Democratic supporters want firmer policies on Israel

The huge demonstrations flooding the streets, parks and plazas across Israel are in many ways inspiring. Reports of more than 250,000 Israeli Jews challenging their far-right government are on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

Here in the U.S., the official response has been “concern.” President Biden “remains concerned” about “some of the extremist activities and behavior by some members of the [Israel Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu cabinet,” a spokesman said. Among other controversies, the Israeli finance minister calls himself a “fascist,” while the country’s national security minister was previously convicted of inciting racism.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, is reportedly concerned about Israel’s military capacity amid the protests.

One thing that Washington doesn’t seem concerned about is Israel’s continued denial of Palestinians’ rights. And perhaps that’s not surprising, because the protests roiling Israel largely leave them out too.

Understandably, Israel’s protestors are concerned about women’s rights, gay rights, equality for secular and nonorthodox Jews, and Netanyahu’s recent power grab. But Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights and international law remain virtually unmentioned. In fact, among the most influential leaders of the protests are generals and politicians who have overseen decades of oppression against Palestinians — and even bragged about it in their own campaigns.

Notwithstanding its “concerns,” Washington continues to send billions of dollars every year to the Israeli military to protect Israel in the United Nations and to shield Israeli officials from accountability in the International Criminal Court for potential crimes against Palestinians.

In 2021 and 2022, leading human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Israeli organization B’tselem all warned that the Israeli government is committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians. Today, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces continues to escalate. According to the United Nations, West Bank killings in 2022 rose 82 percent over 2021 — and almost 500 percent over 2020.

Voters are noticing.

The current Israeli government’s extremism has accelerated partisan divides over U.S.-Israel policy. As a result, support for Israel has become a thoroughly Republican position — with GOP voters embracing Israel, while Democrats, younger voters and American Jews increasingly say, “Not anymore, thank you.”

In 2019, a University of Maryland poll showed that 76 percent of Republicans wanted Washington to do nothing, or just talk, about illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Among Democrats, 66 percent wanted the U.S. to take more serious action, including economic sanctions.

Asked whether Israel is a democracy, an April 2023 Brookings poll showed that a plurality of Democrats with an opinion — 44 percent — viewed Israel as “similar to apartheid.” Almost the same percentage of Republicans identified Israel as “a vibrant democracy.”

Beyond partisanship, Jewish opinion is changing dramatically. A 2021 poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute determined that 25 percent of U.S. Jews — and 38 percent of younger Jews — now believe Israel is an apartheid state. In a striking 2022 J-Street poll, 68 percent of Jews supported restricting military aid to Israel.

Despite these shifts, the Democratic Party’s leaders remain largely committed to the old pro-Israel policy consensus. But change is slowly spreading among some elected Democrats.

In 2021, during Israel’s assault on Gaza that killed 256 Palestinians, including 66 children, Biden refused to call for a ceasefire. The few longstanding congressional supporters of Palestinian rights expressed outrage. But pressure also erupted from other quarters — including from 25 Democratic senators led by Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who is Jewish, and from prominent Jewish members of the House — urging Biden to change course.

Then there were the political operatives.

Some 500 former staffers of the 2020 Biden campaign wrote a powerful letter in May 2021, expressing concern that Israel “continues to use U.S.-funded military equipment to kill civilians [and] target journalists.” They called on Biden to work to end Israel’s “occupation, blockade and settlement expansion.”

Their letter was important because it showed those Democratic operatives realized it was no longer political suicide to criticize Israel, and that doing so would not keep them from getting their next campaign job.

Netanyahu’s Israel provides more evidence that U.S. support for Israel’s government, regardless of its occupation and abuse of Palestinians, has emboldened a violent and extremist Israeli right wing that now proudly rejects democracy for the country’s Jews as well. Ending that support would be consistent with both U.S. and international law.

Pro-Israel Democrats might assume they can continue backing what’s often called “the only democracy” in the region. But beyond ending support for violations of international law and human rights, they now have another reason to reconsider their position: Their voters will be watching.

Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as the international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. She’s the author of several books, including “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.”