Democrats keep an eye on key Israeli lobby

Party loyalties aside, supporting Netanyahu comes down to avoiding political suicide

ANALYSIS

Abbas Al Lawati

House’s support for Israel or that of Obama’s Democratic Party, which could have repercussions that last longer than Obama’s presidency.

The sentiment was echoed by Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, who said that Neyanyahu’s rejection of an invitation for a private meeting with Democratic senators “disappointed those of us who have stood by Israel for decades”.

A recent Gallup Poll showed that while 83 per cent of Americans who identify as Republicans supported Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, only 48 per cent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment, down from 58 per cent last year.

The spat has presented pro-Israel democrats with a dilemma of having to choose between their party and Israel. A case in point is Alan Dershowitz. A prominent American lawyer and a pillar of the Israel lobby who campaigned for Obama in both presidential campaigns, Dershowitz appears to have fallen out with Obama, accusing him of making Israel a “partisan issue”

In a briefing to a Congressional committee on Wednesday, Kerry likened Netanyahu’s judgment on Iran to that of the Bush administration’s on Saddam’s Iraq just two days after intelligence leaks revealed that the Israeli leader had misled the United Nations in his cartoon-diagram assessment of the threat posed by Iran. That comparison conjured up images of then US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s making a case for war at the UN, effectively destroying Netanyahu’s credibility, given the shaky intelligence his speech was based on.

Consequences

“[Netanyahu] was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush, and we all know what happened with that decision,” Kerry said.

Whether the Obama administration’s fury at Netanyahu will remain confined to the White House or spread through his party remains unknown. It would be premature to consider the current schisms as signalling a break from Democratic Party’s support for Israel. Only 23 of the House’s 188 Democrats, two of the Senate’s 44 Democrats, and one independent have dared to declare their boycott of Netanyahu’s March 3 speech, and the Israel lobby’s witch hunt to pursue those boycotters has already started. Politico magazine reported that powerful JewishAmerican groups will be “taking attendance” at Netanyahu’s speech.

Mort Klein, leader of the Zionist Organisation of America, said that any Democrat who boycotts the speech is guilty of being “anti-patriotic and anti-American.” Dershowitz also wrote off the boycotters by declaring that he would “never vote for or support a member of Congress who walked out on Israel’s prime minister.”

Will Democrats opposed to Israel’s undermining of Obama suffer a heavy political cost for their stand, or will those who have sided with Netanyahu split from a party that is distancing itself from him? Those Democrats on the fence need to weigh the cost of supporting a lameduck president who may take his party to a defeat in the next presidential elections, or save themselves from political suicide by avoiding confrontation with an all-powerful Israel lobby.