CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Has the Democratic Party’s Support for Israel Hurt them at the Polls?

The Biden administration made a pretense of supporting democracy and the so-called “rules-based order” advocated by former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. It was surprising, then, that Blinken’s initial response to the International Criminal Courts’s issue of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant was to threaten to impose financial sanctions on the members of that court. Apparently, Blinken thought the I.C.C’s action, which aimed to enforce the laws of international conduct, broke his rules, which seemed to allow war crimes by Israel. Many supporters of Israel state that they support its actions because of Hamas violent assault on Israeli military bases and murder of civilians several years ago. As economist Jeffrey Sachs recently stated, the attack by Hamas had been preceded by fifty years of violent subjugation of Palestinians by Israel.

Then there was Biden himself, who liked to hug the indicted war criminal Netanyahu. The weak charade that he and Blinken put on of trying to require that Israel reframe from war crimes was pitiful and sickening, even as the whole world was watching.

Biden has been a major advocate for Israel his whole career. In the 1980s, then Senator Biden held a town hall meeting at the University of Delaware. He was praising Israel when a Palestinian student asked why the Israelis would not allow his family........

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