The Democratic Congressmen Boycotting Israel and Denouncing It as Racist

July 19 2023

Yesterday, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog arrived in Washington for an official visit. Today, he will address a joint session of Congress, at the invitation of the Democratic leadership. At least five hard-left representatives—the so-called “Squad”—have made clear that they will not be attending, due to their hostility toward the Jewish state. Meanwhile, another representative, Pramila Jayapal, announced at a progressive conference last week that she and her colleagues “have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state.” Her statement provoked a forceful response from her fellow Democrats, after which she offered a half-hearted apology from which she then retreated. Noah Rothman comments:

It is no coincidence that Democratic support for Israel fell off a cliff between 2019 and 2020, when a Theory of Everything involving racial disparities became vogue inside the Democratic party. The same hyper-racial narrative that led Democrats to support defunding police forces now colors the way in which the party’s activist class views the Israeli conflict. While criticizing Israel isn’t inherently invalid or politically suicidal, the worldview that inspired Jayapal’s remarks is particularly toxic.

To reach their preferred conclusion, Jayapal and the activists for whom she spoke apply a distorted framework to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, reducing its complexities into digestible narratives around power dynamics and identity. Their reductive view holds Israelis to be powerful, moneyed, Europeanized aggressors, while Palestinians are a subjugated, colonized, brown monolith. It is seductive to those looking for clear good guys and bad guys in the conflict, and it has the added efficiency of allowing its believers to apply the same language they would in describing domestic conflicts to this entirely foreign one. It might insult anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the region and its dynamics, to say nothing of those who believe in Israel’s fundamental legitimacy, but tidy narratives are sometimes shallow.

It would be nice if Jayapal’s ill-considered decision to read the stage directions aloud produced a change of heart among Democratic lawmakers, but that is unlikely. What it has done is exposed Democrats’ worries about the ways in which they have antagonized the majority of Americans who support Israel.

Read more at National Review

More about: Anti-Zionism, Congress, Democrats, U.S.-Israel relationship

After Taking Steps toward Reconciliation, Turkey Has Again Turned on Israel

“The Israeli government, blinded by Zionist delusions, seizes not only the UN Security Council but all structures whose mission is to protect peace, human rights, freedom of the press, and democracy,” declared the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech on Wednesday. Such over-the-top anti-Israel rhetoric has become par for the course from the Turkish head of state since Hamas’s attack on Israel last year, after which relations between Jerusalem and Ankara have been in what Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak describes as “free fall.”

While Erdogan has always treated Israel with a measure of hostility, the past few years had seen steps to reconciliation. Yanarocak explains this sharp change of direction, which is about much more than the situation in Gaza:

The losses at the March 31, 2024 Turkish municipal elections were an unbearable blow for Erdoğan. . . . In retrospect it appears that Erdoğan’s previous willingness to continue trade relations with Israel pushed some of his once-loyal supporters toward other Islamist political parties, such as the New Welfare Party. To counter this trend, Erdoğan halted trade relations, aiming to neutralize one of the key political tools available to his Islamist rivals.

Unsurprisingly, this decision had a negative impact on Turkish [companies] engaged in trade with Israel. To maintain their long-standing trade relationships, these companies found alternative ways to conduct business through intermediary Mediterranean ports.

The government in Ankara also appears to be concerned about the changing balance of power in the region. The weakening of Iran and Hizballah could create an unfavorable situation for the Assad regime in Syria, [empowering Turkish separatists there]. While Ankara is not fond of the mullahs, its core concern remains Iran’s territorial integrity. From Turkey’s perspective, the disintegration of Iran could set a dangerous precedent for secessionists within its own borders.

Read more at Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security

More about: Iran, Israel diplomacy, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey