A Tectonic Shift in US-Israel Relations is Underway
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's recent speech is just the biggest signal of a generational change.
It’s been a week since I got back from my trip to Israel/Palestine and I’m still processing the experience, which is challenging. Sometimes I feel as though this conflict is like a black hole. You approach the event horizon at your peril, and if you get too close, you will be sucked in, unable to ever escape. Even worse, no light emerges from inside this black hole, just deadly radiation. But that’s an overly dark metaphor, if you’ll forgive the pun. Light is emerging; you just need to know where to look for it.
I’m reminded of a story my dear friend Josh Yarden shared with me as we ate dinner together on my last night before my flight home. Josh teaches anthropology at the Givat Haviva International School, where Israeli citizens, both Jews and Palestinians/Arabs study and live on campus, together with students from dozens of other countries. (He’s also the poet I quoted a few issues back).
In a recent class discussion about minority-majority relations, Josh told me a Jewish student said there are no tensions between Jews and Arabs in the mixed city where his family lives. (In fact, there have been instances of violence there in the past, as well as some robust Jewish-Arab “shared society” programs.) An Arab/Palestinian girl whose uncle was killed in the violence in another mixed city in 2021, quickly pointed out, ‘Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. The Arabs won’t necessarily share what they’re thinking with you.’ The boy immediately said he was confident she was wrong. Josh pointed out to him that we often cannot know the truth of each other’s lived experience, and that this was an opportunity to listen and learn.
Later that week, in another class discussion that touched on the concept of “competitive victimhood,” the same Jewish student said, ‘The Holocaust doesn’t matter here. In order to find the solution for an ongoing conflict, people should not address the past in order to prove their victimhood.’ The same Arab student perked up and said, ‘That’s very ironic of you to say. I would expect you to bring up the Holocaust.’ This time, Josh asked her to listen to the boy who had contradicted her the other day. He went on to say, ‘The people who suffered and the people who caused their sufferings in the past are now all dead and arguing about who was right and who was wrong back then will not get us anywhere in the conflict resolution. Just as for me the Holocaust is not a reason to hate Germans, the events of 1948 should not be a reason for Palestinians to fight or hate Jews.’
Then, he paused the action and asked the class to put both of the exchanges from that week into perspective, to see how hard it can be to understand each other’s viewpoints when they contradict our expectations. It was a classic “teachable moment,” and the lesson perhaps sank in more than usual.
“So there is hope,” I said over dinner, after hearing this story. Josh lamented that this happened in the rare context of an integrated classroom. He said, “We have some sort of impact, and we can hope that the ripple effects will lead to positive changes, but most arguments in society take place without a teacher who can freeze a moment to help both sides see past their initial assumptions.” He’s right, but I tell him this is why teaching at a high school like Givat Haviva is so important.
Now consider, by contrast, what happens when someone with national standing in our political discourse tries to put his arms around the whole mess that is Israel/Palestine, encompassing much of its complexity and contradictions, sums up the moment and speaks some hard truths. He gets whacked from all sides.
I’m speaking of Chuck Schumer, the Democrat who is the Senate Majority Leader and probably the most powerful Jewish elected official in America. In 2022, New Yorkers re-elected him by a comfortable 57%-43% margin, which means he’s politically quite secure. He got 3.3 million votes in that election, and just for argument’s sake, if Jews make up 15% of the overall New York electorate but vote for Democrats by a 70-30 margin, one might estimate that Schumer got the vote of about 700,000 Jews—which would put him not far from the 1.1 million votes Netanyahu’s Likud party got in the last Israeli election. Schumer certainly represents more American Jews (there are 1.8 million in New York) than any other politician, and probably also more American Arabs than any other (there are 400,000 in New York). In 2022, Schumer was the Senate’s #1 recipient of campaign donations from pro-Israel donors, according to OpenSecrets.org.
I’ve met Senator Schumer a few times, though not one-on-one. He is smart, chummy, and very good at charming a crowd; when he wants to he can turn on the borsch-belt shtick with ease. He is also known in many quarters as a consummate transactional politician. That is, he is very good at sussing out who has power and how much, and then to what degree they need to be wooed or placated. Here’s an example I saw up close: Back in early 2012, when Hollywood and the copyright cartel thought they had a permanent lock on Congress and they tried to push through the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, Schumer—who was a co-sponsor of the legislation—took immediate note of the uprising in the tech community. At the height of the fight over the legislation, several thousand tech workers rallied outside his midtown office during the lunch hour, insisting that the bills would not only hobble the Internet, they’d kill lots of jobs. Until then Schumer hadn’t really paid much attention to the tech sector, but he quickly recalibrated his position. Within days he was on the phone to the leaders of the New York Tech Meetup, which organized the rally, listening to their concerns and working to build them into his power base.
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So, when Schumer shifts from embracing Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (as he did quite cravenly a year ago, shown above, during the pro-democracy protests, leading pundit Thomas Friedman to call him Bibi’s “useful idiot”) to declaring on the Senate floor that Bibi is one of four “major obstacles” to peace, that’s no small change. (The other three obstacles, according to Schumer, are “Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways, radical right-wing Israelis in government and society, [and] Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.”) Schumer’s words about Netanyahu are worth quoting in full:
“The fourth major obstacle to peace is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has all too frequently bowed to the demands of extremists like Ministers [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir, and the settlers in the West Bank.
“I have known Prime Minister Netanyahu for a very long time. While we have vehemently disagreed on many occasions, I will always respect his extraordinary bravery for Israel on the battlefield as a younger man. I believe in his heart his highest priority is the security of Israel.
“However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take the precedence over the best interests of Israel. He has put himself in coalition with far-right extremists like Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and as a result, he has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu has also weakened Israel’s political and moral fabric through his attempts to co-opt the judiciary. And he has shown zero interest in doing the courageous and visionary work required to pave the way for peace, even before this present conflict. As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.
Nobody expects Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the things that must be done to break the cycle of violence, to preserve Israel’s credibility on the world stage, and to work towards a two-state solution. If he were to disavow Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and kick them out of his governing coalition, that would be a real meaningful step forward.
But regrettably, there is no reason to believe Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that. He won’t disavow Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and their calls for Israelis to drive Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank. He won’t commit to a military operation in Rafah that prioritizes protecting civilian life. He won’t engage responsibly in discussions about a “day-after” plan for Gaza, and a longer-term pathway to peace.”
Schumer concludes by calling for new elections in Israel. But he also warns that if the current governing coalition remains in power, “and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing U.S. standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change present course.”
This is a tectonic shift in the heart of the Democratic party. It comes alongside additional moves by senior Democrats in both the House and Senate, including a new letter from six top House Democrats to President Biden urging him to restrict additional military aid to Israel because of its failure to allow humanitarian aid to flow more freely into Gaza. In no uncertain words, these Democrats warn of an imminent famine in Gaza, noting that “despite [the Biden Administration’s] efforts to ensure that life-saving humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in need, the Israeli government has repeatedly obstructed the delivery of U.S.-funded and supported humanitarian aid.” They argue that Israel is violating the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act, a provision of the larger Foreign Assistance Act, and is therefore “ineligible to receive continued US weapons.” Last week, 19 US Senators, a substantial portion of the Democratic caucus, sent Biden a letter urging US recognition of the state of Palestine in the context of a regional peace initiative.
Schumer’s shift was a shock to many in the so-called pro-Israel establishment in America. (I say so-called because organizations that prop up the rejectionist/annexationist goals of the rightwing coalition behind Netanyahu are actually doing great harm to Israel.) The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which tilts to the right, issued a statement expressing “deep reservations” about the speech and arguing “it is not a time for public criticisms that serve only to empower the detractors of Israel, and which foster greater divisiveness.” AIPAC criticized Schumer for calling for new elections, instead declaring that “Israel is an independent democracy that decides for itself when elections are held and chooses its own leaders.” On the left, Schumer was criticized by the likes of If Not Now for not going far enough; they demanded that he "call for a lasting ceasefire, reverse course on weapons transfers, and push for Israel to dismantle its systems of occupation and apartheid over Palestinians."
The truth is Schumer is much closer to solid ground than the so-called pro-Israel crowd, and not just because American public opinion has become more critical of Israel since the war began. Schumer is quite in tune with most Israelis. Since October 7, a consistent majority of Israeli voters have told the aChord Center’s pollsters that they want Netanyahu out of office. Back in mid-October, 23% said they wanted him to resign immediately with another 49% saying he should resign after the war. Now, facing a quagmire, fierce international criticism, a rupture with the US and the still unresolved nightmare of 134 hostages in Hamas’ hands, those numbers have hardened. Forty percent of Israelis want Bibi to resign now, with another 35% saying he should resign once the war is over.
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One final observation about what this all means. Two groupings to the left of the so-called pro-Israel establishment helped make this shift happen—progressive Zionists and the anti- or non-Zionists further to their left. For months, the latter group—centered on Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now as well as numerous Palestinian and Arab-American groups—has gotten the lion’s share of the headlines with mediagenic and disruptive rallies demanding a cease-fire and an end to “genocide.” Their efforts were later transmuted very effectively into the “Uncommitted” campaign in several early primary states, that succeeded in tamping down the most anti-Israel side of this movement and funneled its passions into sending a clear message to Biden as he runs unopposed for the Democratic presidential nomination. I’ve been critical of these groups in a lot of my writing since October 7 for how they helped open the discourse to unvarnished nonsense about Hamas’ “legitimate resistance” and other ideological formulations, but respect is also due—these groups have moved the needle. Credit is also due to Netanyahu and his corrupt, messianic, annexationist and racist governing coalition, which is a gift that will keep on giving as long as Bibi can stay in office by prolonging the war.
At the same time, less confrontational organizations grounded inside the broad American Jewish community with solid ties to a majority of Democratic members of Congress like J Street and Americans for Peace Now have kept up a strong inside game, steadily advancing arguments critical of Israel’s rightwing government that are now clearly in the mainstream of the Democratic party. The Biden Administration’s decision Monday to stop wielding its veto in the UN Security Council—something J Street called for back in December—is a clear sign that this strategy is also bearing fruit. If you want to put this in historical perspective, what is going on now in American Jewish politics is a bit like the push-me/pull-you dynamics between the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the heyday of the civil rights movement, with the more radical groups pushing the envelope, making room for the more moderate groups to make headway.
I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this process. Yesterday, J Street and seventeen US Senators called on the White House to decertify Israel for not being in full compliance with international law not only around the humanitarian aid crisis, but also its conduct of the war in Gaza and unlawful expansion of West Bank settlements. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is just digging in his heels. So something previously unthinkable in US-Israel relations is about to happen: the Biden Administration is, in my humble opinion, about to suspend offensive military aid to its longtime ally. That will be an earthquake, but the cracks in US-Israel alliance may finally allow some light to get in. We shall see.
Other Reading
—While Netanyahu complains about Schumer interfering in Israel’s internal politics, Haaretz’s Omer Benjakob reports that disinformation researchers at the Israeli organization Fake Reporter have uncovered an Israeli influence operation that has used hundreds of coordinated fake social media accounts to target American politicians, primarily Democrats of color, to amplify pro-war and anti-Hamas messages.
—Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR in Los Angeles was a bellwether of progressive Jewish leadership before October 7, and her weekly sermons are all worth reading. This one, titled “The Last Bulwark Against Authoritarianism,” which she gave two weeks ago, is important for what it says about the rising expressions of antisemitism coming not just from the right in America but also the left.
—That said, a lot of Jews in Hollywood seems to have lost their minds over Jonathan Glazer’s brave call at the Oscars for an end to the dehumanization of Palestinians.
—And in the wake of a bunch of performative resignations at Guernica magazine over an essay written by Israeli journalist and translator Joanna Chen, Mike Tomasky of The New Republic walks Chen through the lessons of the experience. “I believe the heart is capable of grieving for two peoples at once,” she tells him. Amen.
—Theo Baker reports for The Atlantic (gift link) on the polarized environment at Stanford in the wake of October 7. The kids are not all right.
—Also in the “have people lost their minds” department, I enjoyed this local story about a Hasidic rabbi who is suing the town of Ramapo, NY, for its unconstitutional display of the Israeli flag over town hall. Other local towns have been challenged for doing the same thing, but it’s hard to argue with a rabbi, even if he is an anti-Zionist one.
—As usual, Peter Beinart makes some trenchant points about what is, and what isn’t, antisemitism in the debate about Israel and Gaza.
—RIP Hal Malchow, the Democratic digital strategist who almost single-handedly invented voter targeting, and who late in life came to argue that too much campaign money is being spent on individual races rather than building up party identification. Sasha Issenberg has the inside story on his brave last days.
—If you thought the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s company and imprisonment marked the end of crypto’s political influence, think again—the industry lobby is still wielding cash and twisting arms in Washington, as Henry Burke of the Revolving Door Project reports.
End Times
Last but not least, I have a new personal website that brings together almost all of my written work and projects over the eyars (built with the help of the amazing Deanna Zandt). Check it out.
I hope it’s more than wishful thinking. This “pro-Israel” commentator seems to think the crack is small and just malfeasance and/or ineptness on Netanyahu and his team’s part is exaggerating the shift. I, for one, certainly would love to see a major “break” through.
https://israelpolicyforum.cmail20.com/t/i-l-aktkye-ulukurhlr-y/
Innocent Palestinians and aid workers continue to die while the US keeps the flow of lethal hardware and Intelligence flowing by the billions. They don't need to enter Rafah. Siege warfare where starvation and pestilence do the work for you is ancient and very effective. Schumer's speech, the UN abstention and Genocide Joe's crocodile tears are too little too late and they know it. The majority of Israel's military and genocidal goals have been achieved. No tectonic shift is happening. Why is the question. The only reasonable answer is that Netanyahu/ Israeli government has got something on the US. It's they who are calling the shots not us. The tail is wagging the dog. What this is I have no clue but it is big. Perhaps the Israeli threats to go nuclear? They really believe in that Messianic nonsense. I would not put it past them. So the message is you supply us with regular bombs or we use nuclear ones.