‘Big news!” gushed Mark Pocan, a Democratic congressman from Wisconsin, in a social media post on Tuesday.
“Our letter to withhold offensive arms transfers to Israel picked up steam today. We added 16 signers for our final push – 56 members of Congress total. A shift is under way!” wrote Pocan, among the most anti-Israel representatives in Congress.
In an interview this week on CBS News, Pocan, a former head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said, “I think it’s time for a divorce from Benjamin Netanyahu,” a sentence that – to the ears of Israel supporters cognizant of Pocan’s long-standing hostile position toward the Jewish state – sounds like barely hidden code for “I think it’s time for a divorce from Israel.”
In light of last week’s killing of World Central Kitchen workers, the letter – addressed to US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken – read, “We strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed.”
Along with Pocan, another coauthor of the letter – along with Jim McGovern of Massachusetts – was Jan Schakowsky, a Jewish congresswoman highly critical of Israel, who represents parts of Chicago and its northern suburbs, including Rogers Park and Skokie, which have substantial Jewish populations.
What makes Pocan’s boast that “a shift is under way” not mere bluster and something that needs to be considered seriously is that the letter was not just signed by the regular suspects – anti-Israel progressives and members of the “Squad” – but also by a longtime pro-Israel stalwart, former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi’s signing this letter – alongside the likes of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, Pramila Jayapal, and Jamal Bowman – shows that the once marginalized attitudes of the far Left in the party toward Israel are gliding into the mainstream.
The letter comes amid a perceptible shift in the Biden administration’s position on the war.
Biden's position shifts
This shift began with Biden’s State of the Union speech on March 7 during which he parroted as gospel Hamas’s casualty figures, became more apparent with the US failure to veto a UN Security Council resolution on March 26 that called for a ceasefire without making that contingent on the release of hostages, and is seemingly gaining momentum week by week.
In a conversation with Netanyahu last week after the accidental killing of the aid workers, Biden threatened a reassessment of America’s position on the war if Israel did not change course.
Further, in an interview with the Spanish-language Univision television network that aired this week, the president called for an Israeli ceasefire without calling for a hostage release.
The White House tried to walk this back, saying – as it did after the failure to veto the UN resolution – that there is no change in policy. Nevertheless, these moves and others create the perception of a significant White House pivot on the war and on Israel in general.And perception matters.
The perception that the US was distancing itself from Israel on the war undoubtedly influenced Hamas’s position in the hostage release negotiations.
When the terrorist organization sees the US president warning Israel against going into Rafah to finish off its military capabilities, when it sees Biden calling for a ceasefire without mentioning the hostages, when it watches the IDF unilaterally pull out of Khan Yunis, then it must conclude that time is on its side and there is no reason for it to make concessions, because the US and the international community will “deliver” Israel.
IRAN, TOO, is also carefully watching this shift in US policy and the resulting friction in Israel-US relations. For that reason, Biden on Wednesday made a point of saying during a press conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that his commitment to Israel’s security is “ironclad.”
Why say that? Because the optics of the recent tension may lead the Iranians to conclude otherwise.Yaakov Amidror, a former head of the National Security Council who today is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said the Iranians are certainly watching the state of US-Israel relations very carefully.
What there is uncertainty about, he said, is what conclusions they are drawing and how this will affect their response to last week’s killing in Damascus of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
“On the one hand, they can look at this and say Israel is alone, that even the US is talking against us, so they can do whatever they want” without fear of US interference, he said.
On the other hand, Amidror said, because of the disagreement with Israel over Rafah, Iran may conclude that the Americans “will want to show that they are not abandoning Israel,” and would respond forcefully to any Iranian action.
The Iranians, he said, may see this as “an opportunity for the Biden administration to show its loyalty to Israel by assisting it in case of an attack.”
Washington’s disagreement with Jerusalem over Rafah is significant, Amidror said, but it is one of those moments in Israel’s history where it will need to take action if it feels this is vital for its security, even in the face of adamant US opposition.
This was done in the past: in 1948, when David Ben-Gurion declared independence despite adamant State Department opposition; in 1967, when Israel preempted against Egypt despite then US president Lyndon Johnson telling Israel that if it goes alone, it will stand alone; and in 1981, when Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor despite knowing that the US would strongly condemn it afterward.
Going into Rafah to dismantle four of the remaining five Hamas brigades still standing is another such moment, Amidror said.
“We must go in and dismantle Hamas military capabilities inside Rafah; it doesn’t matter who is opposed,” Amidror stated. “Otherwise, the whole war in Gaza is without value.”
Amidror repeated what Minister Benny Gantz told interlocutors in Washington recently, that not going into Rafah to finish the job is akin to putting out 80% of a fire, and then added his own metaphor: “When you take antibiotics, you don’t stop in the middle; because if you do, the germs only become stronger.”
Amidror said it is vital that Israel achieve the clear objectives set by the government: dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities and its ability to function as an organization that can threaten Israel from Gaza. He said this needs to be done even in the face of Biden’s public opposition and threats inside the Democratic Party, for two reasons.
First, because it is the only way to ensure that Hamas will not continue to pose a threat to Israel from Gaza.
Second, he added, is that there will be no possibility to create something new in Gaza on the “day after” if Hamas is still in control, because no one will enter the vacuum unless Hamas has been neutralized as a military force.
If Hamas is still there, he said, there is no chance of a better future, because Hamas “will kill anyone who will try to do something else the day after.”
When asked if Israel can realistically go into Rafah in defiance of Biden and the US, Amidror replied, “Why not? What will happen in the worst case?”
Reminded of the threats of a cutoff of American arms, Amidror said this is not something that Israel has not dealt with in the past. Following the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and then again during the First Lebanon War, then president Ronald Reagan suspended the delivery of F16s to Israel.
Amidror said that the US and Israel, which have had tough patches in the past, are each sovereign countries, whose interests don’t always align. “In the end Israel has to do what is vital for its security,” he said. “The responsibility for this rests on the prime minister, not on the US president. Biden also knows this.”
Regarding the changing attitudes inside the Democratic Party, Amidror said, “We have a problem that is not connected to the war. We have a problem with the liberal progressive flank of the Democratic Party, which is becoming more and more universalist and leftist and, as a result, less open to the requests and needs of Israel.
“It is not because of the war. It is a process that started before the war. The war accelerated it, and it will continue after the war, regardless of how it will end. This is an internal American development.”
FORMER AMBASSADOR to the US Michael Oren agreed with this assessment.
“What we are seeing is part of processes that are happening in the US over which we have no influence: intersectionality, wokeism, diversity, equality and inclusion,” he said.
According to Oren, that some mainstream Democrats are adopting some of the positions of the radical Left on Israel is a function of a deep fear over the 2024 elections.
The November elections, he said, are seen by many as nothing less than an “existential election” unlike any other in US history.
“Both sides see it as existential,” Oren stressed. “Democrats say that if Donald Trump wins, it is the end of America, and vice versa.” He said that if some Democrats believe that coming out in favor of ending arms sales to Israel will help them win the election, “they will do it.”
In this reading, the Democratic pivot is about the concern that progressives and Arab voters upset with Biden over his Gaza policy will stay home on Election Day or vote for a third-party candidate, thereby handing the election to Trump.
What has been missing now for months is any countervailing pressure coming from the pro-Israel community. “No American Jewish leader is willing to stand up and say to Biden, ‘We are not in your pocket either,’” Oren said.
Asked why not, Oren replied: “They are afraid of being seen as pro-Trump, and I’m not sure they see Trump as a viable alternative.”
And it is doubtful Trump is convincing them otherwise when he says, as he did on Wednesday, that Biden “has abandoned Israel,” and that “any Jewish person that votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden should have their head examined.”