Wayne O’Leary

The Benjamins Flap

As if the Democratic Party didn’t have enough difficulty sticking to what should be its core agenda heading into 2020 -- reversing economic inequality, reforming health care, and reining in corporate power -- it’s lately been forced to deal yet again with the distractions of identity politics, this time arising from controversy surrounding America’s Middle East policy. The upshot is a movement to dredge up the whole matter of anti-Semitism and make the upcoming election, in part, a referendum on support for Israel.

To some extent, this was unavoidable following the provocative remarks about the Jewish state by freshman Democratic House member Ilhan Omar of Minnesota several weeks back. Nevertheless, the ante was upped considerably by the Democratic establishment’s overreaction to those remarks and by Republican efforts to capitalize on them. At issue is whether or not it’s yet permissible, after four decades of extreme right-wing governance in Jerusalem, to say anything negative about Israel without incurring the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism. Based on the latest brouhaha, the answer appears to be “no.”

Rep. Omar’s celebrated comment about the influence of pro-Israeli lobbyist money on US Mideast policy (“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” -- a reference to Franklin’s likeness on the hundred-dollar bill) was not entirely accurate. There’s considerably more to this country’s unwavering support for Israel, no matter the circumstances, than simply money; it’s also tied up with history (our seminal role in creating Israel in the first place), domestic politics (the voting pattern of Jewish Americans, 70% or more of whom consistently support Democrats), and psychology (the assuaging of residual guilt over the European Holocaust).

This combination of factors is hard to ignore, especially for the Democratic Party, which was politically in charge -- present at the creation, you might say -- when the state of Israel came into being in the 1940s. Democrats feel they have a particular vested interest in Israel’s success, which was, initially, the essence of a heroic success story -- a humane, pluralistic, westernized social democracy thriving in a region with few democratic traditions. Unfortunately, this romantic image of Israel, one firmly implanted by Hollywood cinematography, no longer matches the reality and hasn’t for some time.

The Israel of its founders (European social democrats for the most part) ceased to exist in 1977, when the Israeli right took power; the country has been largely ruled since then by nationalist coalitions of right-wing secular conservatives and ultra-Orthodox religionists, culminating in the inflexibly hard-line government of Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party has dominated the scene for the past decade, piling up human-rights abuses against the displaced Palestinians under its purview and urging America to, in effect, take out its potentially threatening neighbors militarily. No less a figure than the late writer Amos Oz, perhaps Israel’s leading public intellectual prior to his recent passing, accused the Netanyahu regime of harboring “Hebrew neo-Nazis.”

This doesn’t concern Donald Trump and the Republicans, who have their own reasons for die-hard support of Israel. To Trump, current Prime Minister Netanyahu represents a like-minded ally on the world stage, a nationalistic, right-wing populist in the mold of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, someone willing to subjugate minorities and abridge civil liberties in pursuit of power. To Republicans at large, the Jewish state represents a bulwark against the hated Muslim world and an essential doctrinal component in the religious beliefs of one of their key constituent groups, conservative Evangelicals.

For reasons of their own, therefore, both Democrats and Republicans have uncritically hitched this country’s international fortunes to Israel, overlooking its regional warmongering and domestic embrace of “illiberal democracy,” and granting it what amounts to veto power over US Mideast policy.

This turning of a blind eye has the US now backing to the hilt a government condemned by the United Nations in 2018 for its inhumane blockade of Gaza; a government adamantly opposed to negotiating a reasonable two-state solution to the chronic Palestinian problem; a government mired in corruption, with a leader under criminal indictment for bribery and fraud; a government eager to downgrade the constitutional rights of its Arab minority (20% of the population) and apply an ethno-religious test for citizenship; a government that has taken racist elements into its governing coalition.

The Trump administration sees no problem here; it’s doubled down on aligning with Israel, recognizing the contested city of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, endorsing Israel’s claim to the disputed Golan Heights, and punitively withholding humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees displaced by Israeli occupation. At the same time, it’s maintained the absurdly high level of US military aid to the prosperous Jewish state, committing $3.8 billion annually to the Netanyahu government, or 73% of our entire foreign military outlay for 2017 alone.

You might think Democrats would recognize the excessive, dangerous bias toward Israel and object; you would be wrong. And this gets us back to Congresswoman Omar and “the Benjamins.” Money does, indeed, play an outsized role in American-Israeli affairs. No other US foreign relationship is influenced by anything like the largess of the bipartisan American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the heavily endowed lobby that rivals the NRA in congressional clout.

Created a half-century ago to promote American support for, and ties to, Israel, AIPAC maintains a national network of offices and commands a vast budget, but (to mask its intentions) does not donate directly to political campaigns. Instead, it encourages its loosely affiliated regional PACs and deep-pocketed members -- conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson is one -- to do so, concentrating publicly on arranging “educational” conferences and congressional junkets to Israel. Still, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, AIPAC managed to funnel $3.5 million into pro-Israel lobbying in 2018.

AIPAC is no longer alone. Panicky establishment Democrats, alarmed by the Omar incident and their party’s diminishing unanimity on Israel, have organized Democratic Majority for Israel to counter the liberal anti-AIPAC lobby J Street and other Jewish peace groups on the left critical of Israeli actions toward the Palestinians.

The new group’s objectives, geared to next year’s presidential primaries, are to stifle intra-party criticism of the Jewish state, which it considers tantamount to anti-Semitism, and to guarantee a pro-Israel Democratic nominee in 2020. You can be sure its efforts will be well-funded. Where America’s Israeli policy is concerned, it’s not all about the Benjamins, but the Benjamins are a big part of it.

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2019

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