Biden, Netanyahu and the Anti-Israel Democrats The President has a change of heart on meeting Israel’s Prime Minister, sort of.
On Friday these columns criticized President Biden for snubbing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declining in gratuitous public fashion to invite him to the White House. On Monday the President had a change of heart, calling Jerusalem and making plans to meet this year.
Will it be a White House meeting, with pomp and ceremony, or a quick 30 on the sidelines of the U.N.? It shouldn’t matter, except insofar as the Biden Administration seems to think it does, rebuffing Israeli requests. The logic isn’t hard to decipher: Mr. Netanyahu would like to reassure his voters that he has maintained strong U.S.-Israel relations, and Mr. Biden doesn’t want to let him.
The point is driven home by the treatment accorded this week to Isaac Herzog. A former Netanyahu opponent, Mr. Herzog is now in a nonpolitical role as Israel’s President. He met Mr. Biden at the White House Tuesday and addresses a joint session of Congress Wednesday. For him, the Biden Administration rolls out the red carpet it refuses Mr. Netanyahu.
The message to Israelis is that the U.S. is with you but not your government. It’s the kind of thing we tell Cubans and Iranians, or at least we used to. That the White House adopts the same approach with an allied democracy is a sign of the times in the Democratic Party.
Last week the White House issued a statement urging Israel “to protect and respect the right of peaceful assembly” for judicial-reform protesters—as if Israel has done something else. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler calls Israel’s reform proposals “anti-democratic” and a threat to judicial independence. That he and other Democrats support packing the U.S. Supreme Court, and putting it under Congress’s thumb on recusal rules, never seems to prompt any cognitive dissonance. They treat Israel as an incipient authoritarian state.
On Saturday Seattle Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chairman of the Progressive Caucus, told the Netroots Nation activist conference, “I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state.” This false claim was a staple of Soviet propaganda, recognizable by its moral inversion. Israel is the least racist state in the Middle East and a stark contrast to the Palestinian Authority.
Ms. Jayapal spoke up after pro-Palestinian protesters had heckled Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, herself a regular critic of Israel, but one who happens to be Jewish.
Republicans are advancing a resolution saying Israel isn’t a “racist or apartheid state,” but this easy vote will let most Democrats off the hook. House Democratic leaders rejected Ms. Jayapal’s claim, arguing, “Government officials come and go. The special relationship between the United States and Israel will endure.”
Ms. Jayapal suggests she is singled out as a woman of color. She also tries to clarify: “I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist. I do, however, believe that Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies.” For this nonretraction, she is defended by J Street, the major liberal lobby group on Israel. Ms. Jayapal and the other usual suspects will boycott even President Herzog’s speech.
Liberals quibble over wording—you’re supposed to speak of “democracy” and “Netanyahu” instead of “racism” and “Zionism”—but under the cover offered by presidential spats and judicial reform, the vilification of Israel has gone mainstream in the Democratic Party. This will be hard to take back, even when Israel gets a new Prime Minister.
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