The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel

[DKW 86 7,507]

The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel

https://www.wsj.com/politics/democrats-risk-long-lasting-rift-over-israel-hamas-war-ec74044f?mod=wknd_pos1

Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian liberal factions now divided as ugly accusations fly in both directions

Many pro-Palestinian activists on the left say President Biden and other Democrats have blindly sided with a right-aligned Israeli government. PHOTO: ZUMA PRESS

To many on the left, the Israel-Hamas war is spurring what feels like a permanent rupture, when previously sublimated differences become impossible to ignore and everyone must choose sides.

The weeks since the Hamas attacks have riven the liberal coalition, pitting erstwhile allies against each other as ugly accusations fly in both directions. From the halls of power in Washington to street protests and social media, progressives find themselves at odds with those they once saw as kindred spirits.

Both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates describe a feeling of disillusionment as relationships fracture and harsh words are exchanged. The result, many predict, could be a breach that splits Democrats for a generation with untold political consequences.

To liberal Jews devastated by scenes of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the ensuing weeks have shattered illusions of solidarity, says Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and director of the Anti-Defamation League. College students and faculty, as well as local chapters of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America, have justified or even celebrated Hamas’s actions, while many others have emphasized the Palestinians’ plight and criticism of Israel over sympathy for the victims of the terrorist attacks.

“It has been an incredibly clarifying and terrifying moment at the same time for many progressive Jews,” Greenblatt said. “They’re calling me, tweeting, messaging, expressing shock and sadness that the people they marched with, the causes they marched for, have abandoned them in their hour of need.”

The feeling is mutual for many activists on the left who say President Biden and other Democratic officeholders have blindly sided with a right-aligned Israeli government bent on retribution that disproportionately harms innocent civilians.

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“If you are Arab-American, Muslim-American or Palestinian, you feel like you don’t matter, you feel invisible,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist and former spokesman for the Justice Democrats, which has supported the progressive Congress members known as the squad in primaries against more centrist Democrats. “If you are advocating at all that Palestinian and Israeli lives should be treated equally, there’s a feeling that the party doesn’t care about you at all,” he said. 

The result, Shahid warned, might be that a president already struggling to ignite the enthusiasm of young and minority voters loses them completely—a recent Gallup poll found Biden losing 7 percentage points of support with voters under 35 in the past month, he noted—or that the party splinters as it did in the Vietnam War era. Others have drawn parallels to the left’s split over Soviet communism in the 1950s.

In a Wall Street Journal/Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 18-20, 48% of Democrats said the U.S. has a responsibility to support Israel in the conflict, versus 53% of independents and 64% of Republicans.

The split comes as Biden has expressed strong support for Israel and called on Congress to approve billions of dollars in new military assistance to the American-allied government. Israel on Monday sent tanks and infantry toward Gaza City in an intensification of its ground operation in the territory. Authorities say thousands have been killed in the fighting since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

The conflict has spilled into the White House, where Biden on Thursday met with Muslim leaders who chided him for not showing more empathy for Palestinians in his remarks on the conflict. A top State Department official resigned Oct. 18 in protest of the administration’s approach, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Oct. 19 sent a letter to diplomatic staff seeking to quell internal dissent. 

Jewish Democrats have reportedly complained to the party’s House minority leader about comments made by representatives including Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) in the aftermath of the attacks. PHOTO: ALLISON BAILEY/ZUMA PRESS

In Congress, a resolution condemning Hamas passed the House overwhelmingly with 412 votes on Wednesday, with nine left-wing Democrats voting against it and six voting “present.” (A lone Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, also voted against the resolution.)

Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, explained her “present” vote in a statement that said, “While I still condemn Hamas’s attacks and the pain and suffering of the Jewish people everywhere, I also condemn the violations of international humanitarian law by Israel and the pain and suffering of Palestinian people everywhere that are not recognized anywhere in this resolution.”

On Thursday, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey centrist, said on X, formerly Twitter, that the 15 Democrats who didn’t vote for the resolution were “despicable and do not speak for our party.” In response, one of the 15, Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, called Gottheimer a “coward” and a “punk,” and invited him to settle their differences physically.

 

A recent closed-door meeting of congressional Democrats erupted in recriminations when Gottheimer was heard to mutter, “they should feel guilty”—a remark that some progressives heard as directed at Muslims as a group, but which Gottheimer said was aimed at his colleagues who hadn’t sufficiently condemned Hamas. Gottheimer has faced protests and death threats over the comments.

Even progressive stalwarts such as Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have drawn protests from the left for backing Israel. Jewish Democrats have reportedly complained to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries about comments made by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), both of the squad, in the aftermath of the attacks. Squad members have received increased protection from Capitol Police because of a sharp escalation in threats against them in recent weeks.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D., Ill.) said that while Democrats have been mostly unified, he has been “incredibly disappointed” to see some people “who not only haven’t been able to condemn the horrific terror attack on Israel, but have celebrated it and called it resistance.” He singled out Tlaib for refusing to retract her statement blaming Israel for an explosion at a Gaza hospital that Israel and the U.S. say was caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza (a Wall Street Journal video analysis supports that claim).

“She spread a claim by Hamas that is not true, that has led to threats to American military personnel and diplomats around the world, and continues to throw gasoline on that fire,” Schneider said in an interview. “It’s important that all of us call out evil. We may have differences of opinion, but we don’t get to have our own facts.”

 

Tlaib’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) has decried the Democratic Socialists of America’s anti-Israel stance for years. PHOTO: MICHAEL NAGLE/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Though the current conflict has brought it to the fore, the discord in the Democratic ranks has deep roots. In 2019, House Democrats struggled to pass a resolution disapproving of remarks by Omar that many saw as antisemitic, eventually uniting around a statement that condemned both antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Democratic Majority for Israel, an advocacy group with ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, sprung up in 2020 to oppose progressive Democrats in primaries. The group’s political-action committee spent large amounts to counter Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign and to stymie a further expansion of the squad, with mixed results.

While some progressives decry the machinations of the big-money Israel lobby, centrists see grim vindication in the ugly expressions from the illiberal left. Center-left thinkers have warned for years about the climate on many campuses, where an “anticolonialist” posture has become a litmus test for faculty hiring, and students embrace a radical chic that rationalizes or valorizes violence if it is committed by groups regarded as oppressed.

“I do worry that young people are increasingly indoctrinated with an ideology, an anti-Israel hatred, that is so virulent that it renders them indifferent to the coldblooded murder of Israeli civilians and children,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat.

Many New York progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, distanced themselves from the city’s DSA chapter after it promoted an Oct. 8 pro-Palestinian rally that blamed Israel for the attacks and included antisemitic displays. Torres, who has been decrying the organization’s anti-Israel stance for years, said too many fellow progressives previously played down such sentiments.

Omar last week attacked Torres for his pro-Israel statements, asking at a press conference, “How many more Palestinians would make you happy if they died?”

Responding on X, Torres called Omar’s accusation a “vicious lie,” adding, “How many Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians must die from endless rocket fire and escalated conflict before she summons the moral decency to support Iron Dome?” referring to Israel’s air-defense system.

Progressive activists say the focus on what they characterize as a few nutty college kids is misguided and disproportionate at a time when some Republican politicians, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have called for leveling Gaza. They see a march to war that echoes the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when antiwar voices were marginalized and the result was decades of disastrous military entanglement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I’ve been heartbroken and disturbed by the lack of empathy altogether around the plight of Palestinians,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the leftist Working Families Party, which is pressuring the White House to back a cease-fire.

To others, however, the lack of sympathy for the suffering of Jews reflects a deeper split. “It really is, I think, a battle for the soul of our party,” says Joe Vogel, a Maryland state delegate who is seeking the open congressional seat to be vacated by Democratic Rep. David Trone.

As an undergraduate at George Washington University, Vogel was expelled from student government by activists for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The same group came under fire this week for projecting antisemitic messages including “Glory to our martyrs” on the outer walls of a campus library.

“It shouldn’t be that hard to condemn the murder of innocent women and children and seniors, yet many have either said nothing or equivocated,” Vogel said. “We have a serious problem in our party right now.”

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

Biden likes to proudly claim “This is not who we are as a people”.  Strangely, he never has defined *who we are as a people* and now he will have the opportunity to do so.  It will cost him votes and that is not the way to run a country.

The left’s policy of never saying any person or faction is wrong, is what is tearing this coalitions apart.  Progressive Jews were happy to march with BLM even though they were Marxist leaning and didn’t realize it until this conflict.  The anti colonization movement took precedence over merely doing the right thing for BLM and other communists as they see this as their opportunity to make headway for their movement.

If you have no standards and anything goes, at some point, when hard decisions have to be made you have nothing but indecision to fall back on.  The ridged rod of reality is about to hit.

[AU9377 5,296]

I don't believe that pro palestinian voices are representative of a large number of actual voters.  In other words, they may be loud, but their bark has little to back it up.

[icanthearyou 4,465]

This is not a binary choice,,, even though that is how it is presented.  

[auburnatl1 5,462]

TYT is the epi center of progressivism. Watch this debate over Israel. 

 

[DKW 86 7,507]

On 11/2/2023 at 10:27 PM, auburnatl1 said:

TYT is the epi center of progressivism. Watch this debate over Israel. 

 

He finally wakes up @ 8:20 He is tired of the "in-his-face" attacks for not agreeing with every egregious misuse of the term of Zionism. 

Look, I long ago gave up on even discussing this with many in this world. Some people who could never think of themselves as racist are CLEARLY RACISTS when it comes to Jews. Anti-Zionism is the worlds biggest, the penultimate dog-whistle of all times. Anti-Zionism is AntiSemitism, at least in 99% of the cases. I will allow that there could be some that dont want to kill all the Jews, deny them the right of defense, deny them the right to exist. But the other 99%...

They deny Israel the right to exist.
They deny Israelis the right to defend themselves. 
They support Hamas and its war crimes and crimes against humanity.
They refuse to even identify Hamas as a terrorist group.
They refuse to accept that Gazans support Hamas in growing numbers and polling.

My MSNBC friend, Mz Progressivism actually told me that that she actually thought MOVING ALL JEWS TO MADAGASCAR was the best solution for everyone. That we should strip them of their homeland and all they have fought for, give up Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount for absolutely nothing, be forced to move to Madagascar where everyone with a brain would be for their immediate extermination for taking land from the natives....

The  Nazis  Plan to move the Jews to Madagascar..

Yes educated people in America, my friend holds a JD, are this blind to their own racism.

Edited November 6, 2023 by DKW 86

[auburnatl1 5,462]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

He finally wakes up @ 8:20 He is tired of the "in-his-face" attacks for not agreeing with every egregious misuse of the term of Zionism. 

Look, I long ago gave up on even discussing this with many in this world. Some people who could never think of themselves as racist are CLEARLY RACISTS when it comes to Jews. Anti-Zionism is the worlds biggest, the penultimate dog-whistle of all times. Anti-Zionism is AntiSemitism, at least in 99% of the cases. I will allow that there could be some that dont want to kill all the Jews, deny them the right of defense, deny them the right to exist.  

They deny Israel the right to exist.
They deny Israelis the right to defend themselves. 
They support Hamas and it war crimes and crimes against humanity.
They refuse to even identify Hamas as a terrorist group.
They refuse to accept that Gazans support Hamas in growing numbers and polling.

My MSNBC friend, Mz Progressivism actually told me that that she actually thought MOVING ALL JEWS TO MADAGASCAR was the best solution for everyone. That we should strip them of their homeland and all they have fought for, give up Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount for absolutely nothing, be forced to move to Madagascar where everyone with a brain would be for their immediate extermination for taking land from the natives....

The  Nazis  Plan to move the Jews to Madagascar..

Yes educated people in America, my friend holds a JD, are this blind to their own racism.

Fair points. I think the British did an incredibly haphazard job in carving up the Middle East as their empire faded and without giving territory to the Palestinians, Kurds, ect. Tribes arbitrarily became countries.  Nonetheless, until there is some sort of 2 state solution (which obviously wouldnt diffuse all radicalism) this will continue to escalate. Badly.

[DKW 86 7,507]

11 hours ago, auburnatl1 said:

Fair points. I think the British did an incredibly haphazard job in carving up the Middle East as their empire faded and without giving territory to the Palestinians, Kurds, ect. Tribes arbitrarily became countries.  Nonetheless, until there is some sort of 2 state solution (which obviously wouldnt diffuse all radicalism) this will continue to escalate. Badly.

The Palestinians have been given a TSS 5X and have turned it down every time. "Palestine will be free, From the river to the sea" has a direct meaning, no Jew State. No Jews.

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

 

Some how there is a disconnect in the U.S.

[auburnatl1 5,462]

This feels like yet another thread that does a much better job at identifying who’s wrong and to blame than having any solutions on how to solve it. 2 state? Nuke em all? Continue tit for tat …forever? 

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

2 hours ago, auburnatl1 said:

This feels like yet another thread that does a much better job at identifying who’s wrong and to blame than having any solutions on how to solve it. 2 state? Nuke em all? Continue tit for tat …forever? 

I clearly see who is wrong and the solution is to get rid of Hamas and then a solution can be discussed.  I don’t know any other way to look at it, unless you just want to straddle the fence and nothing gets done.  

[AUDub 11,257]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

I clearly see who is wrong and the solution is to get rid of Hamas and then a solution can be discussed.  I don’t know any other way to look at it, unless you just want to straddle the fence and nothing gets done.  

Unless you eliminate the problems that give rise to radicalization in the first place something will quickly replace Hamas. 

[auburnatl1 5,462]

19 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Unless you eliminate the problems that give rise to radicalization in the first place something will quickly replace Hamas. 

I believe that is a UN force/ DMZ separation sort of scenario. Radical Islam (which im not sure requires a “stimulus” to cause) is a planetary problem that almost every nation on earth has had issues with.

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

38 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Unless you eliminate the problems that give rise to radicalization in the first place something will quickly replace Hamas. 

OK, but now is not the time for that.  After Hamas is out there can be talks.  The vacuum created by the defeat of Hamas must be controlled and that is where te US can help.

[DKW 86 7,507]

18 hours ago, AUDub said:

Unless you eliminate the problems that give rise to radicalization in the first place something will quickly replace Hamas. 

And exactly what problems are that? That Israel is the only state in the ME doing anything positive with Gaza. They provide water, power, jobs, medical support, etc. The other 40 Muslim Nations do nothing to support the Gazans because they are that fearful of Hamas moving into their countries. So tell us what to do? The Palestinians have turned down a TSS 5X. They do not want peace. They want a One State, a Palestinian State, with no Jews. Negotiate from there...?

Edited November 6, 2023 by DKW 86

[auburnatl1 5,462]

36 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

And exactly what problems are that? That Israel is the only state in the ME doing anything positive with Gaza. They provide water, power, jobs, medical support, etc. The other 40 Muslim Nations do nothing to support the Gazans because they are that fearful of Hamas moving into their countries. SO tell us what to do? The Pal;estinians have turned down a TSS 5X. They do not want peace. They want a One State, a Palestinian State, with no Jews. Negotiate from there...?

The solution most Palestinians say they want is not the expulsion of Israel - but integration with the Israelis. Ps which is problematic 

[I_M4_AU 8,149]

1 hour ago, auburnatl1 said:

The solution most Palestinians say they want is not the expulsion of Israel - but integration with the Israelis. Ps which is problematic 

The problem is the Palestinians have voted in Hamas to do their negotiations.  There is no middle ground with Hamas, if Palestinians voice opinion that is different than Hamas they would disappear.

[DKW 86 7,507]

2 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

The problem is the Palestinians have voted in Hamas to do their negotiations.  There is no middle ground with Hamas, if Palestinians voice opinion that is different than Hamas they would disappear.

In new polling, the Gazans now support Hamas 60%+ This is no mistake made by the Gazans. They want hamas to be there now. 

Now, how much of that is real polling and how much is Hamas pointing a gun at their heads, we will never know.

Edited November 6, 2023 by DKW 86

[alexava 6,974]

It’s all about the victim scale. Palestinians fall further down than Jews. The left will eat their own if you sit back and let them. 

[E'Town4Bama 111]

All this goes back to two people.

 

Isaac and Ishmael. Abraham's two sons.

[auburnatl1 5,462]

2 peoples. 1 country. Both feel they were promised by God. And throw in a lot of retribution and crazy.

Not good.
 

 

 

[icanthearyou 4,465]

A testament to religion.  The rejection of God.

[DKW 86 7,507]

On 11/5/2023 at 6:08 PM, AUDub said:

Unless you eliminate the problems that give rise to radicalization in the first place something will quickly replace Hamas. 

So we have to get rid of the Taliban, the Radical Imams, and 25% of all Muslims on earth and then we still can’t have peace? 
 

or maybe we can remove Hamas, the organization sworn to oppose a two state solution, and then implement a true TSS? Let the grownups do this and stand back and watch. 

[DKW 86 7,507]

On 11/6/2023 at 8:57 AM, auburnatl1 said:

The solution most Palestinians say they want is not the expulsion of Israel - but integration with the Israelis. Ps which is problematic 

Where do you get this from? I have heard nothing that sincerely said they would accept anything short of a One Palestinian State Solition. 

[jj3jordan 2,099]

16 hours ago, auburnatl1 said:

2 peoples. 1 country. Both feel they were promised by God. And throw in a lot of retribution and crazy.

Not good.
 

 

 

Agreed. Difficult for humans to remedy. Neither side will accept the authority of anybody but God. This is the way I have viewed the Middle East for years. God alone will ultimately sort this out. How much should we try to help? I have no idea. He will do it in His timing.