For years, there have been signs that the Democratic Party’s historic support for Israel might be wavering. Joe Biden’s staunch support for Israel after October 7 seemed to suggest that this theory was overblown — that when push came to shove, Democrats would always revert to the centrist pro-Israel position they had taken for decades.
But in the past few days, it’s started to feel like the winds might be shifting again.
Both in public and private, Biden and his deputies have fumed about Israel blocking aid from entering the Gaza Strip. Administration officials told reporter Barak Ravid that last week, when over 100 people were killed outside an aid convoy, was (in his words) a “turning point.”
Of course, the White House can complain all it wants (and has done so before): It’s meaningless unless accompanied by actions to push Israel toward changing course.
They started down that road earlier this year by imposing serious sanctions on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Then during last night’s State of the Union, President Biden ordered the US military to establish a port in Gaza that would bypass Israeli-controlled land crossings and thus allow humanitarian aid to flow more freely into the Strip.
And it’s not just the administration — or even just the party’s clearly furious left flank.
A recent letter signed by 37 Congressional Democrats, including prominent and mainstream figures like Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD), argued that the planned Israeli assault on the overcrowded city of Rafah would likely violate international law. This, they argue, should trigger a cutoff of military aid to Israel — a threat that has yet to be proven credible, but one that knowledgeable observers take seriously.
It does seem like something is starting to change in the Democratic Party’s approach to the Gaza war, and maybe Israel more broadly.
But nothing is real until it actually happens, and there are still plenty of good reasons for skepticism.
A…
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