Bernie Sanders’ Turn against Israel, and What It Means for the Democrats

After making a surprisingly good showing in his bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders has become a leading figure in his party’s left wing—which has always been the segment least supportive of Israel. Jonathan Tobin notes that Sanders’ recent public statements and videos posted on his official Twitter account suggest Sanders himself is moving from a tepid sympathy toward the Jewish state to outright hostility:

[Sanders’] support [for Israel] was never enthusiastic and often deeply critical. But in the last several weeks, he hasn’t merely revisited his opposition to Israel’s measures of self-defense [that he articulated in] 2014. Last month, in addition to condemning Israel for using “disproportionate” force to defend itself, Sanders . . . authored a letter signed by twelve other Senate Democrats that demanded the lifting of the blockade of Gaza. . . .

But with last week’s Twitter videos, Sanders took another step away from even nominal support for the Jewish state. He has adopted the Palestinian narrative about the “Great March of Return” in total. He not only accepts the blatantly false claim that it is “non-violent,” thereby ignoring the use of Molotov cocktails, stones, firearms, and incendiary [kites and balloons] that have laid waste to swaths of Israeli fields. He also claims that Hamas wasn’t involved despite the fact that it has already claimed responsibility and admitted that most of those killed while attempting to breach Israel’s border fence were members of the terror group. . . .

In doing so, Sanders isn’t merely taking another step away from the Democrats’ former position as a pro-Israel party. He’s laying down a marker that other liberal contenders in 2020 will either have to match or to oppose as they compete for the presidency. What this means is that unlike 2016—when the argument among Democrats was one about how supportive to be of Israel—in 2020 the question may be whether you agree with Hamas about destroying the Jewish nation, in essence rendering the position of the left-wing J Street lobby that, at least officially, sees itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace” even more irrelevant. Pro-Israel Democrats . . . are going to need to find their voices—and a candidate—if they don’t want their party to become a stronghold of hate against Israel in the coming years.

Read more at JNS

More about: Bernie Sanders, Democrats, Hamas, Israel & Zionism, J Street, US-Israel relations

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society