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Tuesday, March 26, 2019

The Michael Pence of the United States spoke at AIPAC 2019.

Times of Israel reporting of Pence mongering identity politics stereotyping:

Addressing AIPAC’s 2019 Policy Conference, Pence excoriated freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s suggestion that the powerful lobby pays for politicians to back Israel, and that it pressures lawmakers to have an “allegiance” to the Jewish state.

He also condemned the Democratic leadership’s response to her remarks, as well as Democratic presidential hopefuls for opposing anti-BDS legislation and not appearing at this year’s AIPAC gathering.

[...] “It’s astonishing to think that party of Harry Truman, which did so much to create the State of Israel, has been co-opted by people who promote rank anti-Semitic rhetoric and work to undermine the broad American consensus of support for Israel… The party that’s been the home of so many American Jews for so long, today struggled to muster the votes to unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism in a resolution.”

American Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat. In the 2018 midterms, Democratic candidates won over 75% of the Jewish vote for House seats, compared with 73% in 2016 and 67% in 2014.

[...] “As governor of Indiana, I was proud to sign the toughest anti-BDS legislation of any state in the union. But remarkably, today, all but one Democrat running for president voted against the Combating BDS Act in the United States,” he said, referring to Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

And as I stand before you, eight Democrat candidates for president are actually boycotting this very conference. So let me be clear on this point: anyone who aspires to the highest office in the land should not be afraid to stand with the strongest supporters of Israel in America. It is wrong to boycott Israel and it is wrong to boycott AIPAC.”

While the progressive advocacy group MoveOn encouraged Democrats to skip AIPAC’s policy conference, it’s historically unusual for presidential candidates — or aspiring candidates — to address the confab during a non-election year. Indeed, while Hillary Clinton did not attend AIPAC’s conference in 2015, she did in 2016.

Also in his speech, Pence praised Trump for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, pulling America out of the Iran nuclear deal, and cutting aid to the Palestinians.

[bolding added] As the 75% vote figure and the 2020 Democratic Party candidates declining to be present at AIPAC 2019 shows, it is an antisemitic trope to assert what Pence implies, that all Jews are Zionist or embracing Zionism as a kind of litmus test of U.S. candidate electability and policy decency. As if they should have a dual loyalty. Is Pence asking that if Jews in the U.S. do not slavishly salute AIPAC and its ways and means and biases, they are not good Jews? It seems he gets real close to such a trope.

That the Democratic Party cannot be a good home for Jews, even those holding progressive viewpoints? Is Pence saying that? Pence bends things to appear to be claiming as if they are Jews they should hence by some reach of presumption, feel duty bound to vote GOP because he feels present Isreal lobby opinion is leaning that way. As if some tribal loyalty exists binding Jewish people to bow to AIPAC?

Years back in Minnesota Rudy Boschwitz and Paul Wellstone ran for the Seanate, both Jewish, and the people voted for the candidate with the better policies and the greatest sense of what America should be. Pence now is judging Wellstone's Jewishness? What? It's hard to grasp his exact point, except he misunderstands that someone can support BDS and be Jewish at the same time, in our pluralistic nation.

If that set of Pence assertions is not a trope of a necessity of a blind and unthinking dual loyalty, what is it?

_____________UPDATE______________
Pelosi avoided the insulting trope of - if you're a good Jew you do a lemming lineup for AIPAC, Zionism, and whatever the Israeli government of the day and in power does and wants; but she's self-declared entrenched in the camp even if it's not her litmus test for being a good Jew; see, e.g., Mondoweiss, "Pelosi downgrades Israel from ‘greatest political achievement of 20th century’ to just ‘one of the greatest’," which links back to a post of a host of Pelosi hyperbole going well beyond a courteous "attaboy." An earlier Crabgrass post links to the YouTube video from which the linked-to post opening image was taken.

________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Lest readers conclude from extensive coverage that Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians is a burning issue of conscience and imperative here; it is not. Yes, the Arabs are as human as I am and should have the same human decency accorded them as I'd want from others; but the entire focus here is the painfully apparent need for the Democratic Party to reform and evolve toward a more progressive entity than at present.

Haim Saban stands opposed to that progressive evolution so his position of biases deserves a full examination, as to his being as much an entrenched status quo Democratic Party lover as is Steny Hoyer; i.e., almost being as Steny as Steny; but using a fat wallet private sector poison rather than the DCCC's dumber and more reprehensible poisoning of their own damned well because it's how they've been.

One exploiting a fat personal wallet; the other a fat institutional wallet; each using it to screw progressives. Likely each thinks the old style ply-'em-with-cash and hope they stay bought way of running a nation is more reliable than having to deal with people of conscience where grassroots action and contributions are more valued than fat wallet creeps waving big checks.

Saban is direct and candid as well as primarily single issue and more admirable than a well tailored empty suit doing great behind the scenes evil including taking a dump on those trending toward progressive decency toward the governed while leaving an oil slick behind him like Steny, everywhere he goes. Or actually, I think of having lived in Seattle where garden slugs leave a slime trail marking everywhere they'd moved; Steny the Garden Slug being my image dripping it as he wends his way. What he did with that Democratic primary contender in Colorado is inexcusable. Inexcusabe in any event, but especially so when progressivism is the only future the Democratic Party has if it has a future at all. Counterproductively inexcusable. As the one joke goes if calling Steny's ways "lacking the intelligence and character of a brick," and getting threatned with a lible suit; and then moving the other way, saying "having the intelligence and character of a brick." Saban seems a cut better but that's faint praise. He did not gratuitously oppose Ellison, not wholly so, having instead the primary motive of holding politicians in line or cast out, over Israel.

Ilhan Omar has a closer sense of Muslim identity and suffering, and when she sequentially gets the Israel lobby dumping on her after the dump on Ellison, there comes a need to to say, Enough, and to speak out. BDS in an ideal world would not be needed to bring Israel to the table in good faith, but we lack an ideal world. Bernie and Warren are working on one, but they are not finding any easy path to Nirvana. Nor will they. But a President Bernie sure sings better than a Pres. Trump, or worse, a Pence.