Me and Rahm Emanuel are in Israel at the same time.
Coincidence? You betcha.
I’m here to enjoy the vibrancy and resiliency of the Israeli people after more than two years of war, of missile attacks, of mass population displacement, of scooping up their children and racing to bomb shelters in the middle of the night.
I’m also here to enjoy the beach, not to bitch out the Israeli government.
Rahm Emanuel, whose father was born in Jerusalem and who fought in Israel’s War of Independence, who had his son’s bar mitzvah in the shadow of the Western Wall, came to Israel this past week to bury Bibi, not to praise him. He came to publicly slap Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upside the head and to lecture the Israeli people about everything their government is doing wrong.
It was a blatant effort to make himself relevant to the leftists in the Democrat Party, the group he desperately needs to woo, if he has any prayer at winning the party’s presidential nomination.
So, he took the stage at Tel Aviv University and delivered his full-throated appeasement of the anti-Israel wing of his party, the cadre that will exert maximum influence on all the candidates during the presidential primary season.
Simply said, he read Israel the riot act.
He called for the end of US military aid to Israel. He called for sanctions against Israelis who commit acts of violence against Arabs from their settlements in Judea and Samaria. He said the Israeli government “is complicit in the horrors (emphasis mine) now being inflicted on innocent families in the West Bank.”
He didn’t actually accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza, but he sure came close, saying Israel is guilty of denying food and medicine to Gaza and for “leaving the world to conclude that Israelis not only want to kill Palestinians…but are completely indifferent to their death.”
He drew an equivalence with the “from the river to the sea” gang with the minority of Israelis who want to annex Judea and Samaria.
Of course, de rigueur, he called for the creation of some sort of Palestinian “entity” that somehow would live in peace and harmony alongside the State of Israel.
As a shrewd political animal, Emanuel didn’t deliver his speech in Israel without first reading the room amongst Democrats in the United States. Anti-Israel Dems are getting elected all over the nation. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found 60 percent of Democrats said they were more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis.
Emanuel is savvy enough to know that, as a Jew, he won’t have a fart in a blizzard’s chance of winning the Democrat presidential nomination if he doesn’t stake out his tough on Israel cred, and pronto.
But you know what? It won’t do him any good.
The New York Post said it best. Its headline on the story about his Tel Aviv speech said he “won’t win over the Jew-hating Dems he’s trying to appease.”
Rahm Emanuel is a failed former mayor, with no national following. He’s trying to create space as a presidential contender in a Democrat party where being anti-Israel is the price for entry for any candidate.
He’s also jumped with both feet into the pool of Jewish politicians who want to out un-Jew each other, to pass the requisite Democrat Party anti-Israel purity test.
Emanuel has joined Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who also think they’ll be more accepted into their party’s progressive, anti-Israel club, if they distance themselves from their heritage and from the Jewish state.
Pritzker has endorsed a push in the US Senate to block arms sales to Israel, to pressure Israel into alleviating what he called the starvation in Gaza.
Shapiro has said US policy toward Israel “clearly needs to change” and he implied Israel led the United States into war with Iran, saying “We should never, ever be bullied, as maybe President Trump was, by any other world leader.”
All that blabber won’t do them any good, either.
Sadly, today’s Democrat Party is a far cry from the party that nominated as its vice presidential candidate, that proud and outspoken Jew Joe Lieberman, who came within a hanging chad of getting elected in 2000.
By delivering that speech this past week in Tel Aviv, Emanuel can now say to the anti-Israel Democrats that have hijacked the party that he not only talks the anti-Israel talk, he traveled thousands of miles to walk the anti-Israel walk.
He came to Tel Aviv, trying to become a somebody in the new Democrat Party. But he left as the nobody he will certainly remain, leaving his integrity on the beautiful beaches of Tel Aviv.