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Chicagoland Pro-Israel Political Update
July 1, 2018
A newsletter for people willing to think for themselves
Time For A Pep Talk
Who cares where Sarah Sanders is allowed to eat? The civility debate is not worth having (but I'm going to be civil about it). We need to focus on the issues that matter and on winning elections--that's the only way to get the change we need. We can do it.
Trump is endangering Israel's security by failing to come up with a strategy for stopping Iran after withdrawing from the Iran Deal and by failing to take steps to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution. Israel is less safe since Trump took office. He surrendered moral leadership by withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem pleased his Evangelical base, but it made Israel not one whit more secure.
Trump ran a campaign laced with anti-Semitism, but our Republican friends would prefer that we focus on a handful of Democrats who are not representative of the Democratic Party on Israel, even though many solid, pro-Israel Jewish candidates are poised to win seats in the House in November.
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Friends,
Aside from the reinstatement of the Muslim ban, another gun massacre (for which there is only one explanation), and Justice Kennedy's retirement announcement, how was your week? We learned that people (and a Supreme Court) who have no problem with a Christian refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple are okay with banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and are outraged that Red Hen refused to serve Sarah Sanders based not on the color of her skin or her sexual orientation, but on the content of her character.
Who cares where Sarah Sanders is allowed to eat?
How many restaurants does that woman visit? Is this really a national problem? We need to focus on what matters: children separated from their parents, Puerto Ricans still without essential services, and the threats to health care, reproductive choice, and basic civil liberties coming from the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress.
The civility debate is not worth having
. As a tactic, incivility works for Trump because he's appealing to racism and resentment, not rational self-interest. So it probably won't work for us. Besides, it's impossible to go lower than Trump because he lacks even a core of decency.
I don't blame anyone for venting their frustrations--is there really anyone who continues to support Trump because Robert De Niro and Samantha Bee used foul language (not that they are spokespeople for the Democratic Party anyway or can be controlled)? I'm going to be civil because civility is more likely to lead to healing, and that's the end of my interest in this debate.
It's time for a pep talk.
Despite everything, Hillary won more popular votes than any white person who ever ran for president. She lost the Electoral College by about 80,000 votes spread over three states. She could have run the exact same campaign and would have won if her turnout was a minuscule percentage higher. We should not automatically write-off anyone (winning politics is about addition, not subtraction), but we can win if we fire up our base and fight voter suppression--without swaying even one Trump voter. Some Congressional candidates will need Trump voters, but messaging to local and individual concerns could win their votes without forcing them to admit they were wrong to support Trump in 2016.
It's easy to think that democracy is dying. Half the country not only has different values, but different facts. Enlightenment reasoning doesn't work in those circumstances, and research suggests that it never worked: We don't use reason to decide what to believe; rather, we use reason to rationalize pre-existing beliefs that are more a function of our self-identified tribal loyalties.
Sometimes the cognitive dissonance is so great that people switch tribes, but for the most part, that's why persuasion is so difficult. We should not give up--societal attitudes toward smoking, seat belts, and same-sex marriage changed over time--but with November only four months away, we should prioritize voting. Can we do it? Yes, we can.
What about Israel?
The Jewish vote can make a difference in many close races, so once again Republicans are trying to shift the focus from Trump to a handful of Democrats whose positions, to the extent even known, don't reflect Democratic values. Don't fall for this diversionary tactic.
Israel's biggest internal threat is losing its Jewish, democratic character, which is essential to the Zionist dream. If Jordan had not attacked Israel during the Six Day War, Israel would not have reclaimed the West Bank, where Jews have lived for thousands of years. My wife's great-grandfather was murdered in Hebron during the Arab riots of 1929. We will never forget that, but neither will we forget that the rest of her family survived because righteous Arabs hid them during the rioting.
Israel did not annex the West Bank, and no reasonable person would expect any country that won territory in a defensive war to instantly grant voting and other rights to people living under temporary military occupation. But how long is temporary? At some point, as settlement construction makes a viable Palestinian state harder to achieve, this temporary occupation begins to look permanent, and then Israel faces a choice of no longer being Jewish or no longer being democratic--there are roughly an equal amount of Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and pre-1967 Israel.
Richard Goldstone explains why the situation in Israel today is not apartheid, but as former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Shimon Peres have warned, if Israel stays on its current path, it faces grave risks. The answer is not Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, whose goal is not two states for two peoples, but the replacement of a Jewish state of Israel with one binational state. That's a non-starter. The two-state solution is the only solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Neither side has leadership ready and willing to make peace, but as Dan Shapiro explains, that's all the more reason for the U.S. to do all it can to preserve the possibility of a two-state solution. And Trump isn't doing that.
Democrats remain committed to Israel and to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
But instead of focusing on Trump, and instead of focusing on solid, pro-Israel Jewish Democrats like Dan Kohl, Elissa Slotkin, Lauren Bauer, and other Jewish men and women likely to be elected as new members in November (not to mention good friends like Sean Casten and Ken Harbough), Republicans would have us focus on the four Democrats running for Congress whose views on Israel are troubling, at least as far as we know them.
But Ocasio-Cortez didn't run on Israel, and it doesn't appear to be a priority for her. One of her first statements upon winning was to denounce anti-Semitism, so let's not jump to conclusions before we know more.
The other problematic Democratic candidates are
Ilhan Omar (running in a crowded field to replace Keith Ellison), Scott Wallace in Pennsylvania, and Leslie Cockburn in Virginia. Hardly representative of an entire party and nowhere near as dangerous or powerful as the President of the United States.
And that's pretty much it out of more than 450 Democrats who will be on the November ballot running for the House or Senate (knowing what we know now, no self-respecting progressive should associate with Linda Sarsour or Tamika Mallory, but they are not running for office).
Each party has always had outliers. Remember that one time Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) voted against Iron Dome? Four Republicans voted against Iron Dome on that vote too. In the Senate, several Republicans actually succeeded in delaying funding for Iron Dome. But none of those incidents disproves the fundamental fact that both parties are overwhelmingly pro-Israel, which means we'd be far better off focusing on the vast, real differences between the two parties. If Jews do that, expect Democrats to be rewarded handsomely at the polls, because the Democratic Party is the only party that supports Israel and the other values we cherish.
Tweet of the Week. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). If Cruz can urge voters in Illinois to choose the Democrat in IL-03, why hasn't even one Republican member of Congress from Illinois done the same?
The Fine Print (in regular type): This newsletter usually runs on Sunday mornings. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, my views do not necessarily reflect the views of any candidates or organizations that I support or am associated with. My views might not even be my views
tomorrow
; I reserve the right to change my mind as I learn more, and sometimes I get mad at me too.
Intelligent, well-informed people may disagree with me; seek out opposing views and decide for yourself. When I link to an article, it doesn't mean I agree with everything the author of that article has ever said or even that I agree with everything in that article; it means that the article supports or elaborates on the point I was making. Advertisements reflect the views of the advertisers, not necessarily of me, and advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their advertisements. I read, value, and encourage replies to my newsletters, but I don't always have time to acknowledge replies or to engage in one-on-one discussion.
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