{"id":31827,"date":"2016-08-29T23:24:55","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T05:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=31827"},"modified":"2016-08-29T23:24:55","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T05:24:55","slug":"op-ed-its-indisputable-the-gop-is-the-pro-israel-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/op-ed-its-indisputable-the-gop-is-the-pro-israel-party\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-ED: It’s indisputable: The GOP is the pro-Israel party"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor’s note: The following is the first of two contrasting opinion columns on U.S. political parties)<\/em><\/p>\n

By JEFF BALLABON and BRUCE ABRAMSON<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (JTA) — For years, the leaders of America\u2019s most established Jewish organizations \u2013 AIPAC chief among them – have assured their members that when it came to Israel, there wasn’t much difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Even suggesting that control of the White House or Congress might matter to the U.S.-Israel relationship was taboo, often decried as \u201canti-Israel\u201d if not \u201canti-Semitic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2016 platform debates and conventions have shattered this outlandish insistence that in our hyperpartisan era, Israel policy somehow managed to remain neutral territory. It is now indisputable that the parties have radically different views of Israel.<\/p>\n

To the extent that any bipartisanship persists, it is only among the least\u00a0pro-Israel Republicans and the most pro-Israel Democrats. According to their\u00a0\u201cless than comprehensively anti-Israel\u201d view, Israelis and Arabs are more or less equally culpable, Israel must risk its national security and the lives of its citizens, and an independent, Judenrein Arab state in the historic Jewish heartland is an imperative.<\/p>\n

Though the politicians on both sides of the aisle backing this vision may see themselves as pragmatic, moderate centrists looking out for Israel\u2019s interests, what they actually advocate is rejecting Israel\u2019s status as a favored ally, ignoring history and law, and capitulating to Arab intransigence and inhumanity.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the bases of both parties reject this view. The Republican base sees no moral equivalence between Israelis building a pluralistic, liberal democracy of which all decent people should be proud and the Palestinian Authority presiding over a genocidal, suicidal death cult. Members of the Democratic base, as we saw during their convention, reiterate the slanders of Jimmy Carter, Bernie Sanders and Cornel West, while some burned an Israeli flag in symbolic solidarity with the death cult whose own flags were proudly waved on\u00a0the convention floor.<\/p>\n

West spoke for much of the Democratic base \u2014 and 43 percent of the platform committee \u2014 when he framed his antipathy for Israel as \u201ca moral issue\u201d and called\u00a0for \u201can end to occupation and illegal settlements” and for \u201crebuild[ing] Gaza, which the U.N. warns could be uninhabitable by 2020.\u201d Hillary Clinton\u2019s politically savvy advisers, understanding that anti-Israel agitation would play poorly in the general election (overall, Americans still side with Israel over the Palestinians, 62 percent to 15 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll) preferred boilerplate language similar to the DNC\u2019s 2012 platform: \u201cIsraelis deserve security, recognition, and a normal life free from terror and incitement. Palestinians should be free to govern themselves in their own viable state, in peace and dignity.\u201d In short, a statement of moral equivalence.<\/p>\n

The Republicans had reluctantly accepted comparable boilerplate language in 2012, tempering far stronger pro-Israel sentiment among the base to accommodate AIPAC\u2019s insistence that such moral equivalence reflected the American Jewish consensus. In 2016, however, the GOP resisted such pressure. The party\u2019s base rallied behind a more\u00a0 definitively pro-Israel approach that embraces the moral superiority of Israel\u2019s position and Israel\u2019s unconditional sovereignty.<\/p>\n

It is this platform language —\u00a0to which we proudly contributed —\u00a0that Democrats and their enablers in establishment American Jewish groups have intentionally and repeatedly mischaracterized as standing \u201cto the right of Netanyahu\u201d in its \u201crejection of a two-state solution.\u201d No one actually reading the words of the 2016 GOP platform plank on Israel could possibly reach these conclusions.<\/p>\n

The Republican platform\u2019s actual language recognizes Israel as a fellow liberal democracy and a strategic ally; restates an existing American law declaring an indivisible Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital; upholds our ally\u2019s right to defend itself against military threats, terror attacks and other forms of warfare; labels as false the widely accepted canard that Israel is an \u201coccupier,\u201d and recognizes the anti-Semitism behind a Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement that has targeted Jewish interests far from Israel.<\/p>\n

It closes with a longing for \u201ccomprehensive and lasting peace\u201d negotiated among the residents of the Middle East and opposes outside pressure designed to impose any specific proposal.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the sum and substance of what today\u2019s Democrats consider extremism: acknowledging the rights of Jews in the Land of Israel, embracing a fellow liberal democracy and strategic ally, supporting its efforts to defend itself and encouraging it to negotiate with its neighbors.<\/p>\n

Nothing in the new GOP platform \u201crejects\u201d or creates even the slightest impediment to a \u201ctwo-state solution.\u201d It simply refocuses American interests correctly\u00a0— in support of our ally Israel\u2019s sovereignty and security\u00a0—\u00a0rather than in pursuit of \u201cself-determination\u201d for a Palestinian Authority, the PLO\u2019s legal and moral successor, that continues to incite and support terror and that has explicitly abandoned even the pretext of a \u201cpeace process.”<\/p>\n

The chasm between the parties is clear. Today\u2019s Democrats are split among those who see moral equivalence between Israel and the P.A. and those who see Israel as a rogue apartheid state committing repeated war crimes against Palestinian victims. To the Republicans, Israel is a close and valued ally under unprecedented attack, worthy of the same commitment and support we extend to our closest allies. These views of Israel and the policy consequences that flow from them are very, very different.<\/p>\n

A bipartisan consensus that actually supports Israel remains a worthy ideal. As the 2016 conventions showed, it is very far from what we have today. Americans who care about Israel face a clear choice. There is no use pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n

(Jeff Ballabon is chairman of the Iron Dome Alliance and a senior fellow at the Center for Statesmanship and Diplomacy. Bruce Abramson is vice president for policy of the Iron Dome Alliance and a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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