Were
you shocked when at least 50 percent of the delegates to the Democratic
National Convention appeared to vote “nay” on recognizing Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital and reinserting God into the platform? Admittedly, it
was high drama — a truly unscripted moment that laid bare the raw
hostility toward Israel that has gradually achieved mainstream status
within the Democratic party. But a surprise? Not really. A Gallup poll released earlier this year showed that 78 percent of
Republicans supported Israel over the Palestinians, whereas only 53
percent of Democrats agreed. For the past 12 years, Gallup reports,
Democratic support for Israel has been declining. The Left, which is
increasingly coterminous with the Democrats, has been hostile to Israel
for much longer. Seen an Occupy demonstration lately? Noticed “Israel
Apartheid Week” at your local campus?
The Democrats, as Shmuel Rosner chronicles in The Jewish Journal,
are zealously spinning this little debacle — at first claiming that the
platform wording change from 2008 was insignificant and charging,
through Senator Dick Durbin, that questions about it were a conservative
plot. Former congressman Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat who runs
interference for Obama with Jewish voters, asserted that the platform
reflected Obama’s “unflinching” commitment to Israel. It took only about twelve hours for that line to shrivel.
When the
vote was scheduled to revise the platform, the Obama campaign
circulated a new spin — namely that restoring God and Jerusalem was all
Obama’s idea and that he was befuddled as to how the platform had ever
acquired the offensive wording in the first place. David Axelrod blamed
unnamed “others” on Thursday morning for the screw-up, insisting that
the president was too busy with other things to notice. But Politico reported that Obama had seen and signed off on the platform before the convention.
To suggest that this was a mere snafu insults the intelligence of
Americans. This president has profoundly altered the U.S. position
toward Israel.
He insulted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; adopted
the Palestinian position on negotiations (that all settlement activity
should cease before talks could resume); condemned Israel from the U.N.
podium; and suggested that Israel return to the 1967 borders (“with land
swaps”) before the Palestinians had even agreed to negotiate, far less
renounced terror or adopted democratic norms. To the contrary, the PA
and Hamas are drawing closer.
President Obama was famously outraged at Netanyahu for building
Jewish apartments in Israel’s capital — a capital that neither the State
Department nor the White House spokesman would identify as Jerusalem —
and yet has never publicly chastised PA leader Mahmoud Abbas for
refusing to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.”
What remains in the Democratic platform is just as disturbing as what was revised.
In 2008, the platform proclaimed:
The United States . . . should continue to isolate Hamas until it
renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by
past agreements. . . . The creation of a Palestinian state through final
status negotiations, together with an international compensation
mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing
them to settle there, rather than in Israel.
Any proposed “settlement” of the Palestinian question that permits
Palestinians to exercise a claimed “right of return” to settle in Israel
represents an existential threat, as Israel could be swamped by Arab
immigrants, adding to the one-fifth of Israel’s population that is
already Arab. But the 2012 platform, after the usual bromides about U.S./Israeli
friendship, reads: “A just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian accord,
producing two states for two peoples, would contribute to regional
stability and help sustain Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic
state.”
The reference to isolating Hamas is gone. The rejection of a “right
of return” to Israel for Palestinians is gone. Instead, we see code
words about Israel’s sustaining its character as a “Jewish and
democratic state.” This is the language of Israel’s critics, who warn
darkly that Israel cannot continue to rule over the West Bank and
maintain its democratic bona fides. But Israel has no desire to rule the
West Bank, as it has amply demonstrated (it evacuated Gaza and has
granted near-total autonomy to the Palestinians in the West Bank). Only
the threat of violence and terror keeps a single Israeli soldier on the
West Bank.
The platform manages to patronize the Jewish state about maintaining
its soul, while minimizing the belligerence of its enemies and the
threats to its existence. The embarrassing floor spectacle merely
underlined the obvious coolness that a majority of Democrats — very much
including the incumbent president — feel toward Israel, their fulsome
denials notwithstanding.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2012 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
National Review
