The US/Israel nexus

Manfred Gerstenfeld (“Preparing for an American Democratic President,” February 16) and Ruthie Blum (“Gantz’s Cluelessness About America,” February 21) give contrasting views of the Israeli-American and Israeli-American Jewish relationships. Gerstenfeld comes closer to an understanding of their complexities while Blum confuses cause and effect.

There is a tendency among American Jews to apply their liberal ideals to Israel’s very different circumstances, but recent Israeli governments have supported settlements well beyond the Green Line, denigrated Israeli Arabs and undermined the interests of the liberal branches of American Judaism. Add to that their complicity in the prime minister’s thus far successful efforts to avoid trial and there emerges a clear picture of a widening intra-Jewish gap that plays into the hands of those who see Israel as ultra-nationalistic and moving away from democratic norms. Moreover, given that the overwhelming majority of American Jews identify with the Democratic Party, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open alliance with the Republican Party has been very badly received by them and by many other Democrats.

The Democratic presidential primaries now underway are demonstrating with clarity that the support the voters gave moderate Democrats in the 2018 Congressional elections was no fluke. They should to put an end to the efforts of Blum and others to identify Senator Bernie Sanders and the far left as the voice of the Democratic Party. A Sanders nomination would have tested the Israeli-American connection as never before, but with former vice president Joe Biden as their presidential candidate, the Democrats are well positioned to gain control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. Such a result would afford Israel an opportunity to renew its heretofore traditional bipartisan relationship with the US and with American Jewry.

But this is not an outcome that can be achieved by a Democratic administration and Congress alone. Much depends on political developments in Israel. With moderate administrations in both countries, there is every reason to believe that the downward slide in Israel’s relationship with the Democrats and American Jews can be halted and, in the longer run, reversed.

The writer, a former US ambassador, is a Washington lawyer

PETER R. ROSENBLATT Washington, DC

There is a fundamental factual and logical flaw in Hillel Schenker’s defense of the Democrats’ approach to the Israel-Palestine issue (“What does being pro-Israel really mean?” March 6).

For the Arabs it is a zero-sum situation. The Palestinian issue was created specifically to pursue an alternative to the existence of Israel, not to make peace with it, so, certainly under their current leadership, Palestinians cannot make peace without rejecting the purpose of their collective existence.

Nor can they settle for a return to the 1967 frontiers/1949 ceasefire lines in a “two-state” solution: They could have had that in 1967, if not in 1949, so agreeing to it today is an admission that the refugees’ suffering that has been their currency on the world stage, has been entirely a result of their refusal to accept that Jews will have a state of their own. Establishing a state on those lines today is actually an admission of failure.

Many of the specifics of the Trump Plan aren’t feasible, but it does turn the focus to where it should have been all along: getting the Palestinian people to accept that there will be a Jewish state. By rejecting this shift in focus, Democratic opposition to the Trump plan betrays either ignorance of the realities or hostility toward the survival of Israel. Neither of these can be deemed “pro-Israel,” and it is time for Jewish Democrats to insist that their party face the reality.

YALE ZUSSMAN, PHD

Framingham, MA