Richard Baehr: Netanyahu Tries to Bring Back the Democrats
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=14301
On the most important foreign policy vote in a decade, on an issue with enormous consequence for Israel, Republican members of Congress were 100% opposed to the Iran nuclear agreement.
On the other hand, almost all of AIPAC’s supposed great Democratic friends in Congress did not have the guts to oppose their fellow party member, President Barack Obama, and the ministrations of his “whips,” Sen. Dick Durbin and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In the Senate, only four of 46 Democrats voted against the nuclear agreement, and only one, New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, risked the wrath and vindictiveness of the administration by also speaking out in opposition.
This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the United States for the Jewish Federations General Assembly in Washington. It was also his first visit with Obama following the Iran nuclear deal and his controversial appearance before a joint session of Congress, which was boycotted by about a quarter of all Democratic House and Senate members. Netanyahu has a sophisticated understanding of American politics, and is aware that damage has been done to the historic bipartisan support for Israel.
A strong argument can be made that since Obama became president the two major parties have grown further apart, and that Israel has become just one more issue on which the partisan divide has sharpened. Obama clearly has accelerated this development.
The president welcomed the growth of the left-wing anti-Israel group J Street and supported its goal of pulling leftist Democrats away from AIPAC. J Street calls itself pro-Israel and pro-peace, but its official positions and public presentations at its conferences are always critical of Israel and supportive of Palestinian, or at times Iranian, demands of Israel. J Street and Saeb Erekat of the Palestinian Authority are on the same page regarding the settlements in Judea and Samaria and the “occupation.” The boycotters of Netanyahu’s talk to the joint meeting of Congress were almost all Congressional Black Caucus members (who have supported every Obama directive and initiative since he took office) or J Street-supported Democrats, who have become much more pronounced in their distancing themselves from AIPAC and the traditional bipartisan pro-Israel consensus. The J Street Democrats have been happy to play both sides in one arena of course — claiming their allegiance to both AIPAC and J Street for the purpose of collecting campaign funds from supporters in each group.
On his current trip to the U.S., Netanyahu has been trying to make it easier for Democrats to come back into the fold. One might think the Democrats would look for ways to do this, rather than have to follow Netanyahu’s lead, especially given the upcoming presidential elections in 2016. America in 2016, however, is not the America of a few decades ago, and as the Democratic Party moves ever further to the left, the criticism, and in some cases outright hatred of Israel, has become more pronounced among an increasing portion of the party. Now pro-Israel Democrats have to explain why they continue to hold that position in a party dominated by appeals to other ethnic groups (sometimes referred to as “rising America”).
Jews comprised 4% of all Americans half a century ago, but are now 2% of the population and have a declining share with each passing election. Powerful groups on the Left provide funding and manpower to Democratic campaigns: labor unions, especially public sector unions; the entertainment industry; environmentalists; the gay community; pro-abortion groups; and a significant number of very wealthy corporate and Wall Street individuals who are either solidly liberal themselves or hedging their political bets (think Goldman Sachs and the big banks). Jewish campaign support for the Democratic Party remains significant, but only a modest portion of this can be identified as pro-Israel funding.
In Republicans campaigns, pro-Israel identification is associated with a much higher share of Jewish funding, particularly among the biggest financial backers of the party. In essence, Jewish Democrats may contribute to Hillary Clinton, but support for Israel is issue number nine in their constellation, if it is on their radar at all. Meanwhile, among Jewish Republicans, support for Israel is often the primary reason for their support of the party.
During his trip to the U.S., the prime minister told the federations assembly that he supports a bigger role for the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel. These movements, the largest among the American Jewish community, are quite small in Israel, and there is much friction between them and the Orthodox, who dominate the religious sphere in the country. In a recent vote, which on its face appeared totally uncontroversial, Reform and Conservative World Zionist Congress delegates voted against a resolution stipulating that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel.
A prominent Conservative rabbi explained to me after the vote that if the Orthodox line up one way, Reform and Conservative delegations tend to line up the other way at the WZC, and that is a good part of the explanation for what happened (the resolution was also submitted very late at the meeting). One hardly needs external enemies, who are of course everywhere and growing, when major religious groups within Judaism engage in this type of contrarian behavior. The Reform and Conservative movements are largely made up of liberals and supporters of the Democratic Party (probably 75-80% in each case, maybe higher among Reform Jews). Orthodox Jews are about as solidly in support of Republicans, and while their numbers and share of all Jewish Americans is rapidly growing, they are a much younger population and probably represent no more than 10% of Jewish American voters. Netanyahu’s fig leaf of peace to the two movements at the assembly will make it easier for some on the Left to forgive him for his alleged transgressions — like not working hard enough for peace and for his supposed disrespect toward Obama.
Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama was also a calculated effort to “bury the hatchet” (words no longer acceptable on college campuses), with both the leaders recommitting to the stale bromide of an unachievable two-state solution. Netanyahu also spoke Tuesday at the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank closely associated with Hillary Clinton. Some staffers were unhappy Netanyahu was invited (the building was no longer a “safe space” for Israel haters). Clinton herself penned an article that appeared in The Forward, trying to reclaim her pro-Israel credentials.
Clinton’s history with Israel, while not as obviously problematic as Obama’s before he took office, has consisted of three distinct periods. These include a typically caustic leftist attitude towards Israel before she was elected senator in New York in 2000; eight years of “beating the drum” for Israel as a senator from America’s most Jewish state; then a loyal Obama disciple as secretary of state, often as the one to berate Netanyahu, usually over some announcement regarding new houses for Jews in some community that no one expects Israel to leave even if a peace agreement is reached. Just as Clinton lacks her husband’s vast political skills, she also lacks any of the affection for Israel that Bill Clinton often demonstrated in his two terms.
What we are seeing now is an attempt to temporarily bandage a wound that is new and deep. It serves Netanyahu, and AIPAC and Obama, and Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, to lower the heat between the two countries and paper over their disputes for a while. In reality, Netanyahu would be happy to run out the clock and watch these next 14 months speed by with no more damage to U.S.-Israel relations or to Israel. However, if Hillary Clinton wins in 2016, don’t be surprised if things don’t go so smoothly.
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