Words & Phrases

MAGA pols and dark money groups have no business defining who is ‘pro-Israel’

Rightwing Christian Evangelists, including those who have yearned for a 21^st century Crusader and Islamophobe like Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, have argued that criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is effectively “anti-Israel” — or worse, if you are said to be holding Israel to a higher/double standard than other nations, “anti-Semitic.” This has fed MAGA partisan claptrap that, since only the Republican Party extends unconditional support for Netanyahu’s coalition government, no matter how reprehensible their conduct, it is the only “pro-Israel” American political party.

The specious reasoning that you cannot criticize Israel’s current government and still be “pro-Israel” would be debunked under ordinary circumstances. But now the Republicans are in a fix: Donald Trump, humiliated by his widely panned deal, has not only agreed to a deal infinitely weaker than the JCPOA, but has also railed at the Netanyahu government in terms no Democrat administration would ever have dared utter. Surely, Trump and his Republican flunkies shouldn’t be able to retain the pretense that they are “pro-Israel”? Here is where it gets interesting.

Under unceasing criticism for its lousy Iran deal, Trump went from saying U.S. Jews should get their “heads examined” and were “disloyal” if they did not back him to denouncing Netanyahu as “crazy” in persisting with attacks on Lebanon while peace talks continued. Trump, who routinely excoriated former President Barack Obama for criticizing Netanyahu, effectively told Netanyahu to shut up and do what he is told.

At the G-7, Trump went even further, as Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz wrote:

Using the language of Israel’s bitterest critics, [Trump] charged that “Israel is fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed.” Elaborating, he snapped that “you don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody. Because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses. And they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you.”

Vice President JD Vance followed by unleashing one of the harshest tirades ever delivered from a U.S. administration against Israel. “My message to them would be twofold. ​No 1: Donald J Trump is the only head of state in the entire world ‌who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this ‌moment in time,” he sneered. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left ‌in the entire world.” He continued: “You can’t just kill your way out of solving every problem.” (Too bad Trump failed to grasp the futility of killing his way out of the Middle East before launching his disastrous war.)

What does all this mean for two critical rightwing voices who think they can dictate “pro-Israel” bona fides?

First, so much for Trump’s boast that he was the most “pro-Israel” president ever. To the contrary, no president has done more to shred the U.S.-Israel relationship, imperil both U.S. and Israel’s security (by giving Iran unprecedented leverage to control the Strait of Hormuz), or been so unconstrained about insulting an Israeli leader.

Don’t take it from me. The rightwing English-language newspaper Israel Hayom, founded by Republican donor and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, slammed Trump:

You made a colossal mistake. You failed by signing a surrender agreement with a murderous and cruel terror regime. You severely harmed American interests and the democratic and human values of the enlightened world, and you turned over the hourglass toward the next war, which your successors will have to deal with in the years to come. . . . You did all this in violation of every promise you made, in contradiction to the path you had followed until now, and against the values of America, which was supposed to return to greatness and has now been humiliated into the dust.

All of the rightwing U.S. and Israel apologists for Donald Trump who trusted he was Israel’s “best friend” (or had some coherent vision that aligned with Israel’s interests) blew it. Legacy Jewish organizations, such as the American Jewish Committee and AIPAC, also piled on criticism of Trump, though their tone was wimpy and nowhere near the sort of condemnation we heard about Obama during the JCPOA fight.

Trump’s lackeys should have remembered that he has no friends or guiding philosophy — only an unquenchable thirst for self-enrichment and ego gratification.

Second, no group has more ferociously claimed the right to police who gets a “pro-Israel” moniker than AIPAC. It has targeted those who rebuke Netanyahu and his coalition partners for human rights abuses, question its reckless military strategy, or propose limits on U.S. missile sales that do nothing more than force Israel to comply with U.S. law. In making an unconditional defense of Trump-Netanyahu policies the benchmark for “pro-Israel” credentials, AIPAC messed up big time.

The self-appointed referee in judging pro-Israel bona fides has now become “both a victim and a cause of the unraveling consensus on Israel,” Jonathan Maher recently wrote for the New York Times. In rejecting virtually all criticism of Israel (e.g., denying responsibility for starvation in Gaza) and adhering to grotesque positions on candidate endorsements (Jan. 6 election deniers are welcome…but not thoughtful critics of Israel’s policy!), AIPAC has abandoned the mainstream, become a pariah to many Democrats, and undermined bipartisan support for Israel. As J Street president and frequent guest of The Contrarian Jeremy Ben Ami told Maher: “AIPAC is playing with fire and runs the risk of burning our whole house down.”

In sum, the bickering over “pro-Israel” never made much sense. It seemed to apply solely to one country, and worse, was designed to obliterate nuance. (Can you be pro-France but object to its nuclear power policy?) Especially now, however, no country deserves unconditional support when its policies endanger U.S. interests and offend our values.

Trump, his white Christian Nationalist allies, and AIPAC have no right to lecture anyone about what it means to be “pro-Israel.” They have done incalculable harm to Middle East stability, Israel’s security, and the U.S.-Israel relationship. The sooner the trio cedes center stage, the sooner we can have a reasoned debate about an appropriately nuanced U.S.-Israel policy that rests on shared interests and values.