Today, Explained - America and Israel

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

An arms deal between the United States and Israel is drawing criticism from Democrats. It's part of a shifting tide in the American approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. It's been 10 days of the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence we've seen in years. Israel bombing Gaza and southern Lebanon, Hamas raining rockets on southern Israeli towns, and President Biden, well, he was asked to weigh in yesterday while test driving a brand new electric pickup truck. Mr. President, can I ask you a quick question on Israel before you drive away? No, you can't. Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it. I'm only teasing. Okay, here we the car as I step on it. I'm going to tease you. Okay, here we go. You ready?

Vintage bike. But the president isn't just zipping off in a Ford Lightning. He's also, it turns out, supplying Israel with the very bombs they're dropping. The administration had actually approved of a $735 million arms deal between Boeing and the Israeli government for those bombs that are being used right now to kill Palestinians. Jackie Alimany broke the news at the Washington Post earlier this week. The Biden administration actually approved of this deal on May 5th, a week before the fighting intensified. And Congress was notified of it. But it seems like lawmakers were really caught off guard by the deal over the weekend when many of them just learned of the deal for the very first time. Today on the show, the historically tight relationship between the United States and Israel and what's got some American politicians thinking differently about its future.

How did you guys discover this deal? I cannot reveal my sources, but I will say when news of the transmission from the State Department to Congress broke on Saturday, Sunday amongst lawmakers and staffers who work on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, there was a lot of chatter and a lot of deliberations between those parties and private conversations taking place on how to privately apply pressure on the administration by using this deal as leverage to maybe force a ceasefire. The positions amongst progressive Democrats range on what exactly they wanted to do about this deal. I think some were talking about just privately applying pressure on Tony Blinken to use the deal as leverage to call for a ceasefire. Others wanted the deal halted altogether. That is a much more difficult

task, though, because it requires bipartisan agreement and at least partisan agreement, which the Democratic Party doesn't have on this issue right now. So those conversations were all taking place. I caught wind of it through sources who relayed some of those private conversations. And by Sunday night, we had our story ready to go and confirmed by several congressional aides who work on this issue on a consistent basis, who had also given us details of those exact bombs that were going to be sold to Israel

and approved by the Biden administration, including joint direct attack munitions, JDAMs. These are kits that transform so-called dumb bombs into precision guided missiles, and then guided bomb units, which are shorthand called GBU-39s, both of which are used against Palestinians. Just to be clear here, this deal is not a reaction to the escalating violence we're seeing. This deals over a certain price tag, this one, $735 million, do require congressional approval or at least congressional review. So you published a story on Monday. What's the reaction that the United States is supplying the Israelis with the very bombs that are killing people in Gaza right now?

The reactions definitely varied, and we didn't see much reaction at all from Republicans. But progressive Democrats and even, again, some lawmakers who have been staunch supporters of Israel and defenders of the Netanyahu government called for more scrutiny of this deal. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Joaquin Castro, Mark Pocan, several others, issued statements calling the deal appalling and calling for the U.S. government to, again, use it as leverage to call for a ceasefire, which even the Biden administration at that time on Monday morning hadn't yet called for. The unrestricted, unconditioned $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid enables, it gives a green light to Israel's occupation of Palestine because there is no

accountability and there is no oversight by Congress. We must condition aid to Israel on compliance with international human rights and end the apartheid. We must with no hesitation. By Monday evening after criticism from Democrats, the Biden administration had changed course and called for a ceasefire. The president who had said earlier today that he did intend to speak with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they've had several calls now. The White House just issued a readout of that phone call and they said, among other things, that the president expressed support for a ceasefire

and discussed U.S. engagement with Egypt and other partners toward that. And the two leaders... You know, I think while this deal might go through and there's really not much to be done about it at this point, it is going to, I think, increase scrutiny of deals with Israel when it comes to munition supplies going forward. It's not universal condemnation though, right? I'm sure some people are fully in support of arms deals like these that have certainly predated this one. You have more moderate Democrats who are still not skeptical of Israel and supportive of even the Netanyahu government, which was pretty ideologically aligned with the Trump administration.

Hamas has sent an unprecedented amount of rockets into Israel. Israel certainly has a right to defend its people, but a responsibility, a real responsibility to protect innocent life. Every rocket that Hamas sends into Israel is a deliberate effort to kill civilians. And I think we need to understand that these rockets are indiscriminate and by definition designed to kill civilians. But this is something that Democrats have been evolving on for a few years now. And I was actually going back and looking at some of the stories I was writing in 2019 at the very beginning of actually the presidential primary, when this was popping up as an issue, because at the time, I believe, the Senate had just passed a Middle East bill that was rebuking President Trump's withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, along with a controversial measure to allow states and local governments to punish corporations that boycott, divest, or sanction Israel. Most Democrat members continue to stand with Republicans in rejecting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions BDS campaign. These members understand, as the Republicans do,

that this is a campaign that too often seeks to delegitimize and demonize Israel. And at the time, that bill passed with an overwhelming margin. But Democratic senators at the time who were mulling a presidential run, with the exception of Amy Klobuchar actually, voted against it. And it was a sign that the old school playbook of American politics and the way that we deal with Israel was being rewritten. I will fiercely defend the constitutional right of any American citizen to express his or her views in such a peaceful way if they so choose. Just as I would support the right of every American to engage in other political boycotts, to peacefully express their political views without fear of being punished by their government. When we're looking back at it,

there are a few specific lawmakers who in 2018-2019 really forced the Democratic Party to confront the growing call from younger members to take a more progressive position on Middle Eastern politics. And that's, again, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the first two Muslim American women elected in 2018. We cannot, we cannot let Trump and Netanyahu succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us. As a young girl visiting Palestine to see my grandparents and extended family, I watched as my mother had to go through dehumanizing checkpoints. Even though she was a United States citizen and proud American.

And they are forcing the party right now to have a reckoning with the way that the U.S. deals with Israel. It seems like Biden came into office hoping he wouldn't have to deal with this, but here we are. Did he make it clear what his hopes were for Israel and Palestine in his first hundred days? No, I don't think he had made it clear. And I think that the administration is scrambling to figure out what their policy is right now. Again, in the span of 24 hours, you saw them refusing to call for a ceasefire

to then sort of begrudgingly saying that they favored a ceasefire. The calculus right now that I think that they've taken is that creating and achieving some sort of peace or getting this fighting to come to an end is going to be best done privately through private negotiations and conversations. But that's not a sentiment shared by lawmakers, especially as the death toll rises. So I think we very well might see the Biden administration's posture shift. But at the moment, the response that we've seen so far and the statements on Biden's conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are not in lockstep with at least where the Democratic Party base sits when it comes to concern about the human rights of Palestinians. It isn't just lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Public opinion on Israel-Palestine is shifting in the United States.

More on that in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday. And she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. All right, so President Biden is towing the line on Israel, but parts of his party are drifting away from him at breakneck speed. Just today, it was reported that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with a few of her colleagues, would introduce a resolution to block the U.S. government's latest arms sale to Israel. Now, it will almost certainly not pass, but it's evidence of a shift that isn't just limited to Congress. So we're going to dig into it.

Alex Cain broke the news about the resolution. He's a reporter with Jewish Currents and 972 Magazine. We asked him how the United States government went from steadfast support and billions in aid to the more complicated picture we see now. I would say that this has really developed ever since the end of 2008 and around 2009. This was when Israel bombed Gaza for 22 days. 22 days of death and destruction, as the human rights group Amnesty International said. Israel's stated goals were to end the rocket fire, to disrupt Hamas's weapons supply lines,

and to try to liberate a captured IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit. None of these goals were accomplished. Now, at that time, it was the end of the George W. Bush administration, the beginning of the Barack Obama administration. There was pretty unstinting support for Israel. We are fully supportive of Israel's right to defend itself from missiles landing on people's homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians. And we will continue to support Israel's right to defend itself.

But what's particularly noteworthy about that war is that it was essentially televised 24-7, particularly by outlets like Al Jazeera English. Under attack, Israel's air force unleashes devastation on the Gaza Strip. Really massive destruction, Israeli bombs killing about 1,400 people, the majority of them civilians, according to human rights reports. On the ground in one of the world's most densely populated areas, it's a gruesome scene. And so on college campuses in particular, you had a real growth of student activism calling for divestment from corporations that their universities were invested in that do business with the Israeli military. There is an urgent need for international action to impose constraints on the Israeli state so that it ceases in these violent policies

and its policies of occupation and discrimination. That's part of the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement that Palestinian civil society had called for. It's that sort of international pressure to which we hope to contribute. That was the beginning of this shift. And Israel has gone to war with Hamas in Gaza, not only in 2008 to 2009, but 2012, 2014, and now 2021. That has a real impact on how young people and progressives and Democrats in particular are viewing Israel. The other factor that's really important is sort of the political factor,

specifically Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister in the late 1990s, and then starting right around the time that Barack Obama got into office, started his current over-decade-year term in power in Israel. People want change. People want to take a different path. Our camp has won. This all came to a head when Barack Obama pushed the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu, of course, came to Congress in 2015. Iran's regime is as radical as ever. Trying to torpedo Obama's signature foreign policy achievement, which was a nuclear deal with Iran. We must always remember, I'll say it one more time, the greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. Now, that did not have to do anything with the Palestinians, but it did sour many Democrats on Netanyahu.

And it was the beginning of a small break between the Democratic Party, traditionally a bastion of pro-Israel consensus, and Israel that accelerated when Donald Trump won, and there was a bear hug alliance between Trump and Netanyahu. We call it a key to the White House, and it's a key to our country and to our hearts. Thank you, Mr. President. And I have said, and this is true, that you have the key to the hearts of the people of Israel. And now we are seeing the impact of the growing partisan polarization on Israel

in American politics today. In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you're being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you're being very disloyal to Israel. And only weak people would say anything other than that. I mean, you're talking about tangible shifts in attitudes and tangible reasons for those shifts, but how real is the sort of change in thinking

when President Biden is responding to this crisis currently in a way that seems pretty familiar compared to, say, presidents of recent history? How seriously should we take all these changes, and how much difference do they make? Yeah. So one more thing on these changes, a Gallup poll found that a majority of Democrats, just over 50% support pressure on Israel, which was about a 10% jump. So the shift among Democrats is real. Now it's a good question as to what it really means, because as you said, President Biden has stuck to, we want peace, we want the fighting to stop, but- Israel has a right to defend itself. This has been the standard pro-Israel line, that presidents from George W. Bush to Barack

Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden. That said, there are a number of members of Congress that are speaking out and that show that the shift amongst the grassroots is really playing out in the halls of power. For what purpose does a gentlewoman from Minnesota seek recognition? The most tangible thing that we can point to is last month, Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced a bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the past decade, Congress has provided Israel with more than $30 billion in security assistance. Israel's security is important. But according to UNICEF, Israel is the only country in the world that systematically uses its military

to arrest, interrogate, and imprison children, Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old. That would ban U.S. military aid from being used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes, annex Palestinian land, or detain Palestinian children. Mr. Speaker, I yield back. There are 20 co-sponsors on that bill, including some of the most media savvy and influential Democrats in the party today, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar. They may not have the majority of votes, but they have social media reach and mainstream media reach that is really

reaching millions of Americans and are translating the views of Democratic voters into congressional action. That said, that's still a very small minority of the Democratic caucus. What's going on on the other side? I mean, are there any tangible shifts in the GOP? The GOP has been almost the opposite of the Democratic Party, at least among the voter base, but also in a much more pronounced way when compared to the Democratic Party in Congress. So it's important to remember, and many people may not realize that, but in the 1980s and 1990s, when we had Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, they challenged Israel in a real way. This was during the time when the United States saw the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace as central to U.S. foreign

policy. And they rebuked Israel over actions that they saw as destabilizing the Middle East. How strong were the rebukes? So Ronald Reagan famously held up the sale of fighter jets to Israel after Israel invaded Lebanon. George H.W. Bush held up $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel as a way to pressure Israel over the growth of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel is attempting an end run around the president, appealing directly to Congress to back its request for $10 billion in loan guarantees. President Bush is demanding a delay and threatening a veto if he doesn't get it. The next Republican president, George W. Bush, did at times rebuke Israel, but only rhetorically. Did not take any action on the flow of weaponry to Israel. Did not use U.S. military aid as leverage to pressure

Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. And that's in part because of the growth of white Christian evangelicals and their influence on the Republican Party. In 2006, Christians United for Israel, a massive pro-Israel Christian evangelical group, began. That has become a key organizing tool to pressure Republican members of Congress to show support not only for the Israeli government, but for the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is significant because that support for the settlement project goes against decades of U.S. opposition to the settlement project. So you saw the Republican Party slowly turn into not only a pro-Israel party, but a pro-

greater Israel party, that is a pro-West Bank settlement party. And that came to a climax with Donald Trump, who basically gave the Israeli settler movement and the Israeli far right everything they could have dreamed of. For instance, it's been longstanding State Department policy that, in line with the consensus of international legal experts, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, a violation of the Geneva Convention that says that a foreign power that conquers a foreign territory cannot send its own citizens to settle into that territory. Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, rescinded that order, and Biden has yet to reimpose that understanding in the State Department. Trump's peace plan, so-called peace plan, I should say, that he unveiled in January 2019, envisioned Israel annexing large swaths of West Bank settlements to Israel, leaving the Palestinians with what is essentially a Swiss cheese-like territory that's not a real

contiguous state. So the Republican Party, because of the influence of white Christian evangelicals and because of the influence of massive donations from the likes of Sheldon Adelson, who is another key figure to understand, and donated millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party as a way to ensure that the GOP stayed right-wing on Israel. Those factors all explain why the Republican Party has become so right-wing on this issue. So the Democratic Party is moving one way, the Republican Party is moving another. So will this just be another thing this country can't agree on? Well, yes, that's true. But that's also a big difference between what has gone on historically.

For years, Israel has counted on a bipartisan Washington consensus. The Democrats and Republicans were united on supporting Israel. Now we're seeing not only the beginnings of a partisan split between Democrats and Republicans, but within the Democratic Party, a split between progressives and the establishment. That's the real shift. So yeah, I do think that Israel has become a partisan issue, But I think that's healthy. It's healthy because the U.S. has supported Israel with no questions asked. The U.S. has given Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid,

and that military aid is going to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza. And so there should be disagreement. There should be debate. People's lives are at stake, and it's important to debate what the correct U.S. policy on that should be. Alex Cain, he writes about Israel and Palestine for Jewish Currents 972 Magazine and The Intercept.

You can find him on Twitter at Alex B. Cain. That's Cain with a K. and Palestine for Jewish Currents 972 Magazine and The Intercept. You can find him on Twitter at Alex B. Cain. That's Cain with a K. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. It's Today Explained. You can find me at Ramos-Firm and the show at today underscore explained. Thank you. you