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| Senator John Fetterman and President Isaac Herzog on a June visit to Israel |
This is why cultivating bipartisan support is so important. Best case scenario is that whichever party is in power, they trust Israel and do not make demands on them.
Unfortunately, that ship has sailed. Democrats seem to have lost their moral compass. And they are now unwittingly aiding and abetting Hamas and Iran’s other proxies in the region by blaming Israel for the over 40,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza since October 7th.
The indisputable facts, however, tell another story. Israel has been the target of Iran’s proxies proximal to it for decades. Tens of thousand of rockets have been fired into Israel indiscriminately without the slightest regard as to whether they would hit innocent Israeli civilians. Furthermore the vast majority of Palestinians celebrate as a victory - every Jew killed or harmed by Hamas, their terrorist leadership.
Unlike any other country in modern warfare, including the US, Israel has done more to spare innocent civilians than any other country has during war. This is why even the mainstream media keeps reporting mass evacuations ordered by Israel in areas of Gaza they are going to strike.
Democrats will agree that Israel has the right to defend themselves against terrorist monsters like Hamas and Hezbollah. And a Democratic president has given them the green light and the means to do so (As well as sending a couple of attack aircraft carriers and a nuclear powered submarine with missile launching capabilities into the area.)
The only way Israel can defend itself is by going after the actual Hamas terrorists. Hamas makes sure to set up command centers in the most sensitive parts of civilian population (like in schools and hospitals). This a tactic they use to assure maximum civilian casualties in order to make it look like Israel is killing civilians on purpose. When it is in fact Hamas that is actually responsible for those casualties. Every single one of them!
Unfortunately the images the media keeps focusing upon are heart rendering. It’s hard to not feel sympathy for crying mothers burying their babies that were killed by a strike against Hamas terrorists that killed a lot of civilians together with them.
Placing the blame on Israel lacks moral clarity. Israel was attacked by an Iran backed Hamas in the most brutal ways imaginable. And the world says Israel is guilty of genocide because Hamas makes sure as many of their civilians are killed when Israel finds and eliminates those monsters?!
And then there is Hezbollah. Lest anyone think that they reacted to the civilian casualties in Gaza they blame Israel for - that fallacy should be put to rest. They started firing a daily barrage of rockets immediately starting on October 8th– well before Israel fired a single shot in Gaza. Doing so in solidarity with Hamas and in support of what they did on October 7th.
Somehow, Democrats are blinded to these facts. Which is demonstrated by the repeated comments of the Democratic candidate for president: ‘Too many civilians have been killed in Gaza’.That is code for blaming Israel for those casualties.
That first nicely into the protester narrative that has no mention once the atrocities committed by Hamas. This is bolstered by protesters ripping down pictures they find posted of the hostages. The rare times they mention it at all, is when they are specifically asked about it. Then they might say something like ‘Yeah, that was bad but Israel is committing genocide’.
A lot of people on the left love to make distinctions between Netanyahu and Israel. As if, after October 7th Israel would not have does exactly the same thing under another leader. That is little more than being blinded by hate.
An example of how the left skews the facts into an alternate reality -?happened this morning when Democrat Socialist, Bernie Sanders was interviewed about the fate of the hostages.
First an administration spokesman John Kirby was asked about whether a hostage deal is effectively dead. Without saying so, he basically said it is and accused Hamas – specifically Sinwar - of being the obstacle to a deal. Every time Sinwar has asked for some sort of concession form Israel and gotten it, he then rejected the deal and asked for another concession. Every single time. Kirby did not blame Israel (Netanyahu) at all. He blamed Sinwar and said he doesn’t want a deal. Sinwar is the obstacle. Not Netanyahu.
(Sadly, there is little hope that there will be any deal that Hamas will accept that will release a single hostage.)
Sanders was interviewed about that too. He said that it is Netanyahu is the obstacle because he keeps adding conditions to a hostage deal!
Who should we believe? A Biden administration official or a anti Netanyahu Democrat who happens to be Jewish by birth and nothing else!?
Blaming Netanyahu for losing bipartisan support is a red herring. The vast majority of people blaming him are people on the left. Both here and in Israel. (Or the many political enemies in Israel he’s made on both sides of the political aisle.)
Although there is still support for Israel among most Democrats, it is clearly conditional and heavily influenced by their hatred for Netanyahu as well as their far left colleagues.
This is not the case with Republicans. The pendulum of Israeli support has swung widely in favor of The Republican party. The same arguments I made above defending Israel’s defense tactics have been made by just about every prominent Republican. Most recently this morning by North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum who just returned from a trip to Israel.
None of them have blamed Netanyahu for the conduct of the war and are fully supporting his move against Hezbollah. Not single one of them. They have the kind of moral clarity that Democrats used to have before they were influenced by Hamas casualty statistics and images of Gaza in ruins and blaming Israel entirely for that.
Strangely enough there is one Democrat who does have moral clarity on this subject. The iconoclastic US senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman. He could not care less what his fellow Democrats are saying. He knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. He understands the realities I described about who is to blame for every single Palestinian casualty.
He doesn’t care that he has been picketed by pro Palestinian protesters. Or criticized by his (former) progressive colleagues for ‘not caring’ about 40,000 civilian deaths ‘at the hands of Israel’. He knows whose hands are really dripping with that blood. He is not is blinded by the nefarious tactics of Hamas that wants to increase Palestinian casualties while Israel tries to minimize them.
The bipartisan support for Israel that was once so strong – no longer exists. Pining for it will not make it come back. Telling Israel to base its defense tactics on what a Democratic administration wants will not secure Israel’s future.
All of which makes it understandable why so many Orthodox Jews that care a great deal about Israel have been moving into the Republican camp.
That being said, pursuing bipartisan support should not be abandoned, by pro Israel activists like AIPAC. I believe they are doing their level best to maintain what’s left of it and even increase it.
Hope they succeed. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.