Why Democrats are leaving out Israel while debating the Mideast

On a frigid winter night in an auditorium on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, six Democratic presidential candidates talked for 30 minutes on Tuesday about the Middle East.

By HERB KEINON
DEMOCRATIC 2020 US presidential candidates (from left) billionaire activist Tom Steyer, Senator Elizabeth Warren, former vice president Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar participate in the seventh Democratic 2020 presidential debate a (photo credit: SHANNON STAPLETON / REUTERS)
DEMOCRATIC 2020 US presidential candidates (from left) billionaire activist Tom Steyer, Senator Elizabeth Warren, former vice president Joe Biden, Senator Bernie Sanders, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar participate in the seventh Democratic 2020 presidential debate a
(photo credit: SHANNON STAPLETON / REUTERS)
On a frigid winter night in an auditorium on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, six Democratic presidential candidates talked for 30 minutes on Tuesday about the Middle East. Not one of them mentioned Israel.
Not once.
And it’s not as if foreign policy did not play a role in this more-than-two-hour debate, the last one before the Iowa caucuses on February 3. It did, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s first question prefaced with the dramatic words, “Just this month, the United States and Iran were on the brink of war...”
The candidates – Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer – slammed US President Donald Trump for his Iran policies. They criticized his withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, with some of them pledging to renegotiate and reenter the deal.
“As president, I will get us back into that agreement,” said Klobuchar.
“As you know, the nuclear deal with Iran was worked on with a number of our allies. We have got to undo what Trump did, bring that coalition together, and make sure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon,” remarked Sanders.
“I was part of that deal to get the nuclear agreement with Iran, bringing together the rest of the world, including some of the folks who aren’t friendly to us. And it was working,” intoned Biden.
But not one of them mentioned Israel, something that is telling in itself.
Were the tables reversed, were this a debate among Republican contenders, Israel would most likely have been a major part of the conversation, even if the thrust of the discussion was Iran and not the Palestinian issue. Republican candidates – in talking about Iran or the nuclear deal – would surely have inserted lines about “the need to keep Israel safe” or “working strongly with our close ally Israel.”
As former Mideast negotiator Aaron David Miller told the Jewish Insider after the debate, “Had it been a Republican debate, with Iran as focus, they would have been stumbling over one another with pro-Israeli references.”

Stay updated with the latest news!

Subscribe to The Jerusalem Post Newsletter

Subscribe Now
None of the Democratic candidates felt compelled to do that, which says much about where the conversation on Israel is inside the party at this time.
The current candidates – those on the debate stage and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was not there – apparently feel they have little to gain politically right now by speaking on Israel.
Israel, because of the very tight and highly visible relationship between Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has turned into a partisan issue in the US. For the Likud, the close Netanyahu-Trump relationship is an electoral asset, the reason that – in this year’s election campaigns in Israel – large posters of a smiling Trump shaking the hand of a beaming Netanyahu have draped the country’s major cities.
But that handshake does not have the same effect on the Democrats, many of whom view Netanyahu as a Trump-stumping Republican senator from Jerusalem.
Thus, in this election it’s good for them to keep Israel at arm’s length, which is what the candidates are generally doing, often talking about Israel only when forced to do so at a town hall meeting by activists of the far Left.
Ironically, one of these fringe groups – the Jewish Voice for Peace – is to some extent driving the conversation on Israel in the Democratic campaign, ambushing candidates at various events and forcing them to articulate a position on such issues as whether military aid to Israel should be used as leverage to alter the government’s policies. These exchanges are taped and then placed on social media platforms.
The JVP badgered Corey Booker on this issue with provocative questions during a meeting he held in Iowa this week, just prior to his withdrawal from the campaign. And they asked Warren a sharp Israel-related question at a meeting she held in the state as well.
Her response: “...We have to speak out about Palestinian rights and talk about values. We also need to establish Palestinian representation in Washington. We need to make sure that there is aid to the Palestinian people.... We are a good friend not when we put a thumb on the scales and say, ‘Here is the right answer. Here is how we are going to help one side take advantage of the other.’”
ONE ISRAELI government official divided the remaining candidates this week into three camps: those who are more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, those who are anti-Netanyahu, and those who are pro-Israel.
In the first camp he placed Sanders and Warren.
In the second camp he placed Buttigieg, Biden and Klobuchar, whose criticism of Israel is, more than anything else, criticism of Netanyahu and his policies. These candidates project an empathy with Israel and a sensitivity to its security concerns more than Warren or Sanders do, but also feel free to slam Netanyahu and his policies. Because of Netanyahu’s warm embrace of Trump, it is to be expected that the candidates trying to unseat Trump will not look kindly at that embrace.
The candidates in both of those camps seem to be reading from J Street talking points, including the group’s positions on Iran and support for the nuclear deal – which places them further left than even the mainstream Israeli Left, which for the most part opposed the Iranian agreement, while taking issue with how Netanyahu went about fighting it.
And the candidate in the third camp – the pro-Israel camp not characterized by a dislike of Netanyahu – is Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, who, more than any of the others in the field, also has a strong emotional connection to the country.
WHILE ISRAEL comes up at small meetings in churches and town halls, on the main debate stage – as was the case on Tuesday – it hardly has been a major campaign issue for the Democrats. Foreign policy as a whole has been a sideshow in this campaign, which has been dominated by Trump, healthcare and gun laws – until the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and the rising tension in the Gulf thrust it onto center stage. Up until now, Israel has been a sideshow in the sideshow.
Besides, the candidates have nothing to win by discussing Israel. It is a divisive issue in the party, and articulating support for the country or an understanding of its plight and concerns will alienate many in the progressive wing of the party.
At the same time, the progressive wing is still not the dominant wing, so even candidates like Sanders and Warren have to step somewhat gingerly around the issue, not wanting to antagonize Jewish Democrats – some of whom are major financial contributors – who down the line may refuse to help fund a candidate seen as hostile toward Israel.
As a result, Israel has not been a major issue of the campaign, something that – from Jerusalem’s point of view – is not a bad thing.
US presidential debates, though long, are not deep. The candidates have 75 seconds to answer questions, 45 seconds for responses and rebuttals, and 15 seconds for clarifications. It is a format that encourages superficial, sensationalist comments. Not being a topic of that type of discussion is not a bad thing.
But this situation is not likely to last through the campaign until November. After the nominating conventions in the summer, when it becomes Trump vs the Democratic nominee, Israel will be an issue – regardless of what is going on here at the time – because Trump will want to make his strong support of Israel an issue.
Trump, unlike those running in the Democratic race now, will want his pro-Israel bona fides trumpeted far and wide, because this is something that his base – first and foremost the Evangelicals – wants and appreciates.
While none of the Democratic candidates have an interest in making Israel a campaign issue now, Trump will want to do so later in the year. Some are making the argument that his apparent interest in releasing his long-awaited peace plan, the “Deal of the Century,” before Israel’s elections on March 3 is not to give a boost to Netanyahu – as many have opined – but, rather, to help himself with his base.
In any event, while Israel was completely ignored in Tuesday’s debate and has not been an issue in the Democratic race, that will change when the race between the two parties’ nominees begins. And then Israel will likely find itself in an uncomfortable position: a wedge issue in an ugly political campaign.


Related Tags
debate
democratic