Hard Facts About "Tough Love"
What part of "sovereign nation" do Democrats not understand?
One of the most frustrating aspects of Joe Biden’s Israel rhetoric, continually regurgitated by his administration, has been the effort to cartoonishly portray Benjamin Netanyahu, and not Hamas, as the villain in Israel’s war in Gaza. A key element of that propagandistic fantasy is that the Israeli people do not support Netanyahu, or his policies, and that that he alone, not Israel’s three-member war cabinet, is the sole decision maker.
The administration, media, and other Democrats have dutifully behaved in every way possible to attempt to portray the propaganda as truth. For ridiculously hyperbolic media headlines on the subject, you can go here, here, and here. Each portrays Israel not as a sovereign nation, and a partner equal to America (or any other Western nation), but instead as a recalcitrant child who must be disciplined. The most common, and patronizing, phrase used to describe this attitude is “tough love.” In other words, Israel is a problem child, and not a highly sophisticated, modern, Western democracy that was savagely attacked. It is a wayward teen, not the planet’s only Jewish state whose people were barbarically murdered, raped, and mutilated in a one-day genocide that represented the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
One of the more hypocritical aspects of all of this is the calls from Democrats for “regime change” in Israel. Late last week, many of us were shocked by the news that Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, also a Democrat, not only called for the removal of the democratically elected Netanyahu government, but also compared Bibi to Hamas itself and to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Schumer’s attack included a fourth prong to his so called “obstacles to peace”: right wing, meaning mostly observant, Jews.
So religious Jews, and the Jewish prime minister of Israel, are equivalent to the terrorists who carried out the 10/7 attacks, and the leader of Fatah, who would like to carry out (G-d forbid), another 10/7, and spent much of the first several decades of his life helping to murder Jews. Schumer also referred to members of Netanyahu’s cabinet as “bigots” and “extremists.” Maybe he thought that Jonathan Glazer wasn’t embarrassing us enough and felt inspired to adopt a similar vibe. In retrospect, this should not have been that surprising coming from a man who once directly threated Justices of the Supreme Court. Fortunately, there are indications that the strategy backfired, at least in Schumer’s case, as more liberal Jewish organizations, and some Democrats criticized the speech.
Schumer, like the media, and like lesser Democrats, was echoing Biden’s talking points, many of which were expressed during a March 10 MSNBC sycophantic fawn-fest interview with human water droplet Jonathan Capehart. For context, this is the same interview in which El Presidente apologized for calling an illegal immigrant murderer “illegal,” and claimed that illegal immigrants “built the country.” (It is truly amazing how many “did I just read that correctly???” moments this man inspires)
He also bizarrely claimed that he has known Bibi “for fifty years.” They must have met during Biden’s, a junior senator at the time, super-secret, and also imaginary, trip to Israel in 1974 (where twenty-five-year-old Netanyahu was living at the time). More heinously, he said that “In my view, “(Netanyahu) is hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world—it’s contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think it’s a big mistake.” The “it” being Netanyahu not paying enough “attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”
The reality: protecting Jewish life is exactly what Israel stands for. He is obviously setting up a false dichotomy with Bibi and the reality of Israel on one side, and the leftist, fantasy version of Israel on the other.
To end things on a low note, Biden once again quoted, as he had during the State of the Union, Hamas’ FALSE casualty numbers.
Two days before, Kamala Harris gave an interview to CBS in which she expressed a similar sentiment saying: “It’s important for us to distinguish, or at least not conflate, the Israeli government with the Israeli people. The Israeli people are entitled to security – as are the Palestinians. In equal measure.”
According to Harris then, the Knesset is not elected by a vote of the Israeli people. Apparently, in her view, it kind of just arrives, fully formed, with no input from the public. Much more ominously, this is the kind of language usually reserved for despotic regimes in nations such as Iran where the people actually suffer under the weight of totalitarianism and extremism. I can’t remember any administration, ever, claiming that a nation’s government doesn’t represent its people, when speaking about a democratic ally.
Once again, we are being flagrantly lied to by the people who we (sadly) elected. So, what is actually going on in Israel, and does the government, and its policies regarding the war with Hamas, and possible war with Hezbollah, really represent the will of a majority of Israelis?
Unequivocally, yes. Israel’s system is parliamentary. That means that the prime minister is not elected directly, but is instead the leader of his party, and it is the party, which is elected, not the individual. And because there are more than two parties, it is often the case, as it is now, that rather than rule by a single, majority party, a ruling coalition is often in power.
That also means that many Israelis cast their votes strategically. Meaning that many people don’t vote for an apparent winner of an election, but rather for another party which they hope will be brought into an eventual ruling coalition. If you want party “X” to produce the prime minister, and you know that it is on the verge of winning a majority of votes, you vote for party “Y” because you want it to be included in a ruling coalition as your second choice. In other words, not everyone who voted against Netanyahu’s party did so because they oppose him, but because they wanted him as prime minister, and to choose who would be part of any coalition led by him. So in that system, you can rule without winning a majority of votes, and at the same time, you may still be the first choice of people who didn’t even vote for you.
Additionally, the vast majority of Israelis support the war in Gaza. Netanyahu’s chief opponent is another member of the war cabinet, Benny Gantz. Gantz and Netanyahu have no appreciable differences in their views on the absolute necessity to destroy Hamas. A February poll showed just how incredibly unified Israelis are. It indicated that Gantz would get 75 seats in the Knesset, while Netanyahu’s party would get 45 seats. That’s 120 seats, equaling the entirety of the Knesset. While it is true that Netanyahu would lose, the policies that the Biden administration and the Democrats are so viciously critical of would still win….by 100%. There is no daylight, at all, between Israel’s government and its people on the need to keep Israelis safe. That is true whether Netanyahu is in power, Gantz is in power, or anyone else is in power. In fact, a recent shakeup caused by the withdrawal of MK Gideon Sa’ar from an alliance with Gantz’s party produces different polling, but still clearly demonstrates a unified Israeli approach to the war. So while no government is literally its people, at this moment, Israel’s may be more representative of the will of its people than any other country on the planet.
Attempting to influence internal Israeli politics also proves, once again, that leftists are willing to betray their own principles if they think it will help them. I am old enough to remember when a chief rallying cry of the left was the constant complaint that the United States was evil because, so went the refrain, it sponsored regime change across the globe. They decried our involvement in several examples of regime change: interventions in South America in the early 20th century, the 1953 coup d'état in Iran, the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the 1952 coup which placed Fulgencio Batista in power in Cuba, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (also Cuba), interference in The Congo during the 1960s, and of course, our entire involvement, from 1961-1975, in Vietnam, etc. In fact, our involvement in Haiti is partially responsible for its latest crisis.
The difference then was that, for the most part, America’s activities were covert, and when revealed: always extremely controversial. Now we have a situation in which, much like Barack Obama’s open meddling in Israel’s election in 2015, some Democrats are not only proud of their attempts at regime change, but are extremely vocal about their attempts to topple the democratically elected government of an ally.
What’s behind their enthusiasm for attempting to meddle in the internal affairs of another nation? On March 10, an Israel expert claimed that he had been asked by a “serious administration figure“ about “what "it is that will force the Netanyahu coalition to collapse.” In what universe does the democratically elected leader of the world’s largest democracy seek to topple the government of the Middle East’s only democracy? Apparently, anything is on the table as a campaign strategy for an incumbent president who knows that he is in deep trouble and is trying desperately to please his antisemitic far-left base, while also simultaneously trying to retain whatever loyalty to the party remains among pro-Israel Democrat voters and mega-donors.
Regardless of why they are doing it, it is grievously wrong, and I think most Americans know that. If you really care about democracy, the will of free people to choose their own leaders and recognize Israeli sovereignty: what Democrats are doing right now should repulse you. It will also fail. Why? Because the Israeli people, and the entire Jewish world, are more unified than ever.
Never give in. Never give up.
Am Yisrael Chai.