Several weeks ago, the Republican Jewish Coalition unleashed an online advertising campaign with three dramatic, 30-second ads asserting that radical, anti-Israel extremists had taken over the Democratic Party. One ad focused on Cornel West, the firebrand who called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, another on the Arab-American activist James Zogby, and the third on U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, claiming that he supports Hamas. All three served on the 15-member committee drafting the platform for the Democratic National Convention.
“Sadly, this isn’t the Old Democratic Party,” each of the ads intoned as a blurry photo of John F. Kennedy morphed into a smirking Hillary Clinton. “It’s today’s Democratic Party.”
Oh, the irony. The “radical” positions of West, Zogby and Ellison — who were chosen by Bernie Sanders for the platform committee — were later soundly defeated by Democrats. Instead, it’s the GOP that has broken with the long- standing bipartisan approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by rejecting a call for a two-state solution and further rejecting “the false notion that Israel is an occupier.”
Sadly, this isn’t the Old Republican Party anymore. While a party platform is a largely symbolic document, this development puts to rest the notion that a common vision of what’s best for Israel’s future is shared across the political spectrum.
Liberal Democrats are increasingly concerned more about the plight of the Palestinians than about the needs of Israel, and conservative Republicans are increasingly skeptical that there’s a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 61% of Democrats believed a two-state solution was possible; only 38% of Republicans did.
This gulf has been building for some time, of course. President Obama, determined to forge a Middle East peace agreement, entered office reckoning that he’d hasten that agreement by creating “daylight” between himself and Netanyahu. The prime minister exacerbated their differences by openly defying Obama, first on expansion of settlements and then on the Iranian nuclear deal. Meantime, liberals (especially young liberals) are growing impatient with an Israeli government that seems not to budge on dealing with a Palestinian occupation that is now nearing the half-century mark.
....Republicans are clearly wooing evangelical Christian conservatives by means of the shift on Israel (and so many other reactionary changes in the platform) How else to explain the new language in the GOP plank that describes support for Israel as an “expression of Americanism” — whatever that means?....
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Poster Comment:
We grow so accustomed to double-mindedness. Maybe we accept too blithely the wild, crazy things Trump and co. are shouting. Hahaaaa, "Republican Jewish Coalition" -- great joke. Do they think of everything, or what???