A descendant of European Jews from Russia (Ukraine), Germany, Romania and Poland, who escaped the pogroms, ethnic cleansing and genocide, it’s horrifying for me to see Israel adopting a collective societal worldview of their/our antecedent’s persecutors. Horrifying and sickening. Let me reiterate that everything I know about the massacres on October 7 was hideous and the Hamas perpetrators and masterminds should face the same kind of lethal justice that Adolf Eichmann, the Black September Munich murderers (Operation Wrath of God and Operation Spring of Youth) and the Entebbe hijackers (Operation Thunderbolt) suffered. Israel knows how to do that without wiping out the population of Gaza. So far 27,000 civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed. It’s indefensible. And yet, many defend it, including some of my own close friends and associates.
The other day, I asked a candidate a tax-related question that had nothing to do with Hamas or AIPAC or Israel and he vehemently lashed out at me for ruining the progressive movement by calling for a ceasefire, something he must have seen on one of my social media feeds. Wow! Candidates are petrified of AIPAC and DMFI but someone else on the call— someone I’ve known for over 4 decades— congratulated him on his answer. Both of them are, generally-speaking, progressives, not Bernie-grade progressives but, you know, kind of progressive of most things. Speaking of Bernie:
Yesterday, Mike Lillis reported that “A growing chorus of Democrats are warning that Israel’s fierce response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks is getting tougher to justify— and eroding support for Tel Aviv on Capitol Hill… And the spiraling casualty count— combined with growing allegations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done too little to minimize the civilian harm— is sparking new reproval in Washington of Israel’s military tactics while escalating calls for an immediate ceasefire, if only temporary, to allow for the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Polling shows that most Americans— and as many as 80% of Democrats— favor a ceasefire now and are willing to punish Israel. Many are also willing to punish Biden for playing footsie with Netanyahu (although, we're suddenly being told that Biden Is “deeply suspicious of Benjamin Netanyahu, and privately has called the Israeli prime minister a ‘bad fucking guy,’ according to people who’ve talked to the president.”)
“A lot of people that I talk to have real concerns about what’s going on in Israel and Gaza, and their conversations with me in recent times have been that we need to have some ceasefire, some assessment made that the killing has to stop,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (MS), senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee.
“At some point, just because one group started it doesn’t mean you move forward and annihilate a lot of innocent people who really had nothing to do with the thing,” he continued. “People feel that it’s a bit much, and that you can’t try to hold on to power with that expanded killing that’s going on— children, women, who had nothing to do with the situation.”
The concerns are escalating just as Congress is poised to consider a package of national security proposals combining tougher migration policies on the U.S.-Mexico border with billions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine and Israel.
The fate of the legislation has already been thrown into doubt by staunch opposition from House conservatives to both the Ukraine funding and domestic border provisions. But the path gets even tougher if liberal Democrats start to balk over concerns that the Israel aid will be used for the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has led the charge in opposition to at least some of the Israel funds, accusing Washington of abetting the deaths of civilians in Gaza. He’s crafting an amendment to the national security package that would maintain the funding for Israel’s defense weapon systems, but cut $10.1 billion in funding for what his office characterizes as “offensive weaponry … for Netanyahu’s right-wing government.”
“This is not some abstract horror show that’s taking place in some far corners of the world. This is being done with U.S. military aid,” Sanders said Wednesday on SiriusXM’s The Dean Obeidallah Show.”
“America is complicit in this and it has got to stop.”
Democrats have, for years, been frequent critics of the conservative Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. But that scrutiny has intensified since his most recent victory in 2022, when he joined forces with several far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, forming the most hardline ruling coalition in Israeli history and forging a cabinet that includes nationalist firebrands with a long record of promoting anti-Arab sentiment.
At least two of those cabinet ministers joined a recent rally of Jewish settlers calling for the Jewish takeover over Gaza— a position Netanyahu has officially opposed.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD), a Jewish Democrat who’s fought for both the return of the hostages and humanitarian aid for Gaza, said he’s worried that the extremist views of those coalition ministers has already eroded American support for Israel— on and off of Capitol Hill.
“A lot of the statements and actions of the right-wingers in Netanyahu’s war cabinet are dramatically undermining Netanyahu’s position in the U.S. and in Congress,” Raskin said. “They had a conference last week all about the removal of the Palestinians from Gaza, and then the resettlement of Gaza.
“That becomes a very serious political problem here, if that is the rhetoric of people in Netanyahu’s cabinet.”
The debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East has long divided Democrats, but those disputes have become only more pronounced since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, pitting Israel’s staunchest defenders against liberal lawmakers fiercely critical of Netenyahu’s retaliatory response in Gaza. Some have accused Israel of genocide.
Republicans [who have completely dehumanized Palestinians in their minds] are much more united on the issue. Most of them are staunchly supportive of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which they maintain are necessary to root out the threat of Hamas once and for all. Some contend that the regional popularity of Hamas means that all Palestinians in Gaza are complicit in terrorism.
“These are not innocent Palestinian civilians,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) told peace activists in the Capitol last week.
The issue has become an enormous headache for President Biden as he seeks reelection this year, as Muslim voters, who flocked to Biden in the 2020 contest, are furious with the president’s refusal to call for a ceasefire. Many of those critics are vowing to withhold their support in November— a threat that could have outsized significance in several battleground states.
One of those states is Michigan, where Biden visited last week to shore up support with union workers and other friendly constituencies. But he was also confronted by protestors irate with his continued support for Israel, some of whom accused him of killing babies.
Biden has taken a number of steps to try to ease those tensions.
He’s dispatched top cabinet officials to the Middle East in an effort to build regional support for the release of hostages and a ceasefire agreement. He’s pushed Netanyahu to work towards the creation of a Palestinian state when the conflict in Gaza subsides— a move the Israeli leader has repeatedly rejected. And on Thursday, he issued an executive order slapping sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.
Pervez Agwan, the progressive Democrat taking on corporate shill Lizzie Fletcher in Houston, told us that “The American public's support for Israel is rapidly declining, including here in Houston, because we do not want to be complicit in the Netanyahu regime's genocide against the Palestinian people. President Biden has bankrolled the slaughter of over 26,000 people in Gaza so far. This needs to come to an end, and President Biden has the power to do so. The only reason our leaders are placing a rubber stamp on even more aid to the Netanyahu regime is that they're beholden to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) instead of their constituents. It's time to change this and reorient our foreign policy in the MIddle East to one that's justice oriented and works for all of us, not special interests. That starts with electing unapologetic and uncorrupted champions for Palestinian liberation who will put an end to this genocide once and for all.”
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece by Dov Lieber on a fascist Israeli politician, far worse than Netanyahu and pushing him further right— Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, racist and convicted criminal. He heads the most extreme right, over the top party in the Knesset and their 6 seats are enough to topple Netanyahu’s coalition, so he’s very powerful. He has “laid out his own plan for Gaza, which would repopulate the devastated coastal strip with Israeli settlements while Palestinians would be offered financial incentives to leave… In his first interview with a foreign news organization since joining the government,” wrote Lieber, “Ben-Gvir warned that he would oppose any deal with Hamas that would free thousands of Palestinians held for terrorism or end the war before Hamas was fully defeated.” He has endorsed Trump.
Shortly after this article was published on Sunday, centrist Israeli politicians attacked Ben-Gvir for what he said during the interview and urged Netanyahu to discipline the far-right leader. War-cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who controls the second-largest party in Netanyahu’s emergency government, wrote on X that Ben-Gvir’s attacks on Biden “harm the strategic relations of the State of Israel, the security of the state and the current war effort.” Opposition leader Yair Lapidcalled Ben-Gvir’s comments “a direct attack on Israel’s international standing.”
Netanyahu later told his cabinet not to interfere with Israel’s relationships with its allies. “I don’t need help knowing how to navigate our relations with the United States and the international community,” he said ahead of the cabinet meeting.
Ben-Gvir, who is 47, has a knack for making headlines.
This week he donned a fake beard and put a black beanie over his Kippah and went to a local police station pretending to be a random civilian. He said he wanted to learn what kind of service an ordinary person would get. After a year in office, Ben-Gvir still wears an ill-fitting suit and the laces on his scuffed leather shoes are coming undone. Many of his supporters say they appreciate how he likes to mingle in the crowd.
His detractors see him as a dangerous provocateur willing to provoke a wider conflict with the Palestinians to grow his own personal support base. Farther afield, some Israeli officials say his pronouncements calling on Israel to occupy Gaza makes it harder for them to make their case in foreign capitals.
“When Ben-Gvir opens his mouth, he creates a backlash that makes it harder for us to fight the war and bring hostages home,” said an opposition official, who pointed to how the U.K. and the U.S. are now considering unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state despite Israeli opposition to the idea.
A coalition official called Ben-Gvir a “headache” for Netanyahu but said his influence was limited.
In an example of Ben-Gvir bucking conventional political norms, he expressed rare direct criticism of President Biden as a sitting cabinet member. Israel is heavily reliant on American defense aid.
“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” said Ben-Gvir, giving voice to popular sentiment among many right-wing Israelis. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
Israeli officials initially signaled they would completely cut off food, water, electricity and fuel from the strip to force Hamas to surrender. But under pressure from the U.S. and with the humanitarian situation in the strip worsening, Israel has relented and now says it is trying to get as much aid into Gaza as it can, though, the United Nations says aid flowing into the enclave still isn’t sufficient.
Ben-Gvir’s approach is gaining popularity. Once a fringe idea before Oct. 7, a small majority of Jewish Israelis now fully or somewhat support the establishment of Jewish settlements inside Gaza, according to a poll conducted by Tel Aviv University last month. Israel once had settlements in the enclave but uprooted them in 2005 to bolster separation from the Palestinians.
Ben-Gvir says his plan is to “encourage Gazans to voluntarily emigrate to places around the world” by offering them cash incentives. He called it “the real humanitarian” thing to do. He said he knew Palestinians would be open to this idea through discussions with Palestinians in the West Bank and intelligence material he received as a minister. He declined to share what those materials say.
A global conference, he said, could help find countries willing to take in Palestinian refugees.
Polls and widespread public discussions among Palestinians suggest that such a plan would be overwhelmingly opposed by Gaza residents, many of whom fear Israel’s war is really aimed at permanently displacing them and replacing them with Jewish settlers.
It would also be vociferously opposed by the U.S. and Arab governments, which are demanding Israel relinquish control of Gaza and allow its residents to return to their homes.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has said that Israel doesn’t seek to occupy Gaza, but would retain full security control over Gaza until it was satisfied the territory would no longer constitute a threat to Israel. The prime minister has recently said his policies contradict the idea of a Palestinian state, though in his long career he has at times been ambiguous or openly supported the idea.
There are signs that Ben-Gvir has a growing influence in the debate, however, and Netanyahu increasingly needs him.
In 2021, Netanyahu— isolated politically and fighting corruption charges— brokered a union between Ben-Gvir’s party and the Religious Zionist party of fellow right-winger Bezalel Smotrich to consolidate support. At the time, Netanyahu said Ben-Gvir was fit to be a lawmaker but not for an influential government job. He didn’t explain why, but until that point Ben-Gvir had been widely seen as an extremist.
Netanyahu lost the 2021 election. But Israelis voted again in 2022 and the far-right bloc had more than doubled its mandate.
Now, in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power is the only right-wing party in Netanyahu’s coalition that isn’t bleeding support. Polls show the party would win eight or nine seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament if elections were held now, up from six at present.
It wouldn’t displace Netanyahu’s Likud party, which holds 32 seats, but Likud’s support has dropped to between 19 and 27 seats in recent weeks. Analysts say he and Ben-Gvir are now jostling for right-wing support ahead of any early election.
On Tuesday, after reports emerged of a hostage deal that could involve the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, Ben-Gvir wrote on social media that he would topple the government if it passed. Hours later, Netanyahu appeared in a religious West Bank settlement to announce that he likewise would oppose any such deal, despite the fact that he has been largely quiet until now about hostage negotiations.
Dor Harlap, a member of Likud’s central committee, said while it sometimes looks like Netanyahu is reacting to Ben-Gvir’s pronouncements, in reality he is reacting to the shifting sentiment among right-wing voters— just not as quickly as Ben-Gvir.
Ben-Gvir said he is in no rush to pull the rug out from Netanyahu. He said the likely result would be that a center-left government would take over— and that his own career was just getting started.
“God willing, I’ll go far,” said Ben-Gvir, a grin spreading across his face.
I bet AIPAC will soon have him as a guest speaker at a banquet they hold at Mar-a-Lago. We’ve been suggesting you help give the middle finger to AIPAC here. And to our American-Israeli friends:
אנא עזרו לנו למנוע מ-AIPAC להביס את הפרוגרסיביים
בקונגרס שמתנגדים לרצח עם