The Biden administration made a pretense of supporting democracy and the so-called “rules-based order” advocated by former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. It was surprising, then, that Blinken’s initial response to the International Criminal Courts’s issue of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant was to threaten to impose financial sanctions on the members of that court. Apparently, Blinken thought the I.C.C’s action, which aimed to enforce the laws of international conduct, broke his rules, which seemed to allow war crimes by Israel. Many supporters of Israel state that they support its actions because of Hamas violent assault on Israeli military bases and murder of civilians several years ago. As economist Jeffrey Sachs recently stated, the attack by Hamas had been preceded by fifty years of violent subjugation of Palestinians by Israel.
Then there was Biden himself, who liked to hug the indicted war criminal Netanyahu. The weak charade that he and Blinken put on of trying to require that Israel reframe from war crimes was pitiful and sickening, even as the whole world was watching.
Biden has been a major advocate for Israel his whole career. In the 1980s, then Senator Biden held a town hall meeting at the University of Delaware. He was praising Israel when a Palestinian student asked why the Israelis would not allow his family to visit their former home in Israel. Biden told him to come see his office and he would help him out. The student later told me Biden did nothing. The Israelis had driven the student’s family from their home during the ethnic cleansing and massacres of 1948. During this town hall, I had an exchange with the Senator, who, to my surprise, asked me what I would do about Israel. I responded that I would make them sit down and negotiate. “Oh, no!” he replied. “You better work real hard to get me out of office, then!”
When Senator Sanders offered his first resolution opposing further arms sales to Israel in the autumn of 2024, only 16 Democratic Senators supported it. The Republicans, of course, all opposed it. The Congressional delegation from Delaware, my state, is no exception. Both of our Senators, Coons and Rochester, voted against Sanders’ first resolution. Sanders’ second resolution got Rochester’s vote along with a bare majority of the Democratic Senators’, but Coons again voted no.
The American Israeli Political Action Committee, or AIPAC, is regarded as an enforcer of support for Israel, and often works to defeat Senators or Representatives who refuse to toe its pro-Israel line. According to the website of AIPAC Tracker, Coons has received $376,561 from the Israeli lobby, and is endorsed by AIPAC. Former Representative, now Senator, Rochester has received $62,626 from the Israeli lobby, according to the same source; she is endorsed by J Street, which is not the same as AIPAC. Representative Sarah McBride, widely known as the first transgender member of Congress, is a strong supporter of Israel; she has accepted $72,316 from the Israeli lobby, and is endorsed by AIPAC, according to AIPAC Tracker. At two recent meetings of the Democratic National Committee, a resolution calling for an end of U.S. arms to Israel was defeated, even though only an estimated 7% of Democratic voters support Israel’s actions.
The U.S. Congress is, shamefully, in gross violation of its own laws, the Leahy Laws, which Wikipedia defines as U.S. human rights laws that prohibit the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity. As is evidenced by the warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defense Minister for Genocide by the International Criminal Court, Israel certainly violates the human rights of Palestinians with impunity. According to the Leahy law, Congress is obliged to end military assistance to Israel. However, Congress and many Democrats there instead blatantly violate their own law.
There are reports that the Democratic Party has suffered at the polls for its ongoing support for Israel’s crimes. Kamala Harris’ pledge of unyielding support for Israel, following in the footsteps of Biden, seems to have lost the election because it was a prime reason for former Biden voters to stay home. Recently, graduating college students clearly showed they support protests for Palestine. That does not bode well for the Democratic Party’s future support from younger voters.
In the recent democratic primary in New York, the DSA candidates emphasized their support for Palestinians. Several of them defeated mainstream Democrats in their campaigns. As part of the lead-up to the primary, one mainstream Democrat, when asked about Israel, replied that we’re against Netanyahu, but we definitely support Israel. That ploy has the problem that the large majority of Israelis support the genocide in Gaza, according to polling results. To try to pin the whole problem on Netanyahu will not work. It seems clear that the Democratic Party will be struggling with the issue of its support for Israel and its Zionist goals, for a long time. The essentially apartheid and colonial nature of Israel will be too difficult to conceal.
