Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumA Split Over Israel Threatens the Democrats’ Hopes for Unity
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/us/politics/bernie-sanders-israel-democratic-convention.html?_r=0Two of the senator’s appointees to the party’s platform drafting committee, Cornel West and James Zogby, on Wednesday denounced Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza and said they believed that rank-and-file Democrats no longer hewed to the party’s staunch support of the Israeli government. They said they would try to get their views incorporated into the platform, the party’s statement of core beliefs, at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.
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fun n serious
(4,451 posts)ericson00
(2,707 posts)the Jewish vote, a bloc that has been loyal and active for Democrats for a century (the only demographic group longer than African Americans), could move enough to Trump to give him the White House, given that a lot of Jewish voters live in Florida, Pennsylvania (the Main Line and suburbs), Ohio, not to mention the country as a whole has a big majority pro-Israel view, especially thru the lens of the fight against terrorist evil jihad.
fun n serious
(4,451 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)issue would be such a bad thing.
ericson00
(2,707 posts)given that Gallup has Israel beating Palestinians among Democrats 53-23-remainder (DK/both which means basically no opinion) and Pew's 43-29-dk/both (which again means is equivalent to no opinion) when averaged comes 48-26-both/DK, and because the both/dk is effective abstaining, of those with opinions, 48/(48+26)=48/74=65% of those with an opinion, on average, support Israel.
Once again:
(53-23 is a 2.3:1 ratio)
(43-29 is 1.6:1)
In both cases, a 2.3:1 or 1.6:1 popular vote margin, in a national election, corresponds to a 50 state electoral college blowout, given that it only took Nixon and Reagan 3:2 (or 1.5:1) elections to get 49 states!
Also, we do kind of have to win the national election, and the American public, is strongly pro-Israel.
But if that makes some Bernie voters wanna stay home, they can take their sour grapes and eat em.
6chars
(3,967 posts)What if they conclude that there is more to gain in energetic support from the anti-Israel left than there is to lose in terms of pro-Israel voters who would be alienated enough to stay home, let alone switch parties to one that goes against their other core values? This is about building a coalition, man, and you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
I am waiting to see Hillary destroy this kind of thinking.
ericson00
(2,707 posts)for the moderates/conservative Democrats and the Jewish Democrats, who could (in the case of the former), and who would (in the case of the latter) potentially bolt at least on the POTUS ticket. Even the former group could, because of the support that Israel gets thru the national security/ally perspective, not just the Jewish ethnic perspective. Nor could the anti-Israel college kid/hippie extreme-left make up for the campaign donations and political process participation that the Jewish vote would take to the GOP with it. Also, how about the many Jewish and pro-Israel Dem representatives in the House and Senate?
Most Jewish voters are liberal, but they're not gonna put their liberalism in front of the safety of half the people like them in the world, nor will put it above potentially family and friends who live there and have since the British Mandate or early state period. Jewish voters haven't voted too much on Israel in recent elections because they never thought it was in question, until potentially this.
The non-Jewish moderate/conservative Dems who support Israel, likely are a lot of the Dems who in polls, may have been in the minority of Democrats on Syrian refugees, fighting ISIS, etc., but they're a significant portion of the electorate and the party enough that people noticed that Dem support for refugees was smaller than GOP opposition.
The virulence of the anti-Israel movement that has existed long before Netanyahu's second term (2009-now) as Prime Minister needs to stop being ignored by some out there. Dems stood up against segregationists in the party and they need to do the same to the irrational obsessive anti-Zionists. Criticising Israel's government is OK; the obsession that leads Israel to be boycotted by the likes of Zogby and West when no other nation is, that causes Israel to be the only FP issue with its own forum here and have more tags on Daily Kos posts than "Bush" and "Trump" put together, is pure hatred, not criticism.
Also, don't forget the independents in the general election, and both polls show independents support Israel at a level between Dems and GOP.
Remember, even among liberals, the support for I vs. P is split by only 6%, 33%-39%. That could change more easily than a demographic group, one strategically located in certain swing states, leaving the party. And the GOP is dying to use left-wing anti-Israelism not just to counter attacks regarding the alt-right, but to boost Trump. Breitbart, Weekly Standard, and American Prospect have gotten started BTW.
While coalition building is OK, they should do it on issues like the minimum wage, health care, Wall Street reform; but stay the fuck out of foreign policy, which Bernie and many of his kiddy supporters know jack shit about other than extreme liberal arts professors telling them.
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)It's no real biggie if the party platform is balanced and reflects minority views too. I think the party platform should encompass the core values of the Democratic party, and not be one-sided on any issue, like Israel. Palestinian lives matter too...
I still don't understand how the pro-Israel 53% of Democrats are some kind of greater majority (your table 1) and the 39% of Sanders supporters who support the Palestinians (your table 2) don't even count. The tyranny of the majority isn't what I would call a consensus.
Israeli
(4,141 posts)Lieberman as defense minister garners headlines that can only accelerate the dramatic pro-Palestinian surge seen in Pew's recent poll.
Chemi Shalev May 25, 2016
Benjamin Netanyahu just formed the most right wing government in Israel’s history, Vice News reported on Wednesday, following the sealing of a coalition deal that will make Avigdor Lieberman defense minister. Israel is moving dangerously far to the right, Business Insider noted. For those who care about Israel, this is a dark hour, Tom Friedman wrote.
These ominous assessments cannot be dismissed as anti-Israeli propaganda. After all, it was the ultra-hawkish Moshe Ya'alon, outgoing defense minister and former IDF chief of staff, who said last week that “racist and extremist elements” are taking over Israel and its ruling party. And it was Ehud Barak, former prime minister, defense minister, IDF chief of staff and Israel’s most decorated soldier, who said on Friday “fascist elements are taking root in the Israeli cabinet.”
Against such a backdrop, the growing disenchantment of young American liberals with Israel, highlighted once more this month by a new Pew Research poll, seems almost self-explanatory. For Millennials, the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel and even the Six-Day War are ancient history; they are far more acquainted with Israel’s military superiority, half a century of Palestinian disenfranchisement and the growing intransigence and intolerance of Israeli politics and society. If it were any other country in the world, the disaffection of young American liberals would be regarded as completely natural, if not surprisingly low.
But Noah Pollak of the Emergency Committee for Israel has a different culprit in mind. “[Barack] Obama’s hostility to Israel bears fruit: liberal Dems now sympathize more with Palestinians,” he tweeted this week. Two years ago, when Pew published similar though less dramatic results, Jennifer Rubin came to the same conclusion: It’s all President Obama’s fault. He’s set a “negative example” for the Democratic base, she wrote.
Other right wing columnists haven’t focused on Obama, however. Writing in the Jewish Press, Jeff Dunetz pinned the blame on the misguided loyalty of American Jews to the Democratic Party. “Since Progressives are not pro-Israel and the Jews keep voting for them anyway, why should Democrats support Israel?” In Commentary, Jonathan Tobin ascribes the shift to anti-Israeli propaganda. “Many on the left have swallowed Palestinian lies about Israel being at fault for the lack of peace or regard its acts of self-defense against terrorism as “disproportionate,” as [Bernie] Sanders does,” he wrote.
This has also been the overarching theme of Israeli efforts to counter BDS and growing anti-Israeli hostility on campuses, indeed the leitmotif of Israel’s view of any and all hostility in the world. It’s all part of a sinister anti-Semitic plot, possibly masterminded by Hamas, Iran and other Jew-haters. They are poisoning the minds of naive and impressionable American youths and leading them down a path of evil. And if that is the case, there’s no need to acknowledge the influence - or the very existence, in fact - of occupation, racism, “seeds of fascism,” popular support for extrajudicial killings, endless efforts to curtail democracy and the cries of frustration and anguish that all of these spark in Israel and are broadcast from there, through social media, to the rest of the world. All of these don’t matter, because primordial antipathy to Jews rules the world.
The same reaction awaits the deliberations and recommendations of the Democratic Party’s platform committee. Bernie Sanders’ appointees to the committee are already being branded as fanatic Israel bashers and potential Holocaust deniers. The fact that their positions may be a reflection of the sentiments of most of Sanders’ voters will be ignored at first and then acknowledged, but only as proof of the Obama-led descent to the depths of irrational hatred of Jews.
Nonetheless, explaining away the latest Pew poll findings may require extra effort this time, because contrary to first appearances, they are quite extraordinary. The new poll didn’t simply chronicle a steadily growing partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans, left and right or conservatives and liberals on Israel: for the first time in history it showed that a significant group in American politics, liberal Democrats, actually sympathize with the Palestinians more than they do with Israel. Not only that, the change hasn’t been incremental and gradual, as you might expect, but sudden and steep: In July 2014, liberal Democrats still sympathized more with Israel than with Palestinians by a margin of 39-21, which was actually a positive change for Israel from December 2012, when it the ratio was 33-22. Pew recorded similar numbers from 2006 onwards, until the spike this year.
Some critics have pointed to the gap between the word “support” and the word “sympathize,” which is used in these Pew polls. You can sympathize with the wretched and the downtrodden, even if you think it’s all their fault and actually agree with their oppressors. But that does not clarify why the sudden surge in “sympathy” for the Palestinians.
So what does? How is it that support for Israel among liberal Democrats stayed modest but steady and sometimes increased for the first six years of Obama’s term in office, and then suddenly changed course dramatically? If you claim that Obama is at fault, or the gradual evolution of leftist views, what can explain the sudden acceleration of previously steady trends? After all, Obama spent far more time sympathizing with the Palestinians in his first term in office than in his second. So what changed between 2014 and 2016?
In Pollak’s view, not much. In a reverse paraphrase of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s famous maxim, Pollak contends that Israeli actions don’t matter, only Obama’s words. Responding to my query about the influence of the Gaza war and Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, he wrote in an email: “The president is enormously popular and admired among liberals, and more than any other person he sets the agenda and guides the sentiment of the left. He repeatedly condemned Israel for excessive force and killing civilians [in Gaza]. He called opponents of the Iran deal warmongers, accused Israel of meddling in domestic politics, suggested that Netanyahu is a racist, and hurled epithets - always on background in the press - against the PM. After seven years of portraying Israel as a problem for the US, and two years of intense condemnation, it's no surprise the polling numbers changed. It's not because of Israel - it's because of how Obama talks to the left about Israel.”
Reality, in Pollak’s view, doesn’t even nibble. In the conflict in Gaza in the summer of 2014, and notwithstanding its own perceptions, Israel was viewed as having used overwhelming force against a largely innocent civilian population. Whatever the explanations and excuses offered by Israeli representatives and supporters abroad, the pictures of neighborhoods demolished and turned to rubble were infinitely more powerful than any words could explain.
Multiplied and amplified a million times over on social media, they left a devastating impression, especially among younger liberals who are inclined to “sympathize” more with the Palestinians from the outset.
In the Iran deal, more than anything else, Netanyahu’s speech to Congress soured relations with liberal Democrats no less than with the White House. Netanyahu’s brazen challenge to protocol and what was perceived as his personal insult to Obama was received with a mix of shock and scorn by liberal Democratic figures including most members of the Congressional Black Caucus and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The harsh attacks on Netanyahu, the stony silence that emanated from liberal Democrats who attended his March 15, 2015 speech and the unprecedented decision of Vice President Biden along with eight US Senators and 50 Members of the House to boycott the event marked a dramatic, watershed departure from previous disagreements. Many of the liberal lawmakers may have gotten over it –they’re politicians, after all - but among their voters, the resentment lingers on.
One of the eight senators who stayed away from Netanyahu’s speech was Bernie Sanders. Since then, the Vermont senator has gone on to become a presidential contender who is wildly popular among young Democratic liberals. It is possible that Sanders’ willingness to stray from the norm, to criticize Israel and Netanyahu publicly, to call for an evenhanded U.S. approach and to express unabashed sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians gave an extra push to pent up liberal frustrations that had been simmering beneath the surface all along.
Lieberman’s appointment as defense minister is bound to pour more fuel on the fire, even if one assumes, as I do, that his actions will belie his harsh and often racist words. Nonetheless, the next time someone blames anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, leftist agitprop, liberal naiveté or that all purpose whipping boy Barack Obama for the growing alienation between Israel and liberals, in America and around the world, you might want to refer them simply to this week’s headlines.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.721482
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Clinton has 6 reps plus at least two supporters named by DWS on that committee.
That committee will have to vote instead of reaching consensus.
