Donald Trump’s nominee for American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has long been a supporter of Israeli settlements. A building with his name on it sits in the West Bank town of Beit El, built on private Palestinian land in a settlement known for settler violence. Friedman supports the complete annexation of the West Bank and wants the United States to bless sixty years of settlements and abandon any pretense of pursuing a Two State solution.
With Democrats in disarray and Republicans ready to hand Israel anything it wants, it’s as good a time as any for Democrats to start planning for their post-Trump relationship to a little nation some either earnestly or bitterly call our 51st state. It’s also time for Democrats to abandon the illusion that, after so much land expropriated by Israel, a state for Palestinians is still possible. And when Democrats ultimately regain the White House the American-Israeli relationship is going to have to change.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, questioned whether Friedman would be working for Israel or for the United States: “Based on what he has said in the past, it seems as though he is very opinionated on Israeli issues, even though his role is to advance U.S. policies and interests and not the other way around.” Friedman has accused liberal American Jews (most of whom support Two States) of being “worse than Kapos” (Jewish collaborators with the Nazis). At the Saban Forum Friedman doubled-down on his invective.
As if to put a stamp of disapproval on Trump’s extremist nominee, this week the UN Security Council voted 14-0 (with a U.S. abstention) to condemn Israeli settlements as flagrant violations of international law. For the first time the United States did not automatically veto the resolution – a departure from the long-standing practice of shielding Israel from criticism. Israel was outraged and accused President Obama of orchestrating the vote, of rank antisemitism, and promised to hand over evidence of the “plot” to the next U.S. president.
In a futile gesture, Secretary of State John Kerry announced he’d use his remaining time to present a vision for a Two State solution, while an angry Netanyahu promised to step up the rate of settlement which has continued unabated since 1967. But even before the UN vote Israel was preparing to legalize almost 4,000 outposts in the West Bank. None of this should have surprised anyone. Last April Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel announced that the Two State solution was in its “dying throes” and that by 2019 Israel will have expanded settlements by 50%. But international criticism is not going away anytime soon. Aaccording to the Geneva Conventions seizing land from an occupied people is a war crime.
And yet hope persists. Irrationally.
In Israel 56% of secular Jews support a Two State solution with Palestinian demilitarization, but only 35% of religious Jews and 39% of Palestinians approve of the plan. Here in the U.S. only 39% of Americans support a Two State solution while 77% of American Jews do. American Jewish views on the occupation and on Two States have long been divided – generally between Orthodox and other Jewish traditions. Republicans and hard-line supporters of Israeli settlements are furious with liberal American Jews for breaking with Israel and acknowledging the violations of international law.
Israel, which does less trade with the U.S. than Switzerland, is not a NATO member and has never participated in a U.S.-led military coalition, yet this tiny country is nevertheless the beneficiary of considerable favor and largesse. Israel has received $124 billion to-date from the United States, and just received another $38 billion. Both Republicans and Democrats go out of their way to defend Israel’s interests – even censoring U.S. citizens. A recent Senate bill tried to block criticism of Israel on college campuses and New York governor Andrew Cuomo set up a blacklist of those supporting boycott and divestment campaigns to apply economic pressure on Israel.
To many Republican politicians Israel is not merely another nation but the birthplace of Christ. And for Evangelicals Israel is not just a modern state – it’s the Judea and Samaria of the Old Testament. Thus, David Friedman’s settlement in Beit El is not simply in the “West Bank” – but “Samaria.” Besides appealing to American religious sensibilities, Israel’s considerable lobby operates more freely than those of other nations which must register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This double standard may be partly due to the bipartisan sentiment that “there can be no daylight” (or conflict of interest) between our foreign policy and Israel’s – a tired and dangerous formulation.
But clearly no such “daylight” exists between Israel and David Friedman, who often says “we” when referring to Israel and has close ties to the Yesha Council of Settlements. Because Friedman, in virtually every sense, is an Israeli settler.
There was a time when the U.S. separated its interests from Israel’s. Michal Doran, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described Eisenhower’s reaction to Israel’s involvement in the Suez crisis: “In 1956, Britain, France and Israel launched coordinated invasions of Egypt. To say that Eisenhower disapproved would be an understatement. He directed at his allies a level of hostility typically reserved for worst enemies. After demanding that the attacking forces evacuate Egypt immediately, he imposed crippling economic sanctions on France and Britain. Against Israel, he threatened sanctions while engaging in bare-knuckle diplomacy.”
Yet. with the exception of Republican shutdowns of the U.S. government, there has never been a suspension of military aid to Israel or thought of witholding its get-out-of-trouble vetoes in the UN Security Council. Even Jimmy Carter, a critic of Israeli settlements for over 30 years, never used aid to Israel as a carrot or a stick. Progressive Democrats have been demanding even-handed leadership from their party on this issue, but centrist Democrats have instead thrown buckets of military aid at Israel and a few bucks at an unelected and despised figurehead in the West Bank. Like Republican Evangelicals, AIPAC Democrats have always been happy to maintain the status quo. And Israel has been grateful for all the time the charade has bought – for expropriating more land.
But Friedman has a point. The Two State solution has been dead for years. American presidents have come and gone, each happily mouthing the words “Two States” – but none has ever advocated for a Palestinian state as zealously as for Israel’s.
Perhaps now, with Trump about to be sworn in, Democrats will recognize the unsustainability and depravity of a 60-year occupation. Perhaps, with Trump now running the circus, Democrats and even a few Republicans will have to acknowledge that, paradoxically, many anti-Semites are actually quite pro-Israel. From both David Friedman’s and Steve Bannon’s perspective – what’s not to love about a militaristic nation of ethnic and religious privilege, where government is mixed with religion, and half the citizens want to throw the “dirty Arabs” out?
But without new leadership at the DNC, I wouldn’t pin too many hopes on the Democratic Party. As an article in the lefty Jewish Forward magazine put it, Democrats have a Haim Saban problem. Saban, the American-Israeli movie mogul who brought us the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, was Hillary Clinton’s top donor, a man even Breitbart News describes as an Islamophobe. Saban himself puts it this way: “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”
The Democratic Party has wrestled with its cozy relationship to AIPAC in each of the last two conventions. Although Democrats say they are worried that David Friedman will move the American embassy to Jerusalem, in 2012 the DNC attempted to push through a motion to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. An undemocratic roll was called by Antonio Villaraigosa, and the voice votes caught the DNC by surprise. AIPAC had “vetted” the motion – had actually written the text. In 2016 the issue of the occupation of Palestine came up again. Clinton supporter Robert Wexler insisted that Democrats could not afford to mention the “O” word (“occupation”) if a Two State solution could be salvaged. Sanders supporter James Zogby pushed back, pointing out that everyone knows the occupation exists. Both sides also disagreed whether Democrats should support the BDS movement. Ultimately the DNC adopted wording that made AIPAC (and Clinton) happy.
So when the UN Security Council took its vote this week, the US abstention was quite the exception. And now Democrats find themselves accused of being Islamist-Leftists who love Shariah and hate Jews. But Obama’s abstention was a desperate, and ultimately futile, “Hail Mary” to save the Two State illusion.
Decades of “peace” negotiations under Democratic presidents tell us that “Two States” was always more an act than a plan of action – at least the part involving a Palestinian state. We can only assume now that another four years of extreme coddling under Trump will permit Israel to turn the rest of East Jerusalem and huge swaths of the West Bank into even more American-style suburbs – like Ma’ale Adumim with its mall and ACE Hardware.
But after that? What then?
In nine years Jews will be a minority (48%) in Israel-Palestine, which will make continued Jewish domination more difficult and unjustifiable. Within a few decades of this demographic shift, Theodor Herzl’s experiment will very likely come to an anti-climactic end.
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