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The big issues dividing the US and Israel as the Gaza war bleeds into 2024
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The official “readouts” describing conversations between world leaders are usually dry, information-deficient affairs, but the ones between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been telling a story of diverging views on Israel’s war in Gaza.
Their most recent conversation, on Dec. 23, is an example: According to the Israeli readout, the Israeli leader “expressed his appreciation for the U.S. position at the U.N. Security Council,” referring to the Biden administration’s removal of calls for a ceasefire from a U.N. Security Council resolution. “The Prime Minister made it clear that Israel would continue the war until all of its goals have been achieved.”
The White House readout suggested why Netanyahu felt he had to make it “clear” that Israel would not stop until Hamas is crushed and the more than 100 remaining hostages abducted by the terror group on Oct. 7 are returned: Biden wants Netanyahu to change tactics.
“The leaders discussed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to include its objectives and phasing,” Biden’s version said. “The President emphasized the critical need to protect the civilian population including those supporting the humanitarian aid operation, and the importance of allowing civilians to move safely away from areas of ongoing fighting.”
Biden, while maintaining his opposition to any ceasefire that leaves Hamas intact, has called Israel’s bombing in Gaza “indiscriminate.” His top officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, have said that Israel risks losing support if it does not shift to more targeted warfare.
Both leaders are under pressure. Biden is facing Democrats on the left, and also surprisingly Republicans on his right, who want him to condition aid to Israel. Netanyahu’s popularity in Israel has plummeted and he needs his far-right flank to survive in office to avoid a crushing electoral defeat.
Here are some of the factors that could shape the Biden-Netanyahu relationship as we head into a new year.
That $14 billion
On Oct. 19, less than two weeks after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people in Israel, abducted more than 240 and brutalized thousands more, Biden asked Congress for $14 billion in emergency assistance for Israel, along with $60 billion for Ukraine for its war against Russian invaders.
The aid for Israel seemed an easy ask then: Republicans have become the most reflexively pro-Israel party in Congress, and within three days of Biden making the request, more than half of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives backed Biden’s Israel strategy, in a letter signed by all 24 Jewish House Democrats.
Marching into 2024, the funding has yet to happen and the responsibility lies, unusually, with Republicans, who lead the House.
The first obstacle was the removal of the Israel-friendly speaker, California’s Kevin McCarthy, leaving the House unable to function. He was replaced by Louisiana’s Mike Johnson. The House approved the Israel portion, but for the first time ever, the body conditioned aid to Israel — on cuts to the Internal Revenue Service. Far-right Republicans engineered McCarthy’s ouster for compromising with Biden on spending bills, and Johnson has no taste for playing nice with the president, even when Israel is involved.
Conditioning Israel aid on IRS cuts guaranteed that the bill was dead on arrival in the Senate, which is led by Democrats. There, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Jewish New York Democrat, tried to craft a new assistance bill but was met with a new headwind. Republicans in the body are now using the filibuster to keep the bill from advancing unless it includes new protections on the Mexican border.
Sen. Bernie Sanders joined Republican senators in the Dec. 7 vote that blocked the assistance from advancing. The Jewish Vermont independent, an unofficial leader of U.S. progressives, wants Biden to condition aid to Israel on how it conducts the war.
Calls for a ceasefire
Sanders still stops short of calling for a permanent ceasefire, but a growing number of Democrats do — some 63 so far, including a number of the Jewish Democrats who back in October were backing Biden’s Israel policies.
The number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched its counterstrikes has topped 20,000, according to Palestinian sources, although Israel estimates that a third of these are combatants. Nonetheless, as casualties mount in the Gaza Strip, expect more pressure on Biden from the left.
The politics
Axios reported this week that Biden, in that Dec. 23 phone call, told Netanyahu that he expected him to show the same fortitude in resisting pressure from his right wing that Biden has shown in ignoring his left flank. Biden wants Israel to build up the Palestinian Authority after the war is over so it can replace Hamas; Netanyahu has said that is not an option.
One problem is the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, which has limited governance powers in the West Bank. Biden wants Netanyahu to resume transferring taxes to the Palestinian Authority, which Netanyahu resists as long as it continues to compensate the families of Palestinians who have attacked Israelis.
“This conversation is over,” Axios reported Biden as saying after he told Netanyahu that he needed to show the same level of leadership Biden is showing defending Israel.
Support for Biden’s Israel policy among Democrats has plummeted, and growing numbers of Arab-American and Muslim voters are saying they will stay away from the polls next November, when Biden is likely to once again face Donald Trump in a presidential election. That could cost Biden a key state, Michigan, where there is a substantial Arab-American population.
As Biden heads into the presidential election, the politics of the war are being seen in a phenomenon unimaginable a decade ago: Mainstream Democrats are running against the mainstream pro-Israel line. In California’s Senate race, Rep. Barbara Lee is seeking to set herself apart from the frontrunners, fellow Democratic representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, by endorsing a ceasefire.
Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, a moderate Jewish Democrat running a longshot presidential primary campaign against Biden, also endorses a ceasefire. It’s one of the few policy differences distinguishing him from the incumbent.
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The post The big issues dividing the US and Israel as the Gaza war bleeds into 2024 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Incoming US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has threatened to push legislation imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it does not halt its efforts to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune, who was picked last week to be the next Senate majority leader once the Republicans take control of the legislative chamber in January, wrote Sunday on X/Twitter that he will make it a “top priority” to punish the ICC if it refuses to walk back its arrest warrant application issued against Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The US lawmaker also indicated he would take action if Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the current Senate majority leader, does not do so against the intergovernmental organization.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” he wrote. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this — and other supportive legislation ‚ a top priority in the next Congress.”
In May, the ICC chief prosecutor officially requested arrest warrants for the Israeli premier, Gallant, and three Hamas terrorist leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh — accusing all five men of “bearing criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel or the Gaza Strip. The three Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Gallant was recently fired as Israel’s defense minister.
US and Israeli officials subsequently issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan has come under fire for making his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation infuriated US and British leaders, according to Reuters, which reported that the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the war crime allegations.
Thune’s Republican colleagues praised his threat to the ICC, suggesting that the Senate should target the international organization.
“Well done Senator Thune. The ICC’s actions against Israel have been outrageous, and an independent review into the prosecutor’s actions is more than called for,” wrote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). :The Senate should take up the ICC sanctions bill that passed the House in a bipartisan manner. Standing up for Israel today protects America tomorrow.”
“The Senate must immediately pass legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court,” stated Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY.), chair of the Senate Republican Conference. “Senate Republicans stands with Israel.”
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can and should act ASAP to pass ICC sanctions legislation. We waited for months for the majority to schedule the vote only to have them postpone it before the election. We will not fail to act when Republicans are in the majority,” wrote Sen. John Risch (R-ID), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) wrote that the Senate “should immediately consider the bipartisan legislation passed by the House to sanction the ICC.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) added that Thune is “right” and that “Chuck Schumer should do his job” by advancing legislation to sanction the ICC.
The US has said it does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and rejects the implied equivalence drawn between Israel and Hamas.
The post Incoming US Senate Majority Leader Threatens ICC With Sanctions Over Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’
It was announced quietly, wit a small, two-paragraph notice replacing the web page for Concordia University’s Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), along with an unrelated stock […]
The post Concordia closes its Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre
US Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) speaks during the National Action Network National Convention in New York City, US, April 7, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In his final weeks as a US federal lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has continued his persistent condemnation of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating “apartheid” against Palestinians, expressing pride in not supporting a resolution condemning Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, and arguing against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
During a newly released interview with left-wing pundit Rania Khalek, Bowman reflected on his unsuccessful reelection bid earlier this year. The lawmaker blamed the “pro-Israel lobby” for his loss in the Democratic primary, claiming that his outspokenness about the ongoing Israel-Hamas war made him a target for “Zionists.”
Bowman, one of the staunchest critics of Israel in the US Congress, argued that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, overwhelmed his campaign by spending roughly $15 million to aid his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. He added that his constituents were stunned that a “special interest” group such as AIPAC “can remove a congressman” by submerging a primary race in a torrent of money.
“Now the world has seen AIPAC for who they are,” Bowman stated.
The stated mission of AIPAC is to seek bipartisan support to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.
Bowman admitted that he did not know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he initially ran for office, opting to parrot talking points such as Israel “has a right to exist” and a “right to defend itself.”
Bowman said that his opinion on Israel was transformed after he visited the country on a trip sponsored by J Street, a progressive Zionist organization that recently called for the US to impose an arms embargo against the Jewish state. The left-wing firebrand said that the trip — which consisted of a series of discussions with peace activists, scholars, and former Israel Defense Force (IDF) officers — soured his view of the Jewish state, comparing the security checkpoints and barrier wall that separate Israel and the West Bank to protect against terrorism with the Jim Crow laws in the US south segregating black Americans.
Khalek asked Bomwan if his view on Iron Dome has shifted, citing that the missile interception system “shields Israel from the consequences for bombing all of its neighbors, for constantly stealing land.”
The congressman claimed that his view on Israel’s air defense system has changed, arguing that it represents “a weapon to use and continue apartheid, oppression, open-air prison, occupation, and now the genocide” of Palestinians. He said that he regrets voting in favor of Iron Dome funding, and that the missile defense system should only be replenished if the Palestinians are given a fully-funded army on Israel’s borders.
Bowman also criticized a congressional resolution condemning the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, suggesting that AIPAC authored the document. He dismissed the notion that the mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7 was “unprovoked,” claiming that Israel initiated the aggression by enacting “apartheid” on Palestinians. He then lambasted American governors, senators, and President Joe Biden for immediately showing empathy to Israelis, saying that legislators were being “dishonest” and not having a “full conversation” about the Jewish state.
In the year following the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, Bowman intensified his rhetoric against Israel and pro-Israel organizations. Over the summer, he condemned AIPAC as a “Zionist regime.” In a desperate attempt to salvage his ill-fated primary effort, he promise the Democratic Socialists of America — a prominent far-left organization that has made anti-Israel activism a top priority — that he would vote against future Iron Dome funding in exchange for financial backing of his campaign. Bowman infamously dismissed the widely reported and corroborated allegations of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women during the Oct. 7 onslaught as “propaganda” before being forced to walk back his remarks.
In June, Latimer cruised to a commanding victory over Bowman, winning by a margin of 58 percent to 41 percent.
The post Jamaal Bowman Continues Diatribes Against Israel, AIPAC; Expresses Pride in Not Condemning Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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