Republicans Want to Give Netanyahu a Blank Check
“America First” conservatives are fuming at Biden for trying to limit attacks in Gaza rather than letting Israel do as it pleases.
During the 2012 presidential contest, one of Mitt Romney’s signature messages was that Barack Obama had allowed “daylight” to appear between the U.S. and Israel. Then as now, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was doing everything possible to undermine a two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. It was a pretty remarkable position for the leader of the allegedly superpatriotic party of “American exceptionalism,” as I noted at the time:
Mitt Romney is running for president on a platform of indistinguishable and conjoined exceptionalism for the U.S. and Israel. And because Israel faces a vastly greater military threat, this means America would abandon its own independence of action and consign its fate to Bibi Netanyahu, a man whose views on peace and security are highly controversial in Israel itself.
Well, some things never change. As President Biden made it clear on Wednesday that he was ready to act on his warnings to withhold U.S. weapons if Israel uses them to destroy Rafah, the last city left in Gaza, now-Senator Mitt Romney again stood behind Netanyahu unconditionally:
We stand by allies, we don’t second guess them. Biden’s dithering on Israel weapons is bad policy and a terrible message to Israel, our allies, and the world.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 8, 2024
He’s hardly alone. Reports earlier this week that the Biden administration was “pausing” delivery of offensive weapons to Israel as that country’s government seemed to greenlight a deadly Rafah ground offensive sent leading congressional Republicans into a frenzy, as Politico reported:
Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) all voiced frustration with the move and said the administration must explain itself.
McConnell, in a floor speech Wednesday, jeered the administration’s professed ironclad commitment as bending “under the heat of domestic political pressure from his party’s anti-Israel base and the campus Communists who decided to wrap themselves in the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah.”
Red-baiting aside, McConnell was calm compared to his colleague Lindsey Graham, who went into one of his patented rages when questioning Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin:
“If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the state of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price. This is obscene. It is absurd,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) fumed to Austin. “Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose. This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids.”
Republicans’ blood lust and their continued allegiance to the corrupt Netanyahu have been obvious throughout the Gaza war — for all the attention paid to “Genocide Joe” Biden by his antiwar critics. One low point of obeisance to the Israeli prime minister occurred in March, when GOP senators lashed out at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for calling for new Israeli elections and begged for a video audience with Netanyahu, the Washington Post reported at the time:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined Senate Republicans via live video conference Wednesday, his face and booming voice beamed into the party’s weekly closed lunch meeting. …
A week after Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) chastised Netanyahu and called for a new election in Israel, and amid mounting criticism from Democrats of Israel’s war in Gaza, congressional Republicans are seeking to amplify their party’s unconditional loyalty to the Jewish state, in contrast with the party that has long attracted the most Jewish voters. …
Rep. Max L. Miller (Ohio), one of two House Republicans who are Jewish, said Jewish voters are “pouring” into the Republican Party because of the rhetoric from Democrats. “Jewish voters see it,” Miller said. “They see that, you know, President Trump has stood beside Israel.”
Trump himself has been less supine toward Netanyahu, reportedly because he was angry at the Israeli leader for quickly acknowledging Biden’s 2020 election victory. But he has been a long-standing supporter of Israel’s political right wing and its contempt for Palestinians; his only actual criticism of Israel since the Gaza War began was over its government’s counterproductive release of video images of the horrendous damage Gaza and its people have suffered. He has also encouraged them to quickly liquidate resistance in Gaza, and has repeatedly blasted the Biden administration for willingness to accept a limited number of Palestinian refugees. Trump has also surrounded himself with advisers who impatiently await a full-on Israeli annexation of the occupied territories, as the New York Times reported in late March:
Even as Palestinian-rights organizers focus their ire on President Biden, the advisers who shaped Donald J. Trump’s Middle East policies when he was president have amplified calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank by Israel.
Those policy prescriptions, voiced by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his former ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, suggest a right-wing approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exceeding even the Trump administration’s lopsidedly pro-Israeli proposals for a two-state solution.
Kushner, perhaps his father-in-law’s most powerful adviser on Middle Eastern affairs, has even talked of permanently expelling the Palestinian population from Gaza, observing that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable.”
Assuming Biden steps up his criticism of the current Israeli government and either curbs the offensive on Rafah or carries out threats to cut limit U.S. military aid to defensive weapons, the commitment of Republicans to urge on Netanyahu to ever greater excesses — perhaps in the anticipation of a Trump victory that would eliminate any inhibitions in Washington over unconditional support — may grow more intense. It could become clearer than ever that these “America First” conservatives have no compunctions about outsourcing U.S. policy in the Middle East to their friends in Jerusalem. Certainly concerns for human life are at best secondary to the goal of leaving “no daylight” between the U.S. and this particular Israeli government.