Politicians still trying to pass their criticism of Israel off as mere criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are like customers attempting to redeem an expired coupon.
It worked for a while. Netanyahu’s record-setting amount of time in office made him a safe proxy for the Israeli state’s governance. And his difficulty getting along with Barack Obama gave Israel’s detractors in the Democratic Party eight years’ worth of ammunition.
Yet now politicians who want to go back to that well simply look foolish. It has run dry.
Democrats feeling pressured by their base—or liberated by the anger of their base, as is sometimes the case—want to ratchet up their criticism of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. And they would like to do so without seeming to take Hamas’s side on any facet of the conflict. So they’re going after Bibi.
“I cannot support sending Israel more weapons as long as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power,” announced Rep. Joaquin Castro yesterday. Calling for the removal of an allied head of government in the middle of war is probably a tweet you want to leave in the “drafts” folder, especially if you’re a member of Congress on the intelligence committee.
In opposing additional aid to Israel, Sen. Bernie Sanders framed it this way: “We should not provide this money to allow Netanyahu to continue the indiscriminate bombardment.”
Castro’s fellow Texas Democrat Lloyd Doggett hit similar notes this week: “So long as Netanyahu faces no consequences, even more innocent civilians will face death and starvation.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren argued for conditioning aid to Israel because, she said, “U.S. military aid can’t be a blank check to a right-wing Netanyahu government.”
Last month, as Israel’s military was preparing to go into southern Gaza, California Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs came up with the silliest version of this talking point and announced: “I strongly oppose a continuation of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current military campaign.”
Sorry folks, but this isn’t Bibi’s war. It’s Israel’s.
Nearly 4 percent of the country’s population was called up for this war. Many Israeli families are affected by this alone. Beyond that, there’s the large number of victims and casualties from the initial attack, the many Israelis that needed to be relocated, the large swath of the country in range of regular rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon, the volunteers needed to keep businesses running and farms producing, and on and on. This is not a war of choice, it is a war of survival that Israelis would be thrilled not to have to fight.
That fact is also reflected in its current unity government. Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s main electoral rival, is a key pillar of that unity coalition. Today he warned that if Israel has to, it will take action against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well: “The campaign will continue and expand, according to necessity, to more foci or fronts.” If an election were held today, polls show he’d defeat Netanyahu and easily be able to form a coalition without Likud. Yoav Gallant, the defense minister Netanyahu nearly fired before the war, sparking outrage on both sides of the aisle, was a harder sell on the ceasefire than Netanyahu was.
The prime minister before Netanyahu, and the man who pieced together a motley coalition to replace him, was Yair Lapid. At a recent speech in Berlin, Lapid had this to say: “I came here to tell you, on German soil, we will win this war. On the seventh of October, Jews were murdered, babies were massacred, women were raped, the elderly were burned alive, families were taken hostage. The next day, October the eighth, anti-Semites already told the world, like always, that the Jews were to blame for being murdered.… The state of Israel wasn’t founded with the belief that anti-Semitism will disappear. It was founded so that we can tell anti-Semites they can go screw themselves. It was founded so we can tell the world we will defend ourselves, by ourselves, in any way we must.”
The suggestion that this military campaign is some right-wing adventure or that it is Netanyahu’s alone is insulting to Israelis, who have banded together to show that their politically divided society can act as one the instant something more important than electoral jousting demands it. Warren, Castro, Sanders, and others cannot seem to wrap their heads around the concept. They should try harder.
