NEW COVER STORY: How IlhanMN Is changing the conversation about Israel—and upending the 2020 campaign
In late March, some 18,000 people crowded into a grand ballroom the size of a commercial airline hangar in downtown Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee , the largest pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Behind the stage were a dozen Jumbotrons, which, in between the speeches, broadcast short propaganda films about daily life in Israel.
Omar poses for a portrait during the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival at Spring Studio on April 20, 2018 in New York City. Erik Tanner/Contour/Getty Rep. Rashida Tlaib participates in a ceremonial swearing-in with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in January. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty The election outcome could have profound impact on foreign policy. If Trump wins, he’s likely to double down on his staunch support for Israel, although one never knows with Trump. If a Democrat wins, the influence of progressives like Omar could lead to previously unthinkable changes to the U.S.-Israel relationship amid a post-Trump backlash.If the conversation about Israel has been, until now, mostly one-sided, few can claim more credit than AIPAC.
But in the view of many in Washington, AIPAC’s power also has produced over the years a decidedly unequal view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just a few of the lobby’s successes include winning billions of dollars in additional aid to Israel for missile development and routine passage of resolutions recognizing Israel’s “right to defend itself” after military operations against the Palestinians that some criticize as disproportionate.
Omar, Tlaib and their supporters in Congress are now speaking out forcefully against such policies. Last May, when Israeli troops opened fire and killed scores of Palestinians demonstrating at the Gaza border fence, Ocasio-Cortez, then a candidate challenging Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley, a staunch defender of Israel, wrote a tweet calling it a “massacre.” “I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such,” she added.
Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, speaks to reporters in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 15. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Civil Defense members putting out a fire after Israeli air strikes leveled a six-story building in Gaza City last year. Mohamed Zarandah/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty
“This vision also applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she wrote in her Post commentary, calling for a two-state solution that “recognizes the shared desire for security and freedom of both peoples.” But she reserves her strongest sympathies for the underdog Palestinians. “Without a state, the Palestinian people live in a state of permanent refugeehood and displacement,” she wrote. “This, too, is a refugee crisis, and they, too, deserve freedom and dignity.
In response to McCollum’s “apartheid” remarks, Mellman issued a statement, accusing the representative of anti-Semitism. Such reactions have drawn derision from progressives on Twitter. “You’re not fooling anyone with this farce,” tweeted one respondent.
Both Omar and Tlaib have received death threats, and in February, Christopher Hasson, a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, was arrested and found to have a large cache of weapons and a roster of Democratic lawmakers he plotted to kill, including Omar and Ocasio-Cortez. “No wonder why I am on the ‘Hitlist’ of a domestic terrorist and ‘Assassinate Ilhan Omar’ is written on my local gas stations,” Omar tweeted.
Republicans are basing their strategy in part on polls that show far greater sympathy for Israel among Republican voters than Democrats. A 2018 Pew Research Center poll showed 79 percent of Republicans said they sympathized more with Israel than with Palestinians, compared with just 27 percent of Democrats. Pew said the partisan divide over the issue was wider than at any time in the past 40 years.
And after white supremacists chanting “Jews will not replace us” clashed violently with protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.”
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