Finest associates: US president Joe Biden and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Tel Aviv, 19 October 2023
GPO/ Handout · Anadolu · Getty
Five weeks after the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel, an estimated 290,000 folks, principally American Jews, travelled to Washington DC for a rally to help Israel, demand the discharge of Hamas’s hostages and oppose antisemitism. It might have been the biggest pro-Israel demonstration within the nation’s historical past. Politically, it could even have been essentially the most pointless: Joe Biden’s authorities had already put itself unambiguously behind every one in all these calls for.
The ambiance on 14 November might hardly have been extra totally different from the final try at such a march, after the Could 2021 Israel/Hamas conflict, which drew simply 2,000 attendees. Most ‘pro-peace’ Jewish organisations boycotted it as a result of its organisers outlined all anti-Zionism as antisemitism. This November, they confirmed up in pressure, and lots of had referred to as on Biden to strain Israel to curb the nation’s human rights abuses towards Palestinians – and even, as People for Peace Now (APN), make this a situation of US army assist to Israel. So, too, did the leaders of each events and each homes of Congress.
Most of the Jews current have been possible discomforted by the invitation to the evangelical pastor John Hagee, who heads up Christians United For Israel and whose views embody the idea that God despatched Hitler as a ‘hunter’ to the Jewish folks to punish their failure to fulfil the promise of the Ebook of Revelation and return to the Holy Land. Solidarity with Israel and whoever supported its conflict in Gaza was the order of the day.
The Black liberal pundit Van Jones, from CNN, discovered this when he cried out from the rostrum, ‘I pray for peace. No extra rockets from Gaza. And no extra bombs falling down on the folks of Gaza.’ He was met with boos and chants of ‘No ceasefire’. Current, if solely on the sidelines in small counterdemonstrations, have been dissident Jewish teams, reminiscent of Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. They’d been organising their very own demonstrations, and becoming a member of Palestinians and others at theirs, (…)
Full article: 4 635 phrases.
This text could be learn by subscribers
(2) Based on information compiled in 2022 by the Israel Democracy Institute, 62% of Israeli Jews thought of themselves to be ‘rightwing’ with simply 24% within the centre and a mere 11% as ‘left-identifying’ – a quantity that has sunk precipitously because the conflict started.
(8) See The New York Occasions, 19 December 2023.
(10) Peter Beinart, ‘Joe Biden’s alarming file on Israel’, Jewish Currents, 27 January 2020, jewishcurrents.org/.
(13) Eric Alterman, We Are Not One: A Historical past of America’s Struggle Over Israel, Fundamental Books, New York, p 419.
(16) ‘New examine by Professor Kelman finds decrease ranges of anti-semitism at US universities’, Stanford International Research, 15 September 2017.
(17) Peter Beinart, ‘Harvard is ignoring its personal antisemitism specialists’, Jewish Currents, 11 December 2023.
