When Democratic presidential candidates were offered the chance to weigh in on Middle East policy during Thursday night’s debate, they spent their time attacking Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But at no point did any of the candidates think to mention Palestinian terrorism.
“Israel has — and I say this as somebody who lived in Israel as a kid, proudly Jewish — Israel has the right not only to exist but to exist in peace and security,” Sen. Bernie Sanders started off as saying. As a candidate, he rarely mentions his Jewish identity — unless he’s gearing up to attack Israel or defend left-wing anti-Semites who support him, such as Linda Sarsour and Rep. Ilhan Omar. “But what — but what U.S. foreign policy must be about is not just being pro-Israel. We must be pro-Palestinian, as well.”
He went on to say, “What we need is a level playing field in terms of the Middle East.” But at no point in his call for a level playing-field did he offer any criticism of the Palestinians. Sanders casually called Netanyahu a “racist,” but at no point mentioned that the leader of the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, is a longtime Holocaust denier, who wrote a book claiming the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was inflated by Zionists. More recently, in a live speech on Palestinian TV in 2018, Abbas claimed that Jews themselves were responsible for the Holocaust, stating, “Animosity toward Jews was not because of their religion but because of their social activities.” And it should be noted that Abbas is supposedly the “moderate” leader, as opposed to the terrorist group Hamas, whose goal is to exterminate Jews and destroy Israel.
Sanders’s idea of a “level playing-field” involved talking about the high unemployment rate in Gaza, without mentioning that Hamas, which runs Gaza, concentrates less of its efforts to economic development and more of its energy toward firing rockets, building terror tunnels, and finding innovative ways to target Israeli civilians.
Pete Buttigieg used the question as a way to attack President Trump’s leadership and accuse him of trying to interfere in Israeli domestic politics.
Joe Biden then chimed in by lamenting that the United States was no longer an “honest broker” in Israel, and said that there needed to be a two-state solution.
“Bibi Netanyahu and I know one another well,” Biden said. “He knows that I think what he’s doing is outrageous. What we do is, we have to put pressure constantly on the Israelis to move to a two-state solution, not withdraw physical aid from them in terms of their security.”
Biden made no mention of Palestinian terrorism either, and so by focusing exclusively on the need to pressure Israel, implicitly pinned the entire blame for a lack of progress on a two-state solution on Israel. Yet this was the entire failed strategy pursued during the Obama administration. As president, Barack Obama had the idea that there had to be more “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel so that the U.S. could be seen as an honest broker in peace negotiations. In reality, Obama’s strategy only emboldened Palestinians to set more preconditions for negotiations, sabotaging the peace process. After eight years of Obama’s strategy, his strategy — the same one Biden is advocating — managed to alienate both sides, and the prospects for peace were worse than when he was sworn into office.
Other candidates were not asked the question. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren already threatened to cut off aid to Israel if it did not move toward a two-state solution.
As we enter 2020, it’s clear Democrats have become a party that agrees that Israel is the barrier to peace in the Middle East, and that is too afraid of the Left to criticize Palestinian terrorism. The only debate seems to be over whether the next U.S. president should cut off aid to Israel, or merely constantly pressure our ally.
