by Dr. Alex Joffe
Accusing Israeli leaders and voters of being “right wing” and “racist” sets the stage for other Democratic candidates and American Jews to chance being labeled as the same.
Bernie Sanders, photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,460, February 26, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Unpacking Senator
Bernie Sanders’s announcement that he will not attend the annual AIPAC
Policy Conference because the organization provides a “platform” for
“leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights”
reveals a gambit to split American Jews not only from AIPAC but from
Israel. Accusing Israeli leaders and voters of being “right wing” and
“racist” sets the stage for other Democratic candidates and American
Jews to chance being labeled as the same.
Leading US Democratic presidential candidate
Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he will not attend the 2020
AIPAC policy conference, saying,
“The Israeli people have the right to live in peace and security. So do
the Palestinian people. I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC
provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian
rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference.”
In doing so he followed another Democratic
candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was goaded into agreeing not
attend by a BDS activist who stated,
“I’m an American Jew and I’m terrified by the unholy alliance that
AIPAC is forming with Islamophobes and antisemites and white
nationalists and no Democrat should legitimize that kind of bigotry by
attending their annual policy conference.”
For its part, AIPAC condemned Sanders,
noting that he had never attended the conference and stating that with
his “odious attack on a mainstream, bipartisan American political event,
Senator Sanders is insulting his very own colleagues and the millions
of Americans who stand with Israel.”
The implications of this public turn against
AIPAC, an organization that has emphasized bipartisanship in support for
Israel since its inception, are serious. One need not be an AIPAC
member or even supporter to note this; indeed, some of the most severe
criticism of AIPAC in recent years has come from the right, which has
specifically condemned the organization’s strenuous efforts to include
and work with Democrats as well as Republicans. It is also necessary to
note that the “Deal of the Century” plan, which envisions Israeli
territorial annexations, has put AIPAC to the left of the Trump
Administration.
Unpacking Sanders’ statement reveals that he
implicitly agrees with the idea that certain viewpoints and speakers are
so unacceptable that they should not be given a platform. Formerly
restricted to academia, this notion of “no platforming” became a
mainstay of the British and now the American left. Political discourse
is thus governed by the tastes and whims of those who are offended by
the free exchange of ideas. In itself this represents a fundamental
shift in American political behavior.
But it is the ideas themselves that AIPAC allows
to be presented that Sanders has rejected. Sanders explicitly believes
that AIPAC is a platform for “leaders who express bigotry,” namely
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and for representatives of the Israeli
government, both of which Sanders has described as “right wing” and
“racist.” Giving those viewpoints a platform is unacceptable, and AIPAC
is therefore “right wing” and “racist” by extension. “Opposing
Palestinian rights” is vague but appears to endorse Palestinian
positions on the sanctity of the 1967 “borders” and perhaps even the
“right of return.”
Here Sanders’s true intentions become clear. By
his definition, the current democratically elected Israeli government is
“right wing” and “racist”—but whether Likud or Blue and White wins the
upcoming election, it too will be “right wing” and “racist” according to
this standard. Support for Israel will thus be a “bigoted” position.
Sanders is preparing to identify, condemn, and
perhaps boycott virtually any Israeli government to the right of Meretz,
as all such governments will inevitably fail to meet his progressive
standards. Beyond this, he is setting the stage for the Israeli society
that elects either a Likud or Blue and White government to be labeled,
cursed, and excluded. Other states and society will be not singled out
in this way, except America itself.
More immediately, Sanders’s decision has domestic
political implications for the Democratic Party, especially candidates
for House and Senate races who will be pressured to fall in line with
the presidential frontrunner. With a groundswell of BDS-supporting
candidates emerging from Muslim and left wing communities, the consensus
within the party will be, much as it is in the British Labour Party, to
fall in line and vilify Israel. This will also have the effect of
mobilizing immigrant communities.
Moreover, this litmus test will be applied to
American Jews, long the most dependable supporters of the Democratic
Party. The choice of party loyalty—a key element of American Jewish
identity—or support for a country that has been labeled “right wing” and
“racist” by Sanders will be difficult.
That choice—which effectively states that support
for Israel as it exists is racism—in effect disenfranchises virtually
all Orthodox and Conservative Jews, as well as most Evangelical
Christians and Hindus, from the Democratic Party. The party itself is
expected to chance this disenfranchisement in exchange for the certainty
of support from American Muslims and progressives, the two groups that
Sanders has reached out to most determinedly.
Whether the majority of American Jews will risk
being labeled “right wing” and “racist” is unclear. While a great number
of American Jews voted against Jimmy Carter in 1980 thanks to his
hostility to Israel, the environment is so different today thanks to
changing demographics and the information economy that it is difficult
to predict voting behavior.
But should Sanders fail either to become the
nominee or to be elected president in November, it is a virtual
certainty that, in precisely the same manner of Jeremy Corbyn and the
Labour Party, Israel and Jews will be blamed for his failure. Zionist
conspiracies are a key element of progressive politics and will only
expand as disloyalty to the party ideology and to its leader is rooted
out.
Sanders’s instrumental use of his deracinated
Jewish identity and anodyne support for Israel’s “right to exist” has
shielded him and his antisemitic supporters like Linda Sarsour from the
beginning. Whether it will continue to do so as the leadership of the
party realizes they have been usurped, and as its media allies melt down
into hysteria, is unknown.
What is clear, however, is that the equation of
Zionism and Israel with “right wing” politics, “racism,” and its
American variant “white supremacy,” has taken a huge leap forward with
Sanders. Unless he can be stopped by his own party or by the reelection
of Donald Trump, these concepts will become absolute fixtures on the
American left. Combating these conceptions within American society as a
whole, however, is a bipartisan task.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/bernie-sanders-aipac-israel/
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