Trump and Netanyahu: Why they banned Omar and Tlaib
There are few “traditions of decorum that President Trump has not trampled on since entering the White House,” said The New York Times in an editorial, but last week’s “foul” stunt was “new territory even for him.” Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, were due to visit the occupied West Bank on a trip approved by the Israeli government. Then Trump weighed in via Twitter: “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people.” Within hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rescinded the pair’s visas, earning swift condemnation from Democrats and some Republican supporters of Israel. Even AIPAC, the conservative, pro-Israel lobbying group, said that “every member of Congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand.” Too late, said Bari Weiss, also in the Times. For the sake of pandering to each leader’s far-right base, Netanyahu and Trump have made U.S. support for Israel, long a rare point of national consensus, “a partisan wedge in American politics.” Israel’s interests just suffered “long-term damage.”
Sorry, said David Harsanyi in TheFederalist.com, but Omar and Tlaib “aren’t mere ‘critics’ of Israel.” They support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose goal is “rallying the world to destroy the Jewish state economically.” Worse, their planned trip was sponsored by Miftah, a radical group that celebrates suicide bombers and which as recently as 2013 was publicizing the ancient “blood libel” that Jews murder Christian children and use their blood for baking matzos. By what “principle of democracy” should Israel issue visas to “anti-Semitic terror apologists” who deny its right to exist and seek its total destruction? That would be like inviting “an arsonist to measure your home,” said Ari Hoffman in Forward.com, “to determine just how much lighter fluid he would need to burn it to the ground.”
But Trump and Netanyahu just did more to mainstream BDS “than Omar and Tlaib’s trip ever could,” said Eric Levitz in NYMag.com. Until last week, the movement got little attention in this country; now young liberal Democrats in particular are learning to associate BDS with anti-Trump sentiment. Netanyahu has made a crucial error, said Dana Milbank in
The Washington Post. As the U.S. electorate gets younger and more diverse every day, pro
Israel Republicans are “disproportionately old, white evangelical Christians” whose influence will shrink when Trump leaves office. Netanyahu has “hitched Israel’s future to a fading constituency.”
Netanyahu’s desperate, said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times. Facing indictment on corruption charges, his only hope of avoiding prosecution is to win next month’s election and turn Israel into a “Jewish banana republic” where it’s illegal to prosecute the prime minister. To pull this off, he needs to build a coalition of far-right political groups that openly demonize Muslims. With slumping poll numbers, Trump’s desperate, too, said Bess Lewis in VanityFair.com. That’s why he retweeted a right-wing conspiracy theorist’s claim this week that Israelis love him “like he’s the King of Israel” and “the second coming of God.” Even more stupidly, Trump complained that when the majority of Jewish Americans vote for Democrats, it “shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” In dredging up the anti-Semitic “dual loyalty” trope, Trump has proven that he’s no better than Omar and Tlaib—and that his support for Israel is entirely transactional.