MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : CRITICAL U.S. JEWISH CAUCUS – Netanyahu clashes with left-wing US Jews over migrants, Gaza

Bryant Harris April 4, 2018  – AL MONITOR  –  Article Summary – The latest actions by Israel’s right-wing government are further straining historically bipartisan support in Congress.  Israel’s pending expulsion of thousands of African asylum seekers and violent suppression of Palestinian protesters is further straining ties between the country’s right-wing government and left-wing US Jewish groups, potentially undermining bipartisan support for Israel in Congress.Leading American Jewish organizations and Democratic lawmakers have expressed dismay at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to go forward with plans to deport thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese migrants.

Meanwhile, more liberal groups and a handful of progressive Democrats have accused the Israeli military of overreacting by using live fire against Hamas-inspired protesters at the border with Gaza.

“The killing of Palestinian protesters by Israeli forces in Gaza is tragic,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tweeted over the weekend. “It is the right of all people to protest for a better future without a violent response.”

Sanders, a Jewish lawmaker who was the progressive left’s standard bearer in the 2016 presidential primaries, later added on CNN that “Israel overreacted.”

Meanwhile, the liberal group J Street, which endorsed more than half the current Democratic House members, urged restraint by Israel in a statement and said it was “dismayed” by the government’s “out of hand” rejection of an investigation into the deaths of unarmed protesters.

Netanyahu in turn has lashed out at the US Jewish left, singling out the nonprofit New Israel Fund for allegedly undermining a deal in which Rwanda would have taken many of the asylum seekers. Netanyahu called for a Knesset investigation into the group, which funds several leftist Israeli human rights organizations that have been critical of Netanyahu’s policies.

“I don’t know any Western democracy, and particularly not the United States, that would’ve been willing to tolerate for long such hostile activity funded by foreign countries, as has been the case here in Israel with the fund for decades,” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

The clash is but the latest escalation in an ongoing battle between the Israeli right and the US Jewish left that reached new heights after Netanyahu led the charge against the Barack Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

The New Israel Fund has awarded more than $250 million in grants to Israeli civil society organizations in the nearly four decades since its establishment in 1979. Its grantees include organizations critical of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank such as Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem, which have long drawn the ire of Israeli conservatives.

The organization responded with a defiant statement denying the accusations and dismissing them as “a blatant assault on Israeli civil society from an increasingly desperate and flailing” prime minister. New Israel Fund CEO Daniel Sokatch told Al-Monitor that he was ready to fly to Israel to directly answer any questions before the Knesset.

“The prime minister and his political allies in and outside of the government have long used the New Israel Fund [and other groups] as scapegoats to distract and divert attention from their own horrible policies in some of the cases, or in this case their humiliating failures at doing their job,” Sokatch told Al-Monitor.

He also scoffed at Netanyahu’s apparent argument that American Jews should not get involved in Israeli policymaking. He pointed to the pro-Israel advocacy done by myriad US-based Jewish groups as well as American Jewish conservative backing for Netanyahu and his coalition.

“The entire Zionist enterprise for 120 years has been predicated on folks within the US to strengthen the endeavor,” Sokatch told Al-Monitor.

“I think the prime minister will remember that he has a newspaper that an American mogul bought him that is free and thus the largest newspaper in Israel,” added Sokatch, referring to US casino mogul and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson’s funding of Israel Hayom.

Unlike the Gaza confrontation, the debate over the African migrants has sucked in a broad swath of American Jewish groups that support refugees because of their own historical experience. Groups including the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and the Union for Reform Judaism criticized Netanyahu’s decision this week to cancel a compromise with the UN Refugee Agency to keep about half the migrants in Israel. Under pressure from his right-wing allies, Netanyahu scrapped the deal on Tuesday and accused the New Israel Fund of seeking to “eliminate the Jewish character of Israel.”

“Prime Minster Netanyahu’s summary cancellation of the proposed migrant deal, a positive step toward resolving the matter, is unfortunate,” David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, a pro-Israel Jewish advocacy organization, said in a statement.

American Jewish advocacy against the deportations has not been lost on Democratic lawmakers, who took the rare step of opining on domestic Israeli politics during a congressional delegation to Israel last week. During the trip, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and 10 other House Democrats urged the prime minister to release 280 Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers from Israel’s Saharonim prison.

“We are surprised that this group remains incarcerated after a clear decision and injunction from the High Court of Justice preventing their deportation by force,” the lawmakers wrote in a follow-up letter to Netanyahu sent last week. “With this judicial order, there is no legal justification for deportation, and therefore no grounds for continued detention. These asylum seekers should be released.”

The Congressional Black Caucus has also pushed the Israeli government on the release of the African detainees. Two caucus members, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Rep. Donald McEachin, D-Va., participated in the delegation and signed the letter.

Bryant Harris is Al-Monitor’s congressional correspondent. He was previously the White House assistant correspondent for Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.  www.mesop.de