” will be likely to lead to peace, or that their vision of Israel will be more democratic, or that another partition of the Land of Israel will prevent a demographic crisis. They have absorbed the narratives of the international Left and are simply anti-Israel. They are not coming back to AIPAC.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
08 March '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/03/the-poisonously-ambiguous-concept-of-two-states/

AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr created a stir Sunday when he called for “two states for two peoples: one Jewish with secure and defensible borders and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future.”

Kohr deliberately echoed the words of Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University in 2009. Netanyahu said then,

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other. …

I have already stressed the first principle – recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel. …

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

Bibi’s statement was a mistake. His enemies on the right pounced on him for giving up his historical opposition to a Palestinian state, while the Arabs and the Left derided him as insincere. He got nothing in return from Obama and lost whatever reputation he still had for principled opposition to concessions for the PLO. Most damaging to Israel was the fact that the Americans and the PLO “pocketed” his statement, making it almost impossible for him or any subsequent Israeli Prime Minister to walk it back. From then on, anyone could say “Israel officially supports a Palestinian state.”

The root of the problem is that the concept of “two states” is poisonously ambiguous. Everyone can understand it to mean something different, up to embracing diametrically opposite ideas.

It Would Seem, the Party’s Over for Pro-Israel Dems - by Jonathan Tobin

...It is one thing to be “pro-Israel and pro-peace” as J Street claims to be or even to assert that appeasement of Iran is in Israel’s interests. But it is quite another to have prominent Israel-bashers and BDS advocates among those in charge of declaring where the party stands on important issues. The Democrats have ceased to be a pro-Israel party and become one where Israel-haters are not only welcomed but given honor and power. If they are honest, pro-Israel Democrats must understand that they are on their way out in their old political home. Anyone who doesn’t understand that’s one of the clear outcomes of the 2016 campaign is in a state of denial.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
25 May '16..

The names of those chosen to be on the Democratic Party platform committee were announced yesterday, and the headlines were about Bernie Sanders getting his due. Sanders was able to name five of the 15 members of the committee with Hillary Clinton getting six and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz naming four. The group will have plenty to argue about as they decide just how far to the left they will tilt as Democrats prepare for the general election. But it is also painfully obvious that one of the clear points of disagreement will be about Israel and the Palestinians. Three of Sanders’ picks are outspoken opponents of Israel. While there are some clear supporters of the Jewish state among the others chosen, there are also others who are deeply critical of Israel. It is not clear that such a group can possibly arrive at a consensus and avoid a painful floor fight about how “even handed” Democrats will claim to be about the Middle East conflict, we do know one thing, any pretense of this being a pro-Israel party is now officially exploded.

The reports that the Sanders camp is planning on making demands that the platform move away from the unambiguously pro-Israel document it has put forward at past conventions were confirmed when we learned the names of the committee members his campaign selected. They include: Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim in Congress and a fierce critic of Israel though he does have good relations with Minnesota’s Jewish community; James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute and someone who has fought for many years to distance the Democrats from the Jewish state; and academic Cornel West, an advocate for the BDS — boycott, divest, sanction — movement that advocates for economic war on Israel in order to isolate and ultimately destroy it.

Among Clinton’s picks was Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress think tank, who is not an opponent of Israel per se but a fierce critic of the Netanyahu government, even if her group did allow the prime minister to speak at one of their events.

Wasserman Schultz chose the committee chair Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland as well as Representatives Howard Berman of California, both of whom are generally considered strong friends of Israel and Jewish philanthropist Bonnie Schaefer. But she also chose Rep. Barbara Lee of Texas who joined those ganging up against Israel during the time of the 2008 conflict with Hamas. As JTA noted, the left-wing J STREET lobby has endorsed all five of the members of the House that are on this committee.

It would be wrong to prejudge what they will produce but suffice it to say with such a group no one should expect their work to say anything about Jerusalem being Israel’s capital or to note that Israel has already taken risks for peace and been repeatedly rejected.

At best, such a committee will give the country a platform plank that will be, as Sanders intends, one that puts democratic Israel on the same moral plane as the terror-supporting Fatah kleptocrats of the Palestinian Authority and the Islamists of Hamas who make no secret of their desire to eliminate the Jewish state and to commit genocide against its people. Democrats will spin it as an approach that is pro-peace and recognizes Israel’s right to exist alongside a Palestinian state, but it will almost certainly disingenuously label Israel as being as much to blame for the conflict as the terrorists seeking to destroy it.

Will the Democratic Platform Dump Israel? - by Jonathan Tobin

...Those who say that Israel has a right to defend itself but then denounce its attempts to do so and, in effect, grant Hamas terrorists impunity to not only rain down missiles on cities but also to use civilians as human shields are undermining the Jewish state’s existence and the rights of its people.

2012 Democratic Convention Chairman Antonio Villaraigosa
calls for a vote to amend the platform on Jerusalem being
the capital of Israel. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
23 May '16..

One of the most absurd moments of the 2012 National Democratic Convention was when officials sought to rectify an omission in the draft of the party’s official platform. The original language, as produced by the platform committee, failed to reaffirm a commitment to supporting Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, prompting a firestorm of criticism from Republicans and pro-Israel groups. But then convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa, acting under orders from the Obama campaign, which was in the middle of an election-year Jewish charm offensive, attempted to insert new language into the platform that simply said, “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel,” by a voice vote. The arena in Charlotte echoed with shouts of “no!” Villaraigosa tried three times to get the result he wanted before finally — and falsely — declaring that the ayes had it anyway.

But as foolish — and embarrassing — as that moment was for pro-Israel Democrats, what awaits them in Philadelphia this July when they gather for their next convention may be far worse. As the Washington Post reported last week, the Sanders campaign is planning to push for new language in the Democratic Platform that shifts the emphasis away from stalwart support for Israel and toward prioritizing Palestinian rights in an effort to form a more even-handed approach to the Middle East conflict. If they get their way, it will be a clarifying moment that will indicate just how far the party has drifted from its former stance as a dependable defender of the Jewish state. It may also give ammunition to Republicans trying to argue that, despite his widely inconsistent foreign policy statements and stances, Trump is the better choice for president from the perspective of friends of Israel.

That 2012 convention moment epitomized the shift within the Democratic Party whereby much of its liberal base had moved away from support for Israel. The people shouting “no” were not then or even now representative of the opinions of the majority of voters who identify as Democrats. The most recent Pew Research Center poll on American opinion about the Middle East indicated that a plurality of Democrats backed Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 43 to 29 percent. But those convention delegates were party activists who represent the sort of rank and file left-wingers who go to conventions and provide the legwork and muscle for the Democratic Party around the country. The question facing the party now, however, is how hard the Hillary Clinton camp will fight Sanders on the issue of Israel and whether a convention where the challengers will be both numerous and itching for a chance to teach the nominee and the party establishment a lesson will be able to turn back this attempt to distance Democrats from Israel?

Sanders claims he is “100 percent pro-Israel” and claims that his support for “Palestinian rights” should not be interpreted as an attack on Israel’s right to exist. But Sanders’ approach to the conflict is actually anything but supportive of Israel. His claim that Israel’s counter-attacks against terrorists shooting rockets and using tunnels for cross-border murder and kidnapping raids were “disproportionate” illustrates just how much his stance is influenced by misleading Palestinian propaganda. Those who say that Israel has a right to defend itself but then denounce its attempts to do so and, in effect, grant Hamas terrorists impunity to not only rain down missiles on cities but also to use civilians as human shields are undermining the Jewish state’s existence and the rights of its people.

Will This Be the Last Pro-Israel Democrat? - by Jonathan Tobin

It’s true that the bipartisan pro-Israel coalition can be shattered if a president decides to make an issue a litmus test of partisan loyalty as Obama did with the Iran nuclear deal. But it must also be understood that pro-Israel stands aren’t merely a matter of political contributions. They are a reflection of Israel’s popularity among Americans of all different parties and backgrounds. That is being chipped away at by people like Beinart and by others who go even further in their efforts to delegitimize Israel and its right to self-defense. But while they are winning on the left, the rest of the country is not with them.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
19 May '16..

Did Bernie Sanders miss a golden opportunity to contrast his standing as the avatar of liberal ideology with Hillary Clinton’s more centrist beliefs? Sanders chose to stay away from attacks that pointed to Clinton’s well-earned reputation for dishonesty–a reputation having to do with her email scandal as well as the serious conflict-of-interest charges resulting from the activities of the Clinton family foundation. But he was not shy about trying to tie the former secretary of state to Wall Street or painting her as a tool of the country’s financial and political establishment. But there was one issue where he might have appealed to the party’s liberal base as being more in line with their views than is Clinton: Israel. According to Peter Beinart, that might have been a mistake on Sanders’s part, and it won’t be repeated by another candidate the next time there is a Democratic presidential contest.

In his Haaretz column Beinart acknowledges that the two did highlight their disagreements over Israel at their Brooklyn debate in April. He might have also pointed out that this contrast was apparent even before that, in their contrasting Middle-East-policy speeches earlier in the campaign. Clinton gave a standard issue stalwart pro-Israel speech at the AIPAC conference. Sanders, who has gotten closer to winning a major party presidential nomination than any other American Jew in history, chose to boycott AIPAC and then gave a policy speech on the Middle East that was highly critical of Israeli policies while still reflecting support for Israel’s right to exist.

Yet Beinart is correct that aside from those two moments and the Vermont senator’s slanderous exaggeration of Palestinian casualties during the 2014 Gaza war, Sanders’s equivocal approach to Israel didn’t play a role in the campaign. It’s Beinart’s thesis that this was a mistake because of the way most liberals feel about the issue. Though I seldom agree with Beinart, he may be right about this. As I noted last week, Hillary Clinton’s decision to take a stand against the BDS — boycott, divest, sanction — movement against Israel before the convention of the Methodist church where a resolution on the topic was to be voted on, put her at odds with the base of the Democratic Party.

Like Beinart, I cited a new Pew Research Center poll that showed that while most Americans remained solidly pro-Israel, there were two groups that were not: liberals and Bernie Sanders voters. However, if we take it as a given that the left represents not only the base of the Democratic Party but its future — due to the fact that Sanders has captured the enthusiasm of younger voters — then there may be some truth to the thesis. He believes that just as Donald Trump won the Republican nomination by telling the GOP base what it wanted to hear about immigration (but wasn’t getting from other candidates) about immigration, trade, and isolationist positions in foreign policy, so, too, is there “an unserved market among grass roots Democrats for a candidate that is critical of Israel.”

Is he right about that? He might be.

Who's prepared to stand silent as a mob preaching hate advances their campaign to delegitimize Israel?

...Are they prepared to respect the people of Israel in their just struggle for survival? Or are they prepared to stand silent as a mob preaching hate that is forming around left-wingers like Zimmerman advance their campaign to delegitimize Israel and its democratically elected government? If Sanders’ youthful supporters are the future of the Democratic Party then that is something Jewish Democrats and all Americans who care about Israel must worry about.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
14 April '16..

Update: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders suspended his new Jewish outreach coordinator Simone Zimmerman, his campaign said Thursday night, after reports surfaced of her harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Israeli policies and of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “She has been suspended while we investigate the matter,” spokesman Michael Briggs told the New York Times.

We already know that Bernie Sanders has already positioned himself as the presidential candidate that is the most hostile to Israel’s government in either party. He not only stated a wildly inflated number of “innocent” Palestinians that he claimed Israel had killed in the 2014 Gaza war that was several times the figure put out by Hamas terrorists. Though he backtracked on that claim, it’s more important to note that he doubled down on the inflammatory and false charge that Israel’s campaign of self-defense against Hamas terrorists in Gaza was “disproportionate.” In neither his full length Middle East policy speech (that he chose not to give at the AIPAC conference) nor his subsequent statements has he demonstrated any interest in noting that it’s the Palestinians that continue to turn down Israeli peace offers rather than the Israelis saying no to an end to the conflict.

Given these facts, it can hardly be considered a surprise that the person his campaign hired to be in charge of outreach to Jewish voters is a vicious opponent of the Netanyahu government. Simone Zimmerman has achieved a degree of notoriety for having put out statements in which she profanely denounced Prime Minister Netanyahu in which she accused him, the state of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces of “murder” and “war mongering” because he opposed the Iran nuclear deal.

Zimmerman’s comments weren’t merely wrong-headed. They were disgusting and an outrageous attempt to delegitimize not merely Netanyahu but also consensus positions held by Israeli parties across the political spectrum.

In response to criticisms of Zimmerman, Sanders’ campaign has no apologies. To the contrary, a Twitter account that goes under the name of “Jews for Bernie” claimed that all those who opposed her hiring had “far right connections.”

Let’s concede that Zimmerman isn’t important in and of herself. She’s a minor functionary in a campaign that has zero chance of success. Which is to say that no one should expect her to be serving as a White House liaison to the Jewish community next year. But there’s more to this story than just one nasty piece of work that is flogging one of the Democratic candidates.

One of the primary talking points of left-wing critics of Israel is the charge that democracy is under assault from Netanyahu and his supporters. There is very little substance to this accusation. What there is of it generally revolves around claims that efforts to create more transparency and accountable for leftist non-governmental organizations is a grave offense to the spirit of democracy. But the main point to be gleaned from such controversies is that the groups involved are unpopular because they get most of their funding from hostile foreign governments and seem to have as their purpose to either harass or spy on Israeli forces defending the country against terrorists.

But there’s a more important conclusion to be drawn from the willingness of so many on the left — even someone who works for a candidate who claims to be very “pro-Israel” as Sanders does — is that their main complaint isn’t so much with Netanyahu as it is with the people of Israel.

Shoring up the (Jewish?) Base

JINSA
Report #: 989
21 May '10

Laura Rozen of Politico named names: "Rahm Emanuel has met twice with a group of rabbis, the NSC's Dennis Ross has gone up to the Hill to talk to House Democrats and Senate Dems in recent weeks, the NSC's Dan Shapiro and Ross both spoke at the ADL conference last week, Hillary Clinton keynoted the AJC conference earlier this month, National Security Advisor Jim Jones addressed the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates held an honor guard for visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Obama hosted Elie Wiesel... Later this month, Obama and the First Lady host a Jewish Heritage event for the first time at the White House... (and) Obama met with some 37 House and Senate Jewish Democrats at the Old Executive Office Building yesterday."

Why?

In parts deliberate and ideological, and in parts amateurish and unintended, friends of Israel have reason to believe the Obama Administration's push for "reformed" relations with Arab and Muslim-dominated countries bodes ill for Israeli security and for the advancement of tolerance and democratic norms in the Middle East. Under the policies of the Obama Administration:

Palestinian-Israeli relations have regressed 17 years back to "proximity talks";

Iran has advanced on multiple fronts;

Turkey has moved away from the West and closer to Iran and Russia;

Syria (with North Korean assistance) has progressed militarily and (with Iranian assistance) reestablished hegemony in Lebanon;

Hezbollah (with Syrian and Iranian assistance) has moved closer to governing Lebanon;

Lebanon has bowed to Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah ascendance;

Iraq has found itself without American political support for the political reconciliation it needs;

The Gulf States believe they face Iran alone;

Egyptians believe democracy doesn't matter; and

Al Qaeda has advanced in Yemen, Algeria and Somalia and other parts of Africa.

In addition, the Obama Administration has rejoined the UN Human Rights Commission (and didn't object to Iran holding a seat on the UN Committee on the Status of Women) and rejoined the UN Alliance of Civilizations, an openly anti-Israel body that claimed in 2006 that global tensions were driven primarily by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and, relating to the September 11th attacks, referred to "a perception among Muslim societies of unjust aggression stemming from the West."

(Read full report)

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