Democrats Splinter!
Posted: 30 Oct 2023, 08:34
https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats-sp ... 47440.html
Democrats Splinter Over Israel as the Young, Diverse Left Rages at Biden
Reid J. Epstein and Anjali Huynh
Fri, October 27, 2023
The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 30, 2018. (Hilary Swift/The New York Times)
The Democratic Party’s yearslong unity behind President Joe Biden is beginning to erode over his steadfast support of Israel in its escalating war with the Palestinians, with a left-leaning coalition of young voters and people of color showing more discontent toward him than at any point since he was elected.
From Capitol Hill to Hollywood, in labor unions and liberal activist groups, and on college campuses and in high school cafeterias, a raw emotional divide over the conflict is convulsing liberal America.
While moderate Democrats and critics on the right have applauded Biden’s backing of Israel, he faces new resistance from an energized faction of his party that views the Palestinian cause as an extension of the racial and social justice movements that dominated American politics in the summer of 2020.
In protests, open letters, staff revolts and walkouts, liberal Democrats are demanding that Biden break with decadeslong U.S. policy and call for a cease-fire.
The political power of the Israel skeptics within the party is untested, with more than a year remaining until the 2024 presidential election. Their efforts have been fractious and disorganized, and they have little agreement on how much blame to lay at Biden’s feet or whether to punish him in November 2024 if he ignores their pleas.
And yet Biden is already struggling with low Democratic enthusiasm, and it would not take much of a slip in support from voters who backed him in 2020 to throw his reelection bid into question. His margin of victory in key battleground states was just a few thousand votes — hardly enough to spare a significant drop-off from young voters alienated by his loyalty to a right-wing Israeli government they see as hostile to their values.
At its heart, the turbulence over Israel is a fundamental disagreement over policy, setting it apart from challenges like voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy, which Biden’s allies believe can be solved with better messaging. The president, who has for decades positioned himself in the middle of his party and has navigated Democrats’ ideological and generational divide for the first half of his term, now confronts an issue that has no easy middle ground.
Perhaps most concerning for Biden is that in the halls of Congress, the most critical Democratic voices are Black and Hispanic Democrats who helped fuel his 2020 victory. As of Thursday, all 18 House members who had signed onto a resolution calling for an
were people of color.immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine
said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, one of the cease-fire resolution’s co-sponsors.We process pain, deprivation and cruelty personally, having either encountered it in our current lives or having had historical connections to it with our ancestors,
For Democrats in Congress and in liberal groups in Washington, pressure to oppose Biden’s Israel policy is bubbling up from younger, more progressive staff members who have grown up in an environment more doubtful about Israel.So we understand that cruelty and war and violence do not have positive outcomes.
Hundreds of former staff members who worked for the presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts this week signed open letters urging them to introduce a similar cease-fire resolution in the Senate.
The senators have resisted such calls, but Sanders this week urged a “humanitarian pause,” a position that some other liberal lawmakers and groups have begun to embrace and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said
Other progressive lawmakers, however, argue that such a pause does not go far enough.must be considered.
said Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who introduced the cease-fire resolution.A humanitarian pause, what is that?
At MoveOn, the liberal activist group that endorsed Biden in April, younger staff members revolted after the organization issued an initial statement condemning the Hamas attack that ignited the current war without addressing Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinians.We need a cease-fire. We need to stop bombs from being dropped on hospitals and on schools and communities.
Rahna Epting, MoveOn’s executive director, said in an interview.There was a vocal percentage of our staff that did express their opinions,
MoveOn’s latest statement on the war, a petition, underscores the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and states thatI reminded them that ultimately we need to go to the members and see where they are.
Differences over Israel policy have caused conflict even among the nation’s top union officials. The executive committee of the AFL-CIO addressed the issue during a tense meeting Monday night that was dominated by a 30-minute anti-Israel monologue from the president of the American Postal Workers Union, who described himself as anPresident Biden and our leaders must publicly call for an immediate cease-fire.
Many on the left, however, acknowledge that Biden remains preferable to a Republican alternative in 2024. Epting said MoveOn couldanti-Zionist Jew.
Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders who is among the most vocal proponents of a cease-fire, condemned Biden’s hug-Israel approach — but said he would not withhold support for Biden next year over the differences.support President Biden and apply pressure to him at the same time.
Duss said.Is this worth losing an election to Trump and all that would bring? No,
For many on the left, sympathy for the Palestinian cause stems from the same feelings of powerlessness that fueled the protests after George Floyd’s murder three years ago.At the same time, I think it’s on Biden to understand where his voters are.
said DaMareo Cooper, a co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a collective of progressive community groups.There’s definitely a direct correlation,
Biden’s allies dismissed the prospect that his position on Israel would damage him in 2024. Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, one of the most outspoken Democratic supporters of Israel in Congress, said he had been offended by cease-fire calls that did not also demand that Hamas release American and Israeli hostages.When we say Black Lives Matter, what’s really being said inside of that statement is a history of oppression.
Torres said.We have to be careful not to mistake a visible vocal minority for a majority,
Demonstrations against U.S. policy in Israel have spread from the Capitol and college campuses — Cornel West, the left-wing independent presidential candidate, appeared at a rally Wednesday at UCLA — to high schools across the country. Students at several high schools in northern Virginia walked out of classes this week in a “Humanitarian Walkout Week.” The presidents of George Washington and Emory universities, among others, condemned anti-Israel slogans chanted at rallies and projected on buildings.The critics of Israel have far more power on social media than in the real world.
An array of liberal groups have adopted the Palestinian cause. This week in New York City, one protest sign read,
At another demonstration in New York, hundreds marched under the banner ofReproductive justice means justice for Palestine.
[deleted] for Liberation in Palestine.
said Angela Balya, 28, a protester in New York who said she had volunteered for the Biden campaign in 2020.I feel very betrayed by Biden,
The Sunrise Movement, a coalition of young, progressive climate activists that mobilized on behalf of Biden’s campaign in 2020, is one such group that has called for a cease-fire. Some in the organization have been “raising questions” about whether they and other young people will mobilize for Biden again, said Michele Weindling, the group’s political director.I definitely will not be voting for him again.
Weindling said.If the Democratic Party and President Biden continue to send weapons and military support to Israel, it threatens to lose our generation, and that’s a very dangerous choice to make ahead of a critical election year,
The United States’ support for Israel is unpopular with voters under 35, polling has shown, and students at dozens of colleges on Wednesday afternoon walked out of class as part of a nationwide mobilization effort by the group Students for Justice in Palestine.
said Kaleem Hawa, who has helped organize student protests with the Palestinian Youth Movement.President Biden has shown to people that there’s virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the question of the mass atrocities being leveled against Gaza,
Few liberal organizations have had as raw a discussion about Israel as the AFL-CIO did at the Monday night meeting of its executive council.
Mark Dimondstein, the president of the postal union, argued that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into a single state. He called for the AFL-CIO to demand a cease-fire, according to four people familiar with the contents of the meeting.
No other labor leader in the meeting offered vocal support for his position.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who is married to a rabbi, responded by asserting Israel’s right to defend itself, the people familiar with the meeting said. Weingarten said she backed establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
she said.That has been part of the Democratic platform for as long as I can remember,
Dimondstein, whose union represents more than 220,000 postal workers, said he was
and, like Weingarten, declined to discuss the AFL-CIO call.not part of the Democratic Party
he said.I’m not answering your questions,
Some of the left-wing demonstrators’ demands fall well outside the American political mainstream.
read one bullet in an online document posted by the Democratic Socialists of America and shared widely this week among pro-cease-fire organizers.The occupation and the existence of Israel is not peaceful; there is no ‘maintaining the peace’ with a violent settler state,
At a protest in New York on Wednesday, protesters chanted,
We don’t want no two states, we want all of it.
___________
Left revolts over Biden’s staunch support of Israel amid Gaza crisis
Lauren Gambino in Washington DC
Sat, October 28, 2023
Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of liberal Jewish American activists staged sit-ins in the Capitol Hill offices of top Democrats, including in the senate office of progressive champion Bernie Sanders, to demand a ceasefire in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas.
As they sang in Hebrew and prayed for peace, the House floor resumed legislative activity for the first time in weeks after the election of a new Republican speaker, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... eaker-vote congressman Mike Johnson.
In his first act, Johnson brought to the floor a resolution https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-con ... 71/actions declaring US solidarity with Israel after Hamas rampaged through Israeli cities, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages, Americans among them. Nearly all House Democrats voted to approve the measure, save for a resolute https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023528 minority who dissented, citing its failure to address the thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign of Gaza.
The discontent on display in Washington was a testament to the rising anger among the party’s left over the response from Biden and Democratic leaders to Israel’s war in Gaza. But as many progressives split from the White House over the US’s staunchly pro-Israel stance, there were also splits within the left itself – a sign of the raw emotions stirred by the conflict.
Nor were the scenes in the House the only signs of discontent as US politics – and civil society as a whole – becomes increasingly roiled by Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attack.
That same afternoon, Joe Biden was asked about the rising Palestinian death toll during a news conference at the White House. Biden replied that he had “no confidence” in the death count provided by the Gaza health ministry, which says nearly 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
Biden said, in comments the Council on American-Islamic Relations described asI’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,
https://www.cair.com/press_releases/bre ... asualties/shocking and dehumanizing.
Online, many progressives seethed, accusing Biden of further enabling violence against Palestinians and predicting that he would pay an electoral price next year with Muslim and Arab American voters, who have emerged as an important Democratic constituency in recent elections.
said Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group leading many of the demonstrations in Washington, including the one at the Capitol on Wednesday.The White House and many in the US government are clear as they should be that 1,000 Israelis killed is too many,
As Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza, Biden is facing extraordinary and growing resistance from his party’s left flank, especially from young voters and voters of color, over his steadfast support for Israel. They have staged demonstrations, penned open letters and even tendered resignations https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ons-israel in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of a war they say is threatening the president’s standing at home and possibly his chances of winning re-election next year.Our question for them is: How many Palestinian deaths are too many?
A Gallup poll https://news.gallup.com/poll/513305/dem ... roval.aspx released on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating among Democrats plummeted 11 percentage points in one month, to a record low of 75%. According to the survey, the drop was fueled by dismay among Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel.
Meanwhile, a poll https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/20 ... ce-in-gaza released last week by the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66% of likely US voters strongly or somewhat agree that the US should call for a ceasefire.
Still, the White House has firmly rejected calls for a ceasefire, which Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, initially described as “repugnant” and “disgraceful” in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack. The administration’s rhetoric has since evolved, with White House spokesperson John Kirby arguing this week that a ceasefire at this stage
only benefits Hamas.
Asked earlier this week whether the US would support a ceasefire, Biden said:
Pressure is building in Congress, where 18 House Democrats – all progressive lawmakers of color – joined a resolution calling for the White House to supportWe should have those hostages released and then we can talk.
On Capitol Hill, a group of Jewish and Muslim staffers https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... pen-letter wrote an anonymous open letter to their bosses similarly calling for an “immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. Urging congressional leaders to act swiftly, they cited the rising death toll in Gaza and the rise of antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiments in the United States.an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.
Meanwhile, hundreds of former campaign and congressional staffers to progressive senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/20/ ... ease-fire/ John Fetterman of Pennsylvania https://theintercept.com/2023/10/20/joh ... ael-hamas/ and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have penned open letters urging them to call for a ceasefire.
So far no senator has backed a ceasefire. Warren, Sanders and several other Democratic senators https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/p ... ed-nations have urged a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid, food and medical supplies to flow into Gaza after Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the territory. It echoes the position of the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said earlier this week that it “must be considered” to protect civilian life.
Sanders’ resistance to back a ceasefire has disappointed some of even his most loyal followers, in a sign of how emotionally fraught the debate over Israel has become on the left.
Though the 2024 presidential election is a year away, many progressives, and especially younger activists, have threatened to withhold support for Biden, while Arab and Muslim Americans have expressed deep alarm over the president’s actions and rhetoric.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has accused Biden of abetting the deadly war.
she wrote wrote in a social media post tagging the president.We will remember where you stood,
At his press conference on Wednesday, Biden also cautioned Israel to be
incredibly careful to ensure they’re going after the folks propagating this war.
For many on the left, the warning was buried behind his comments casting doubt on the scale of war deaths in Gaza.
Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist tracking the administration’s response to the war, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.Like many progressive Democrats, I have applauded and been pleasantly surprised by President Biden’s actions on climate and the economy,
The White House said on Thursday the Biden administration did not dispute that thousands of Palestinians had been killed and emphasized that the health ministry was run by Hamas.But he’s crossed a moral line with nearly every Muslim, Arab and anti-war young voter I know.
Even a slight erosion in support could spell danger for Biden, who was already struggling with low enthusiasm, particularly among young voters.
In polling conducted after the Hamas attack, a Quinnipiac survey https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3880 found that slightly more than half of voters under 35 say they disapprove of the United States sending weapons and military support to Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. By contrast, nearly six in 10 voters between the ages of 35 and 49 support sending weapons to Israel, with older age groups offering even stronger approval.
Biden’s allies have largely downplayed the disagreements among the party’s grassroots. They note that most Democrats, including the party’s congressional leaders, the senator Chuck Schumer and the congressman Hakeem Jeffries, are strong supporters of Israel and fully back the president’s handling of the conflict. In the coming weeks, their caucuses are expected to overwhelmingly support a White House request to send $14.3bn https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-uk ... 75d3c3d3cb in security aid to Israel.
A letter https://raskin.house.gov/_cache/files/d ... nflict.pdf to Biden, signed by a majority of House Democrats, including every Jewish member of their caucus and several liberal members, praises his
It further commends Biden for displayingstrong leadership during a tragic and dangerous moment in the Middle East.
while also makingsteadfast support for our ally Israel in a moment of need and horror
Deep, abiding support for Israel among Democrats on Capitol Hill obscures a shift among the party’s voters, and especially among those who came of age in a post-9/11 US. A Gallup poll conducted in March found for the first time https://news.gallup.com/poll/472070/dem ... nians.aspx that a greater number of Democrats say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.clear statements regarding the fundamental importance of ensuring that the humanitarian needs of the civilian population of Gaza are met.
Republicans have sought to exploit those divisions in an attempt to cast the Democratic party as anti-Israel, a narrative progressives say media coverage has unfairly promoted.
‘I have long found the ignoring and sidelining of Palestinians … in Congress quite shocking,’ Ocasio-Cortez said. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Many liberal Democrats, including the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have forcefully denounced https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... y-new-york pro-Hamas or antisemitic sentiments expressed by the party’s activist fringe. At the same time, they contend that there is a double standard in the way elected officials speak about Palestinians.
They point to comments from Republicans like the senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who described the conflict as a “religious war” and said Israelis should
Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, made a similar remark, saying in an interview:do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.
As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.
Ocasio-Cortez said recently on MSNBC.I have long found the ignoring and sidelining of Palestinians in the US House of Representatives, the humanity of Palestinian populations, in the five years I have been in Congress, quite shocking,
With expectations that a large-scale Israeli invasion of the besieged territory is imminent, demands for an immediate ceasefire have grown louder and more urgent.
In a statement on Friday, amid intensifying bombing and a communications blackout in Gaza, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... -territory Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the progressive group Justice Democrats, implored the president to act now to prevent a ground invasion that would
Looking to the future, progressives say the administration must be prepared to dramatically reshape Washington’s decades-long approach to Israel and Palestine.ensure thousands more civilian casualties, bring us closer to an all-out regional conflict in the Middle East, and thrust the United States into another endless war.
said Matt Duss, https://www.internationalpolicy.org/people/Matt-Duss a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders.If we want to take a consistent policy towards human rights, we cannot always be focused on supporting the rights and security of one side here,
he said,The status quo,
is clearly unsustainable.
