A Diminished Netanyahu Meets Growing Protest in Congress

Editor’s note: On July 24, 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke before a joint session of the US Congress. Concurrently CIP co-hosted a counter-programming event, featuring among others Representative Pramila Jayapal, pictured above. The IPJ is happy to publish this paired response to Netanyahu’s speech, authored by Y.L. Al-Sheikh and Hadar Susskind.
 

Protest honors the dead. Action can save the living

Y.L. Al-Sheikh is a Palestinian-American writer and organizer.

Despite being responsible for the murder of more than 40,000 Palestinians and one of the most horrific campaigns of mass starvation in modern history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rewarded with the opportunity to come to Washington D.C. for a victory lap.

There will rightfully be many articles written on the saber rattling against Iran, or the slanderous attacks on American college students, but the most important element of the Prime Minister’s speech was by far his unsurprising rejection of Palestinian freedom and self-determination. By proposing that Gaza remain under Israeli “security control” for an indefinite amount of time, Netanyahu made clear yet again that he is ideologically opposed to anything but apartheid and Jewish supremacism between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. While it is obvious to anyone who pays attention that this sort of regime does not guarantee Jewish safety, the facts seemed to matter little on Capitol Hill.

Netanyahu peddled lie after lie about the last ten months of warfare and destruction. When the Prime Minister claimed there were no civilian deaths in Rafah, this was of course a lie. The Prime Minister said that there has been no use of starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians, and that is plainly untrue. The Prime Minister insisted that there are no plans to “resettle” Gaza, but his most senior coalition partners openly advocate for cleansing the land of its Palestinians and embedding Israeli settlers in their place. This is just a sampling of the falsehoods he threw at the audience.

Yet it was perhaps those who were or were not in attendance which painted the bigger picture. Roughly half of all the Democratic members of Congress opted to boycott Netanyahu’s propaganda tour, and those who didn’t were not keen to visibly approve of his rant. Palestinian-American state legislator Ruwa Romman (D-GA) was right to note that this demonstrates significant progress compared to the measly 58 Democrats who chose to boycott back in 2015. The boycott was hardly limited to socialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC, instead being embraced by the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, and Dick Durbin. This is likely because they know support for this war is unequivocally unpopular. Poll after poll shows that the demand for a ceasefire is a mainstream view, with voters more likely to cast a ballot for a Democrat who expresses clear support for a ceasefire than a Democrat who mirrors the Republican point of view. More than 45% of voters who expressed support for the Biden-Harris ticket believe that military assistance to Israel should be decreased. Some of the biggest labor unions in the country want President Biden to suspend military assistance entirely until the war is concluded. It is likely because of these facts that the Vice President herself opted not to attend Netanyahu’s remarks so soon after she became the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party in the forthcoming presidential election.

As promising as the trend-line is for the long-term prospects of a Democratic party that values Palestinian life, slow shifts offer cold comfort while the Biden-Harris administration still supplies Netanyahu and his government with the bullets and bombs that kill Palestinians and the United States still acts as a diplomatic shield protecting the State of Israel from the consequences of its decades-long illegal occupation. Displays of discontent do not bring our dead back to life, and symbolic gestures will not secure us what we are entitled to.

Without an arms embargo, sanctions on the government of the State of Israel and its settler enterprise, and an internationally coordinated push for Palestinian self-determination, it is unlikely that any ceasefire will actually be permanent. Durable peace is not possible without Palestine, and the sooner that Democrats in the United States understand this the better. Occupation and apartheid systems are systematic obstacles to peace, not just the choices of the present Prime Minister, and as such require systematic response, and not just a change in Israel’s leadership, to remedy.

It is time for the Democratic Party to face the one-state reality in the eyes, admit that there will be no such thing as peace in the Middle East so long as Palestinians are subject to military rule and displacement, and take meaningful action. If those who boycotted the Prime Minister’s speech are truly disgusted with what this war has produced, then they should demand that not another bomb be sent to the government of Israel until a permanent ceasefire is established. If those who claim to support democracy at home want to prove their sincerity, they ought to oppose military rule and racial segregation abroad and fight for an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine. It will be up to us who care about Palestinian and Jewish life alike to ensure that these advancements finally happen. The Vice President, if she wins in November, has the chance to work with us and be bold on this front. I hope that she takes it up.
 

Netanyahu and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Hadar Susskind is President and CEO, Americans for Peace Now, and an Israeli-American dual citizen.

Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stood before a joint session of Congress and spoke eloquently about Israel, about the October 7th attacks by Hamas, about the conflict with Hezbollah, about the looming threat of Iran, and about the US-Israel relationship. It was heartfelt, it was well delivered, and it was mostly not true.

He spoke about how Israel has allowed so much food into Gaza that any accusations of hunger as collective punishment are absurd. Sadly, it is his statement that strains credibility. The accounts of hunger are widespread and well documented.

He spoke about how he will do anything and everything to bring home the hostages still being held in Gaza. And yet, at this very speech, seven Israeli family members of those hostages were arrested for the “crime” of wearing t-shirts reading “Seal the Deal Now”. Those grieving family members showed up in those shirts knowing that they could be arrested, but did so despite that risk because they cannot otherwise get their Prime Minister’s attention, unless it’s for a photo-op.

He also spoke about how Iran is funding the “anti-Israel” protest in the United States, including those that took place right outside of the Capitol Building yesterday. As someone who helped lead, and spoke at, one of those protests, I can assure you, that wasn’t true either. The protest I spoke at, organized by UnXeptable, a group of Israeli ex-pats living here in the United States and cosponsored by many American Jewish organizations, featured rabbis, IDF veterans, and hostage families. Each demanded that Netanyahu end the war, bring home the hostages, and stop prioritizing his own political survival over the good of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

One remarkable facet of Netanyahu’s speech was how few people were there to hear it. Approximately half of the Democratic caucus (and one Republican) declared that they were unwilling to be used as props for Netanyahu’s speech, and they didn’t go. And many of those who were there, including the senior Jewish member of Congress Jerry Nadler, made their disdain for Netanyahu very clear. Even Senator Chuck Schumer, a longtime friend of the Prime Minister, gave him barely a nod as he entered, and received even less in return. This of course stems from Senator Schumer’s remarks in May in which he said he believes “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost his way and is an obstacle to peace in the region”.

Netanyahu spoke in English, but his real audience was back in Israel. He has, for his whole career, told Israelis that he and he alone knows how to “manage America”. That he can captivate Congress and build bipartisan support. Like most of his speech, it was never very true. But yesterday it was made absolutely clear that through his words, his actions, and his failed government, Netanyahu has alienated not only Democrats in Congress, but the many millions of Americans who they represent. If anything, Congress lags behind the opinions of those Americans, many of whom were surprised and disappointed to see that any Democrats showed up for the speech.

Between the protests outside, the members of Congress who skipped the speech, the hostage families who showed up only to get arrested, and the disdain that the speech was met with in Israel, it is clear that Netanyahu had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.