Bernie Sanders voices newfound willingness to stand up to Israel

By Roger Cohen

Tuesday, April 26, 2016 | 2 a.m.

In New York, no less, days before a primary, a candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination declared that Israel used “disproportionate” force in Gaza in 2014, that “we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity,” that the United States has to play “an evenhanded role” and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “is not right all the time.”

Wow! Sensation! Hold the presses!

That candidate, of course, was Bernie Sanders, a Jew in the party that is the political home of a majority of American Jews, and the fact that his words were deemed shocking or even newsworthy reflects the degree to which, over many years, major U.S. Jewish organizations have been able to dictate the line that says there is only one way to support Israel and win elections — and that is uncritically.

In most of the rest of the world, Sanders’ position would be uncontroversial, reflecting a consensus. In fact, his statement in the debate with Hillary Clinton that he is “100 percent pro-Israel in the long run” would almost certainly have caused more of a ruckus in Europe.

Many people in Brooklyn cheered Sanders. He has overwhelming support with young Democratic voters, and it is among those ages 18 to 29 that a sense of alienation from Netanyahu’s right-wing government and the Israel it reflects has been growing most rapidly. The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu’s heavy-handed interventions in U.S. electoral politics and his relentless attempt (even in extremis) to stop the Iran nuclear deal all have been factors in undergirding the view that it is no betrayal of Israel to be critical of some of its policies.

Israel, as Sanders said, has “every right in the world to destroy terrorism.” A recent suicide bombing in Jerusalem was a further escalation in the simmering violence of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. No state can accept rocket attacks of the kind perpetrated against Israel by Hamas from Gaza nor random stabbings of its citizens. Hamas hides operatives among civilians. There is often something sickening about the continent — Europe — on which Jews were slaughtered reproaching the descendants of those who survived for absorbing the lesson that military might matters. Palestinian leadership is divided and weak. It condones or engages in incitement to violence.

But the backdrop to all this remains an Israeli government driving the country rightward toward intolerance, permanent dominion over another people and their perennial humiliation. An oppressed people will rise up. Jews, as no others, know the lacerating trials of statelessness.

The Iran deal, finished last year, was a watershed in the politics of Israel within the politics of the United States. It divided the American Jewish community, was fiercely opposed by the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and was rejected by the Israeli government. Yet, in the end it won congressional approval and the support of a vast majority of Democratic senators.

This outcome suggested a new willingness on the part of members of Congress — at least Democrats — to place some daylight between their positions and Israel’s. Jewish votes do not win U.S. elections, although they may be important in one swing state, Florida. Jews account for about 2 percent of the U.S. population; most live in New York and California, which have voted Democratic in national elections for a quarter-century. Modest numbers concentrated in nonswing states do not on the face of it carry significant weight.

But voting is one thing, funding another. As Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a growing pro-Israel group critical of settlement growth and the occupation, told me: “The longtime perception was that the only way to get money was to toe the AIPAC line. Iran showed something has changed.” It still may not be easy, but it is no longer U.S. political suicide to criticize Israel or reject AIPAC’s prescriptions.

Sanders struck an important blow for honest and more open debate by raising issues seldom broached in a U.S. presidential campaign — the Palestinian houses and schools “decimated” by Israeli force in Gaza, the fact that “there are two sides to the issue,” the need for a balanced U.S. role. He set down a marker in the Jewish American city par excellence.

My sense is that he will not pay a political price for his stance because there is an emergent constituency, particularly among young Americans, for a different approach to Israel, one that underwrites its security without writing a blank check for its every policy. Whether Sanders will benefit is another matter — the situation is fluid and Clinton’s more conventional approach to Israel retains strong support.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father, said, “Peace is more important than real estate.” Yitzhak Rabin came to the same conclusion and, derided by Netanyahu, was assassinated by a messianic Israeli fanatic. Netanyahu’s government is a don’t-give-an-inch government.

“There comes a time,” Sanders said, “when if we pursue justice and peace, we are going to have to say that Netanyahu” makes mistakes.

A growing number of Americans committed to Israel’s security and its Jewish and democratic character believe that time is now.

Roger Cohen is a columnist for The New York Times.