Stacking the Dem platform panel against Israel politics to go
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’ve been saying for a long time that the more liberal one is politically the less likely one is to support the Jewish state. The anti-Israel policy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton offers anecdotal proof; the vote by Democrats in favor of the Iran deal provide another example, and then, back in 2012, there was the removal by the Democrats of four pro-Israel planks from their platform.. When the platform changes were reported by this columnist, Democrats restored one of the four — the Jerusalem-is-the-capitalof-Israel plank; but they failed to restore a promise not to negotiate with Hamas as long as it refused to renounce terrorism, or a position that in a final deal Palestinian refugees would be resettled in a Palestinian state rather than flooding Israel with the purpose of removing its Jewish character, or that the 1948 armistice lines should not represent the final boarders between Israel and Palestine. A Pew Poll released last week backs up the qualitative judgements with quantitative evidence, finding that “views of Israel and the Palestinians have become more ideologically polarized. In early September 2001, just before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there were only modest partisan and ideological differences in Israeli-Palestinian sympathies. But since then, and especially over the past decade, the share sympathizing more with Israel than with the Palestinians has increased
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Hamas in 2014 because of its repeated terrorist attacks and the tunnels constructed to enable them to kill Israelis, Cornel West called Israeli actions a “crime against humanity” and said that there was “much blood on the hands of Prime Minister Netanyahu.” West, a long-time supporter of the BDS movement, has called President Obama a war criminal for supporting Israel. Sanders also placed Rep. Keith Ellison (DMN) on the committee. Ellison is certainly pro- Palestinian, however he is not the same kind of “froth at the mouth” Israel hater as Zogby and West. Zogby and West’s placement in such a prominent position within the Democratic Party highlights the changing face of the Democratic Party as does some of the appointments made by Clinton and Wasserman Schultz. Hillary’s haters: Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who is Jewish, may not be an Israel hater. But she is a supporter of the Obama/Clinton anti-Israel policies and was one of the chief negotiators of the P5+1 deal which enables Iran to remain an existential threat to Israel. Center for American Progress (CAP) head Neera Tanden is likewise not necessarily anti-Israel, but CAP has been accused of being anti-Israel and worse. In the lead-up to the last election, Politico published a piece about how CAP was fighting to change the Democratic Party to the anti-Israel party. Stories by CAP bloggers had appeared in the vehemently anti-Israel fringe publication The Electronic Intifada. Cap bloggers have also accused American Jews of a dual loyalty, calling them “Israel-Firsters.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center went beyond calling CAP anti-Israel, they
called it anti-Semitic. Perhaps CAP’s worst infraction was the creation of the anti-Israel group J-Street which is explained in the next section. Debbie’s downer: Rep. Barbara Lee tries to have it both ways. At times she votes for military aid and claims to be a supporter of Israel. But generally she looks at the Jewish State through the jaded lenses of the anti-Israel group J-Street that endorses her. J-Street was founded in 2008 with help from Center for American Progress and progressive sugar daddy George Soros. It markets itself as kind of left-wing AIPAC. Fellow progressive Alan Dershowitz said that while J Street says it is “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” J Street is “neither pro-Israel or pro peace.” Looking at the record of these people on the DNC platform committee and the liberal move away from support of Israel as shown by the Pew study, do not be surprised if the 2016 platform does more than remove proIsrael planks from the platform, and becomes more overtly anti-Israel. Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
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among all ideological groups, with the exception of liberal Democrats.” “The share of liberal Democrats who side more with the Palestinians than with Israel has nearly doubled since 2014 (from 21-percent to 40-percent) and is higher than at any point dating back to 2001,” according to Pew. ased on people appointed to the platform committee of the Democratic National Committee by Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Bernie Sanders, we should expect that the Democratic Party will continue to back away from support for Israel. Sanders appointees included James Zogby, Cornel West, and Rep. Keith Ellison. Hillary’s picks include some who should be worrisome to Israel supporters — Ambassador Wendy Sherman and Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden. One of Wasserman Schultz’s picks was California Rep. Barbara Lee, a longtime critic of Israel. Bernie’s bashers: James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, has a long history of anti-Israel rhetoric. He has referred to Israelis as “Nazis” and has called Israel’s actions in protecting herself from terrorism “a Holocaust.” He has also described sitting members of Congress as “Israel Firsters,” an anti-Semitic charge that implies dual loyalty to the Jewish state. “Zogby has two goals: to make Arab Americans more powerful than Jewish Americans and to be their preeminent leader,” explained Yehudit Barsky, a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy. In a 2014 column, Zogby pushed the falsehood that Arafat never turned down an offer from Israel in 2000 and turned to violence instead. When Israel launched an operation against
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June 3, 2016 • 26 Iyar 5776 THE JEWISH STAR
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