Is Kamala Just Biden Her Time?

By Steve Sheffey

If you remember nothing else, remember this:

• Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has strong ties to the Jewish and pro-Israel communities.
• Trump suffered a major diplomatic defeat at the UN on Friday, again proving the incoherence of his Iran policy.
• The roadmap to normalization between Israel and the UAE suspends unilateral annexation efforts that Trump had encouraged.
• Normalization of ties between Israel and any Arab country is good, but the existential threat to Israel was never chilly relations with the UAE and it is too early to assess the significance of this development.
• Trump’s Middle East policy has moved Iran closer to nuclear weapons than when he took office and pushed Israel and the Palestinians further from peace than when he took office.
• On Tuesday, GOP voters across the country rewarded anti-Semitism.

It’s Biden-Harris. Joe Biden’s record on Israel is longer and stronger than any previous nominee from either party, and he chose a running mate whose foreign policy views match his. Ron Kampeas and Jewish Insider outline Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) connections to all things Jewish. Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) tracks where the presidential candidates and their parties stand on issues of concern to Jewish voters.

Trump’s Iran policy failed at the UN. The Trump administration suffered a major diplomatic defeat on Friday when its proposal to extend an arms embargo against Iran was overwhelmingly defeated by the UN Security Council. Moreover, the arms embargo that Trump wanted to extend has not”significantly affected Iranian military capabilities, regional behavior, or ability to arms its proxies.”

Now the Trump administration will try to snap back sanctions under the JCPOA: “An interesting idea — if only a certain country hadn’t detonated the JCPOA framework.” By withdrawing from the Iran Deal without any credible Plan B while Iran was still in compliance, Trump took remedies that otherwise might have been available to the U.S., including snapback, off the table.

On the other hand, lest anyone accuse me of not being even-handed, Jarrett Blanc notes in this thread that Trump did get one country to vote for its resolution, and that’s “one more than zero. And, to be fair, they successfully cast their own vote as well.”

This follows the failure of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran which, as the Washington Post explains, “failed to achieve either its stated or unstated aims: It has not forced Iran to renegotiate the nuclear accord from which President Trump unwisely withdrew; nor has it ended Iranian aggression in the Middle East or caused the regime of Ali Khamenei to collapse.”

Iran, not the UAE, is an existential threat to Israel. But…

Israel and the UAE reached an agreement. The roadmap to normalization announced on Thursday between Israel and the United Arab Emirates requires Israel to “suspend” efforts toward unilateral annexation, which throws Prime Minister Netanyahu the lifeline he needed and gives Trump and Bibi a pre-election boost. The UAE emphasized that this agreement is a roadmap toward normalization, not normalization. It’s not a peace agreement, but it does enshrine the emerging status quo in the region.

The UAE and Israel have been moving toward normalization for years including, as Biden noted in his statement, during the Obama administration. But the roadmap was announced on Trump’s watch, and moving toward normalization is good.

It’s hard to evaluate the significance of this announcement because much is unknown. Normalization is good. Delaying unilateral annexation is better than moving forward on unilateral annexation. But does taking unilateral annexation off the table (for now) mean that more Arab countries will look the other way as long as Israel does not change the legal status of the territories but continues to build settlements, which could make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve?

The most compelling argument for a two-state solution was never that it was essential for Israel-Arab relations. Rather, a two-state solution is the only solution that would ensure a Jewish, democratic state of Israel, and that remains true even if Israel normalizes relations with its Arab neighbors. The unkown is whether normalization, if it continues, will create dynamics that will make it easier or harder for Israel to address the existential necessity of a two-state solution. The prospect of unilateral annexation led to unprecedented calls by some members of Congress to condition aid to Israel on unilateral annexation because it was contrary to the shared values that are the basis of our alliance. At some point, unless action to the contrary is taken, Israel’s control of the West Bank will seem permanent, and at that point, Israel will be faced with the choice of whether to remain Jewish or whether to remain democratic — a choice that will have major repercussions for U.S.-Israel relatons.

Unilateral annexation was on the table because the Trump administration, unlike previous administrations, allowed it on the table. This agreement puts unilateral annexation on hold, an achievement akin to fumbling the ball behind the line of scrimmage and regaining lost yardage on the next play.

Israel is further from a two-state solution than it was when Trump took office. Israel cannot remain Jewish and democratic without ceding the West Bank or demonstrating its commitment to ceding the West Bank when the Palestinians demonstrate that they are ready for peace. As a practical matter, that means stopping settlement expansion, dismantling settlements outside the major blocs, and eliminating unilateral annexation from further consideration, not delaying it.

I wrote on April 24, 2019, that “the motivation for annexation differs from the motivation for the BDS movement, but each threatens Israel’s legitimacy and existence as a democratic, Jewish state. Bibi opposed annexation until a few days before the election. He knows what it would mean. If anyone can walk it back he can, but he may need our help.”

On Thursday, more than a year later, he got the help he needed. The key word in the agreement is “suspend.” Bibi said after the agreement was announced that he still plans unilateral annexation, signaling to the right that Bibi is still their guy and signaling to the world that Bibi is not serious about a two-state solution. But that’s better than unilateral annexation now, and it preserves the possibility for progress under a Biden administration.

To the extent unilateral annexation is off the table, calls by some Democrats to condition aid to Israel are off the table. The strong relationship between Israel and the U.S. is based on shared security interests and shared values. Allies can disagree and remain allies. But if Israel contemplates action that flies in the face of our shared values, those of us who care about our alliance need to speak up, because by speaking up, we can prevent bad outcomes.

I disagree with even symbolic conditioning of aid (which is what some Democrats proposed — as currently structured, U.S. assistance to Israel could not be used to finance annexation), but just as we will never know what Trump’s role in reaching this agreement really was, so too we will never know the extent to which Joe Biden’s vocal opposition to unilateral annexation, reiterated in his statement, factored into Bibi’s decision to suspend it — Shibley Telhami explains that the prospect of a Biden presidency and “uniform Democratic opposition to Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank was key in the calculus.”

This is complicated. Read Michael Koplow’s article and these threads by Ilan Goldenberg, Yael Mizrahi-Arnaud and Aaron Weinberg for other perspectives.

Tuesday, GOP voters rewarded anti-Semitism. Several Republican candidates were rewarded for anti-Semitic rhetoric with primary victories on Tuesday. Former congressman Jason Lewis (R-MN) won his U.S. Senate primary. Lewis has said that Republicans had “dual loyalties” to Israel and that support for Israel was the result of AIPAC and a “very strong American Jewish lobby.”

Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-MN), who said Joe Lieberman supported the Iraq War because he was Jewish and who accused his Democratic opponent, Dan Feehan, of being owned by George Soros, also advanced to the general election.

Conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has made racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic statements, won her congressional primary. Trump congratulated her. She will win in November.

Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), who has yet to apologize or even accept responsibility for anti-Semitic ads he ran against his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, won his primary.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) did not have a primary, but she nonetheless managed to use the anti-Semitic George Soros trope (and threw in some other Jews for good measure) last week.

We also learned last week that GOP congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who won his June primary, called Hitler “Führer” and displays in his home an early American flag that the ADL says has been appropriated by far-right extremists.

The GOP, led by Donald Trump, has become the party of anti-Semitism and white nationalism.

Steve Sheffey is Senior Strategy and Policy Adviser to the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) and the publisher of the weekly Chicagoland Pro-Israel Political Update. Sign up for his newsletter here. The views expressed here are his own.