Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2022, pp. 26-27
Special Report
By Walter L. Hixson
DURING AND AFTER World War II, American Jews united, created the Israel lobby, and established the foundation for decades of unquestioned U.S. political support and economic assistance for Israel. Today, however, American Jews are “very easily divided” on Middle East policy, Stacy Burdett, a vice president of the Anti-Defamation League, pointed out in an April 5 webinar entitled, “The Changing Pro-Israel Politics on Capitol Hill.”
Liberal Jews—firmly aligned with the Democratic Party—comprise a clear majority of the American Jewish population. The growth and assertiveness of liberal Jewish organizations has undermined the historic mission of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to maintain the bipartisan character of the Israel lobby. The effort long championed by AIPAC to maintain a singular, united American Jewish community “is not realistic any longer,” Dan Kalik, an official in the preeminent Jewish liberal organization, J Street, noted in the webinar.
While the Israel lobby maintains its iron grip on the U.S. Congress, especially when it comes to securing military assistance to Israel, AIPAC is increasingly viewed as the Republican wing of the lobby. Armed with its new PAC that makes direct contributions to candidates, AIPAC confirmed its right-wing orientation by endorsing and financing more than 100 Republican candidates who have refused to affirm the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The AIPAC support for the “Big Lie” candidates drew a flurry of denunciations, including from liberal Jewish groups. J Street issued a statement declaring, “AIPAC’s support for these candidates endangers American democracy” and was “completely beyond the pale.” AIPAC refused to back down, however, as it dispatched a letter stating that its new PAC would base funding decisions solely on the level to which candidates supported Israel, all other issues aside.
While AIPAC veers to the right, liberal Democrats are demonstrating “more alignment on Israel-Palestine than I’ve seen in a long time,” Kalik noted in the April 5 webinar sponsored by another Jewish liberal organization, Americans for Peace Now (APN). J Street, APN and other liberal Jewish groups endorse the two-state solution, call for a halt in settlements, and a commitment to diplomacy to resolve the conflict with Iran, whereas Republicans are increasingly associated with extremism. The dominant Trump-oriented wing shows a consistent “lack of respect for democracy”—both at home and abroad—and is “comfortable with an endless [Israeli] occupation,” Kalik noted, thus alienating some GOP moderates and forging unity among the Jewish Democratic opposition.
Recent polls, as well as the results of the 2020 election, show that Jews are overwhelmingly Democratic and support President Joe Biden at higher levels than the U.S. population. At the same time, however, liberal Democrats in Congress continue to receive AIPAC-generated support and funding for toeing the Israeli line. To cite one example, in Ohio’s 11th district Rep. Shontel Brown exploited lobby support—which means embracing unconditional funding for Israel—in twice defeating a more progressive Democratic primary opponent, Nina Turner.
If liberal Democrats truly want to distinguish themselves from the increasingly right-wing and GOP-orientated AIPAC and its two sister PACs, they must find a way to wean liberal Democrats like Brown and many others from feeding at the AIPAC trough.
Contributing editor Walter L. Hixson is the author of Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy and Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict (available from Middle East Books and More), along with several other books and journal articles. He has been a professor of history for 36 years, achieving the rank of distinguished professor.
SIDEBAR
LIBERAL JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS MUST CONFRONT THEIR CONTRADICTIONS
LIBERAL AMERICAN Jewish organizations have become increasingly outspoken in criticism of the profusion of illegal Israeli settlements, brutal repression in Jerusalem, undermining of diplomacy with Iran, attacks on free speech and the weaponizing of anti-Semitism. However, the liberal Jewish critique is riddled with contradictions.
Liberal Jewish groups remain thoroughly Zionist in their support of a “Jewish state” and advocacy of a two-state solution. This position begs the question of how a viable Palestinian state might be created in view of Israeli apartheid and the ongoing settler takeover of much of the West Bank as well as the ethnic cleansing campaign in East Jerusalem. It also fails to address how marginalized Palestinians living inside Israel’s recognized U.N. borders—20 percent of Israel’s population—could be treated with genuine equality in a state that is somehow both “Jewish” and “democratic.”
The largest liberal organization, J Street, has failed to address the blatant contradiction between its opposition to settlements and repression of Palestinians coupled with its support for the unconditional U.S. funding of Israeli militarism. Routinely bowing to AIPAC, long the powerful anchor of the Israel lobby in Washington, the U.S. Congress doles out $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel with no conditions on Israeli policies, including its routine repression of Palestinians and rampant violations of international law.
In a tortured policy statement on its web site, J Street calls for continued U.S. funding at current levels, stating that such funding should not be used for settlements or annexation of occupied territory, yet in the same breath insisting that aid to the Zionist state should not be “conditioned” on Israeli actions. J Street was equally contradictory on the issue of apartheid—rejecting use of the term in response to the designation by Amnesty International and other human rights groups—even as J Street acknowledged Israel’s “ongoing denial of fundamental rights and freedoms to millions of Palestinians in occupied territory.”
In a potentially significant breakthrough, one liberal Jewish group, Americans for Peace Now (APN), has become the first Zionist organization to call for conditioning aid to Israel. It has become “abundantly clear,” wrote APN president Hadar Susskind in an April 16 New York Times op-ed, “that continuing to give military aid without conditions neither serves the U.S. policy interests—nor, I would argue, does it serve Israel.” Susskind sharply condemned Israeli policies, citing “the horrifying images coming out of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and inside Israel.”
ONE JEWISH GROUP HAS A CONSISTENT VOICE FOR PEACE
In contrast with J Street and other liberal groups, Jewish Voice for Peace—by far the most progressive Jewish organization—is “unequivocally” opposed to Zionism, which it accurately describes as “a settler colonial movement establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others.” JVP advocates an immediate end to all military funding to Israel until the occupation and the Gaza blockade have been terminated; Palestinians have secured equal rights; and Palestinian refugees receive the U.N.-provisioned (Resolution 194) right of return.
While liberal groups verbally condemn efforts to outlaw boycotts and the weaponization of anti-Semitism, JVP has long since gone much further through its unconditional endorsement of the BDS effort. Bolstered by a growing membership and support, JVP has become increasingly engaged through its affiliate JVP Action in direct involvement in funding select congressional campaigns. Not surprisingly, right-wing Jewish groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, have launched a full-scale attack on JVP as an “extremist” and “radical anti-Israel activist group.”
