The latest test in the relationship came in Saturday’s congressional vote on a stand-alone bill to provide Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance. This was the first time the House voted on a “clean” Israel bill that wasn’t bundled with Ukraine aid or poison pills such as funding cuts to the IRS. Thirty-seven of the 213 Democratic members of the House voted against the legislation. In one way, this was a lot. Voting against Israel aid was once exorbitantly risky; it no longer is. On the other hand, for a war as brutal and unpopular as this one, 37 seems like a low number.
No matter how you look at it, one conclusion is inescapable: There is a divide at the heart of the Democratic Party. Its standard-bearer, Joe Biden, finds himself at cross purposes with tens of millions of his own supporters.
In the days leading up to the vote, a group of Democratic members of Congress worked to marshal support for a “no” vote, in the hope that a strong showing might push Biden to reconsider his strategy. I spoke with four of them — Reps. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Ro Khanna (Calif.), Joaquin Castro (Tex.) and Becca Balint (Vt.). Castro called it “one of those defining votes about who we are as a nation.” Jayapal compared it with lopsided congressional votes in support of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. “In the moment, it is very difficult to stop these wars and change policy,” she said, “and afterwards, we all say, oh, we shouldn’t have done that.” Each conveyed growing frustration but also a guarded optimism that the mainstream view was shifting in their favor. In a CBS News poll conducted earlier this month, only 32 percent of Democrats said the United States should send weapons and military supplies to Israel.
The “no” votes weren’t meant to express opposition to aid for Israel altogether. The problem, rather, is that the bill fails to put any conditions on that aid. It allows the secretary of state to waive “any congressional notification requirement applicable” to the $3.5 billion in foreign military financing grants — one of those peculiar provisions by which the legislative branch abdicates its own oversight powers. It also rewards the Netanyahu government with enhanced and exceptional privileges, enabling Israel to use the money to purchase arms from its own domestic industry as well as to buy U.S. weapons below “fair market value.”
One of the great puzzles of recent months has been the Biden administration’s refusal to use its considerable leverage with Israel. Conditioning aid to an ally is no small thing. But allies shouldn’t get a blank check to do whatever they want with American weapons. For months, Netanyahu has been resisting or ignoring Biden’s counsel on the need to drastically ramp up humanitarian aid, a matter made more urgent with Gaza on the brink of famine. Netanyahu’s postwar vision — one that calls for a large “buffer zone” and indefinite security operations in Gazan territory — is also dramatically at odds with America’s and, for that matter, everyone else’s.
For Americans, myself included, the question lingers: If we’re not willing to use our leverage now, is there any circumstance in which we would? Or should support for Israel, as opposed to other countries, be unconditional? As Jayapal put it, “It’s not just a matter of huffing and puffing.” Presumably, at some point, the Biden administration has to do something differently if it wants different results.
In my conversations with them, Jayapal, Khanna, Castro and Balint each emphasized the important distinction between providing defensive and offensive weapons to Israel. Their concern is the latter, the weapons of war that are used to destroy Gaza and kill Palestinian civilians in such large numbers. Of course, Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend itself. But this right is never unlimited or absolute. As Khanna noted, he has been a supporter of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system and voted in the past for the $3.8 billion annual aid package to Israel. Balint, the first Jewish House member to come out in support of a cease-fire, describes herself as pro-Israel. “I have been a lifelong supporter of offensive and defensive measures for Israel to protect itself,” she said, “but there has to be a point at which we say, I am a supporter of Israel, I am the grandchild of someone who was murdered in the Holocaust, and I can also stand strong with what I believe are the majority of Americans.”
These arguments are compelling. But so far they have not been enough. Khanna, a rising star in the party, pointed to a “complete disconnect” between Washington and ordinary Democrats when it comes to Israel. There is, of course, something to be said for posterity, for setting a marker in moments when political courage is called for, however futile the cause. If rank-and-file Democrats continue to register their discontent in the months to come, the Biden administration might feel compelled to bend, not out of principle but for the more practical reason that a party leadership cannot afford to ignore its members on such a charged issue.
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