“Jewish Insider” is Wrong: Democratic Senators Are Acting in Israel’s Own Long-Term Best Interests — And We Should Be Thanking Them

“Jewish Democratic disillusionment deepens over party’s direction,”  screams the Jewish Insider headline. The subhead is even more alarmist: “Former ADL chief Abe Foxman: ‘This is a calamity for the Democratic Party, if it will not be contained and stopped'”

To which I say: Complete hogwash. 100% wrong. Off by 180 degrees.

But let’s start at the beginning. What exactly are JI and Foxman so worked up about?

This month 36 out of the 47 Democratic US Senators voted to hold up a major US weapons transfer to Israel – several thousand 1,000-pound bombs.  And all 36 plus four more – for a total of 40 – found the gumption to also say “No” to transferring dozens of armored D9 bulldozers – the ones the IDF uses at the direction of Bezalel Smotrich (who serves as minister in charge of West Bank settlement expansion) to knock down Palestinians’ homes to make way for more Israeli settlements – settlements intended to make a future two-state peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians both physically and politically impossible.

This was only the second time that the majority of Democratic Senators said “No” to Netanyahu’s demands. Last July, for the first time ever, a majority of Democratic Senators – 27 – voted for a similar “Joint Resolution of Disapproval.”

If you’re like me, you grew up learning that the US should never say “No” when Israel says it has urgent need of US weapons. I was 10 years old when Israel was surprised attacked by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur in 1973. In the first week of that war, Israel’s very survival seemed to teeter on a knife’s edge. But then the US airlift began, bringing tons of vital military supplies. As a result, Israel was able to repel the enemies’ advances and regain the initiative. The very next day, General Ariel Sharon made his daring crossing of the Suez Canal to surround the Egyptian 3rd Army and end the war with an Israeli advantage.

Given this history – as well as my own personal history of having spent over four years of my life in Israel and visiting every year and being in regular contact with my Israeli family and friends – how can I possibly support saying “No” to any weapons shipment to Israel?

The answer is, quite simply, that times have changed. Israel has changed. In fact, Israel has changed so much and so quickly that two recent prime ministers and dozens (possibly hundreds) of retired generals now say that Netanyahu and his government represent an “existential threat” to Israel.

The sad but undeniable fact is that the Netanyahu government elected in the November 1, 2022 election is the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history. Its policies aimed at preventing the two-state solution – such as delivering tens of millions of dollars of Qatari cash every month to Hamas in Gaza – exploded in Israel’s face with the barbaric Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023. It is quickly turning Israel into an international pariah, endangering the country’s very existence in the long run, even as, in the short term, it betrays the liberal Zionist vision of the nation’s founders and the democratic values of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. And all this at a time when the entire Arab world is offering Israel regional normalization and integration – once Israel agrees to the two-state solution.

Last fall I served as one of the American delegates elected to the 39th World Zionist Congress, which meets every five years in Jerusalem to set the direction for the global Zionist movement. Since its founding by Theodore Herzl at Basel, Switzerland in 1897, the WZC has served as a kind of “parliament of the Jewish people,” the only body elected by Jews globally to debate and act on the challenges facing the Jewish people as a whole.

The biggest lesson to emerge from last fall’s Congress, which met at the Jerusalem Convention Center (בנייני האומה) on October 28 and 29, was how far from the mainstream of global Jewish opinion the Netanyahu government has strayed. The Congress passed no fewer than seven resolutions against the policies advocated and practiced by the Netanyahu coalition government and its members:

Resolution #1: Against the Netanyahu government’s West Bank settlement policies because “the just path for maintaining Israel as a Jewish, democratic state includes the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”

Resolution #5: For implementing the 2016 agreement to create an egalitarian prayer space at the Kotel/Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Resolution #6: Supporting “equal conscription into the IDF or civil/national service for all citizens of Israel.”

Resolution #7: Calling to “establish an independent State Commission of Inquiry, headed by a Supreme Court judge, to investigate all events and failures leading up to and during October 7.”

Resolution #9: Calling for “Security for Liberal Jewish Communities in Israel” following attacks by right-wing and Orthodox Israelis on Reform and Conservative synagogues.

Resolution #10: Opposing “pending legislation that seeks to impose a tax on donations received by Israeli NGOs from foreign governments.”

Resolution #11: Opposing right-wing efforts to reestablish Israeli settlements in Gaza.

The resolutions of the WZC sent a clear message from the liberal Zionist Jewish majority. But sending messages is no longer sufficient.

Why has Israel moved steadily to the right under Netanyahu’s governments since he took power in 2009? Because Netanyahu truly is in “another league,” as he likes to say about himself, in one very important sense: He is the first Israeli prime minister to figure out how to manipulate American politics so that he can ignore American (and American Jewish) advice (against West Bank settlements, for the two state solution) and not pay any price. This is in sharp contrast to previous Likud prime ministers like Yitzhak Shamir, who lost American aid in the early 1990s when he refused to stop expanding settlements. (And that loss of US aid is why he lost the confidence of Israeli swing voters, who voted him out the following year.)

If we are serious about saving Israel not just from the threat posed by Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas but also from the internal threat posed by the zealots of our day – who pose the same threat as the zealots whose fanaticism brought an end to Jewish sovereignty in our homeland nearly 2,000 years ago – then it’s time to act like it.

With rare exception, these Democratic Senators voting to temporarily block more weapons transfers are liberal Zionists like most of us who are simply sick and tired of being Bibi’s freiers. They’ve come to understand that if they really care about Israel and the Jewish people, they need to help protect Israel from its own internal extremists (Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, etc) and not just defend against the external threats.

These Democratic Senators understand that it’s time to go back to the days when US policy set clear red lines and enforced them. Because that’s in the long-term best interests of Israel, the US, and the American Jewish community. And let’s remember, these are the same red lines that already apply under existing law not just to Israel but to all US military aid recipients, under the Foreign Assistance Act, Arms Export Control Act, and Leahy Law. But under Netanyahu, we’ve let them slide, and, by doing that, we’ve let Israel slide down a slippery right-wing slope.

Another lesson I learned at the World Zionist Congress last fall is that it is not too late to reverse course. It’s not too late, as we celebrate Israel’s 78th birthday, to save our one and only Jewish state from a future of illiberal democracy, unending occupation, and endless war. As Herzl said over a century ago, “אם תרצו אין זו אגדה” – “If you will it, it is no dream.”

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)