| The Democratic Civil War Over Israel Is Just Getting Started |
 | A view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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| If you are tired of the endless debates over Representative Ilhan Omar’s tweets calling
American support for Israel “all about the Benjamins,” then we have bad news for you. This is just the beginning. The next two years of American politics are all but certain to be filled with vicious, heated debates over Israel. |
| American foreign policy toward Israel is becoming, for the first time ever, a deeply partisan issue, and one that resonates with political identities in both parties. That is causing two things to happen, both of which will bring many more political fights over Israel. |
| First, Democratic lawmakers are out of step with much of their voter base, who have grown skeptical of Israel and sympathetic to Palestinians. This is setting up the party for a civil war between establishment Democrats, who remain friendlier to Israel, and younger and more left-wing Democrats who are closer to the base. |
| For the most part, the party has been able to prevent that divide from exploding open, but this will become harder as the Democratic presidential primary ramps up. A serious debate over whether the party should recalibrate its position on Israel is all but inevitable. The infighting over Ms. Omar’s tweets, while less about Israel per se than tangential issues of lobbying and anti-Semitism, showed how much anger and distrust this issue can bring out. |
| Second, Republicans, who understand that they face difficult prospects in the 2020 election, see an opportunity to widen Democratic party divides. Indeed, this whole controversy was set off when Representative Kevin McCarthy, who is the House minority leader, suggested that Ms. Omar was anti-Semitic. He was vague but appeared to be referring to her criticism of Israeli policies. This was what Ms. Omar was responding to when she sent her tweets. Expect more Republican efforts to split the Democrats over Israel. |
| This isn’t just an issue of partisan or identity politics. American policy toward Israel could be about to change dramatically, maybe for good — and for reasons that have much to do with Israeli strategy toward the United States. |
| The “bipartisan consensus on Israel,” as it is known within Washington, first took shape in the 1980s. |
| For reasons that are complex, and that have changed considerably over time, both parties have sought to treat Israel as a permanent, cultural ally much like Britain or Canada. This came with a cost to Israel: in order to live up to its image as a bastion of American values in the Middle East, it would have to end its occupation of Palestinian territory. Presidents from both parties pressured Israel to make peace, even if they rarely pushed hard enough to risk backlash from American voters. |
| Though this consensus emerged organically within American politics, Israeli leaders have worked to maintain it ever since. |
| But Israel’s strategy has changed under Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s right-wing prime minister. Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, Mr. Netanyahu has sought to align Israel with the Republican party, whose hawkishness toward Iran and skepticism of Palestinians line up
with Mr. Netanyahu’s policy goals. |
| This would come at the cost of alienating Democrats, whose voter base was already trending away from long-held support for Israel. But Mr. Netanyahu’s gambit was that he could get Republicans to let him pursue more hard-line policies toward Iran and the Palestinians. Under the bipartisan consensus, Israel had been expected to seek peace with the Palestinians. By turning peace into a Democratic issue, Mr. Netanyahu reduced that pressure. |
| But Mr. Netanyahu’s antagonism toward the Democratic party — he all but endorsed Mr. Obama’s opponent in the 2012 presidential election and gave a speech to Congress in 2015 overtly opposing Mr. Obama’s policy on Iran — has come at a cost. |
| Within the Democratic base, including among Jews and racial minorities, antagonism toward Israel is rising. A new generation of left-wing, activist-oriented Democratic politicians feels little nostalgia for the era of, say, Bill Clinton. Even many establishment Democrats are less eager to make sacrifices for Israel after watching Mr. Netanyahu’s attempts to humiliate their president. |
| And Israel itself has changed, taking an ideological path somewhat similar to that of the Republican party under Donald Trump. The country has become more right wing and overtly ethnonationalist
, for instance passing a recent law that formally declared
the right of national self-determination to be “unique to the Jewish people.” It has largely abandoned any pretense of entertaining peace with the Palestinians. |
| Mr. Netanyahu’s strategy helped him win some big gains from President Trump, who has made support for hard-line Israeli policies
a central component of his foreign policy, along with support for Saudi Arabia and antagonism toward democratic allies like Germany. |
| But the more that Democratic voters associate pro-Israel policies with Mr. Trump — and particularly with his foreign policy, which is broadly unpopular
— the more that Democratic politicians will feel compelled to reject or at least question those positions. |
| That is not to say that any Democrat questioning American policy toward Israel is acting purely out of political calculus. |
| The top Democratic policy objective with Israel has always been to achieve a peace deal known as the two-state solution. (That was also a top Republican objective up through the George W. Bush administration.) Mr. Netanyahu’s government is widely seen as having made a two-state solution more difficult and maybe, at this point, impossible. An emerging view among some left-wing Democrats is that peace is a moral imperative that can be better achieved by pressuring the Israeli government than by offering it unlimited and unconditional support. |
| But that policy debate, while real, is increasingly becoming a flash point for Democratic divides — generational and left-versus-moderate — that go way beyond foreign policy. It does not help the Democratic old guard that one of the party’s highest-ranked leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, is also one of its most vocal supporters of Israel. |
| So virtually any time that Israel comes up, the party’s moderate establishment and its left-wing rising stars will be at odds — and over an issue that seems to bring out everyone’s worst. Party leaders are eager to tamp that down. |
| But this is still a real, important debate over what sort of policy the party should have toward Israel if and when it retakes the White House. Should it resolve in favor of a more left-wing position, which seems possible given the party’s general leftward tilt, that could change American policy toward the Middle East for a generation. |
| It’s important to note that, while the dustup over Ms. Omar’s tweets foreshadows more debates and controversies to come, her specific claims do not reflect how the left of the Democratic party typically talks about Israel. Senator Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser gently disputed
Ms. Omar’s statements, as did J Street
, an advocacy group that promotes liberal positions on Israel. Ms. Omar herself disavowed the tweets in an apology. |
| A more representative left-wing position might be that of Mr. Sanders, who supports maintaining American backing for Israel but has sharply criticized
Mr. Netanyahu’s policies, particularly toward the Palestinians. Some left-wing activists want Americans to pressure Israel to make peace by boycotting Israeli goods, but this has yet to find a prominent Democratic champion. |
| For the Republican party, raising those debates is all upside. The Republican base is unified on having a policy that is as supportive of Israel as possible. As a wedge issue
, it allows Republicans to rally their base and divide Democrats. |
| So expect many more debates and controversies over Democratic statements on Israel. |
