The Israeli election that brought Bibi back should serve as a warning for the Uncommitted Movement

The November 2022 Israeli election that brought Bibi Netanyahu back to power should be the canary in the coal mine for supporters of the Uncommitted Movement of pro-Palestinian Democrats. 

The Uncommitted National Movement emerged during this year’s Democratic primaries as a means of expressing dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden’s policy on the war in Gaza. The most contentious issue was the continued supply of offensive weapons used in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. Israel was responding to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 Israelis.

More than 700,000 people chose “uncommitted” in Democratic presidential primaries, NBC News reported. In the swing state of Michigan — which has a significant population of Palestinian and Lebanese immigrants — slightly over 100,000 votes (13%) were cast in the Democratic primary for “uncommitted.”

Last month, the Uncommitted Movement refused to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, while also making clear its opposition to former President Donald Trump or voting for third-party candidates. 

Uncommitted Movement co-chair Layla Elabed, a Palestinian-American from Dearborn, Michigan, said this week in an interview for NBC News — NOW that even though she realizes “how dangerous a Trump presidency is going to be,” she is not going to cast a vote for president but instead focus on down-ballot candidates who align with her views.

Supporters of the Uncommitted Movement who are reluctant to vote for Harris solely over Gaza would do well to look at the similarities between Netanyahu and Trump. Netanyahu returned to power despite being on trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust filed in late 2019.

Netanyahu has called the charges against him a “witch-hunt” by his political enemies, asked parliament to grant him immunity, and has done everything to delay the trial proceedings.

National elections in Israel, as in the U.S., are decided by very narrow margins. Israel is a parliamentary democracy. A party needs to receive 3.25% of the overall vote to gain seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament.

Arab Israelis make up about 20 percent of the 9 million population.  There are four main predominantly Arab parties which are ideologically diverse — Hadash (communist), Ta’al  (secular nationalist), Balad (pan-Arab nationalist) and Ra’am (United Arab List — conservative-Islamist).

in March 2020, the four Arab parties ran together as a Joint List, emerging as the third-largest faction in the Knesset with 15 seats. Netanyahu was forced to form an uneasy coalition with his main rival, centrist Benny Gantz, which collapsed seven months later.

In March 2021, three Arab parties ran on the Joint List gaining six seats, while Ra’am ran separately getting four seats. And then the unimaginable happened — secular centrist Yair Lapid, religious ultra-nationalist Naftali Bennett, and Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas agreed to form a coalition government in June 2021 which enjoyed a razor-thin parliamentary majority. It marked the first time an independent Arab party had joined an Israeli governing coalition.

It seemed that Israelis had finally grown tired of Netanyahu, who had served as prime minister since 2009. Bennett replaced Netanyahu as prime minister with Lapid serving as foreign minister. But the unwieldy eight-party coalition collapsed in June 2022,  Parliament was dissolved and Lapid served as a caretaker prime minister through the November election.

Netanyahu returned to power as prime minister in December 2022 at the head of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, with a narrow 64-56 Knesset majority. 

Here’s how the New York Times described what was at stake in the election:

Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc includes a far-right alliance that seeks to upend Israel’s judicial system, end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank and legalize a form of corruption that Mr. Netanyahu is accused of committing. The bloc also includes two ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose the secularization of Israeli public life. …

By contrast, Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents presented the election as a bid to protect Israel’s liberal democracy. In particular, they warned of his dependence on a far-right alliance that has frequently antagonized Israel’s Arab minority and seeks to remove checks and balances on the lawmaking process.

This time, the four Arab parties ran on three separate lists, winning 10 seats. Balad, the Palestinian Arab nationalist party, ran on its own, receiving 2.9 percent, falling about 15,000 votes short of the threshold for winning Knesset seats. An Israeli leftist party, Meretz, also ran on its own, failing to reach the 3.25 percent threshold by about 4,000 votes. If both parties had won seats, Netanyahu would have lost the election.

Arab voter turnout was just 53 percent, far below the overall national turnout rate of 71 percent, according to The Israel Democracy Institute. That means nearly half of all eligible Arab voters sat out the election despite the stakes. A survey by the Democracy Institute found that more than half of Arab voters didn’t believe that voting will change their situation.

But Netanyahu’s right-wing government certainly has made the situation worse for Israeli Arabs.

Minister of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of a Jewish supremacist party, in his younger years was convicted eight times for offenses that include racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Ben-Gvir has called for deporting his political opponents and having the police take a tougher line against anti-government protesters.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. a self-described “proud homophobe,” is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party. He has called for annexing the entire West Bank.

Vox wrote that Netanyahu’s policy failures enabled Hamas to mount its deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Netanyahu was preoccupied with staying out of jail, pushing for a controversial judicial reform package that stirred widespread protests.

Vox wrote:

Distracted by both the fight to seize control over Israel’s judiciary and their effort to deepen Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Netanyahu and his cabinet allowed military readiness to degrade and left outposts on the Gaza border in the south unmanned.

Anshel Pfeffer, a journalist for the liberal Israeli Haaretz newspaper, wrote in The Atlantic, that Netanyahu should now be considered “Israel’s worst prime minister ever.” Pfeffer wrote:

“He has brought far-right extremists into the mainstream of government and made himself, and the country, beholden to them. His corruption is flamboyant. And he has made terrible security decisions that brought existential danger to the country he pledged to lead and protect. Above all, his selfishness is without parallel: He has put his own interests ahead of Israel’s at every turn.”

That same description might just as well apply to Trump. Supporters of the Uncommitted Movement should realize that the election offers a binary choice between Trump or Harris.

And that choice should be clear if you just look at Trump’s track record. Trump has long believed that politics is transactional — a quid pro quo relationship between donor and politician.

The Forward, an independent Jewish newspaper, wrote that in September 2016 the billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021, was the most generous single donor for Trump, spending $20 million. Adelson’s support was leveraged to a demand that Trump announce the relocation of the U.S. embassy from  Tel Aviv to Jerusalem when he won. 

Trump relocated the embassy, breaking a policy supported by past Democratic and Republican administrations.

In September 2020, Adelson reportedly purchased the U.S. ambassador’s official residence near Tel Aviv for about $67 million in a move that was seen as helping prevent the embassy from relocating back to Tel Aviv.

In the final stretch of the 2020 presidential campaign, Adelson and his Israeli-born wife Miriam donated $75 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.

Adelson, a staunch supporter of Netanyahu, was also actively engaged in Israeli politics, He launched a pro-Netanyahu newspaper Israel Hayom to give the Israeli people “a fair and balanced view of the news.”  He also helped bankroll the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

And Trump’s policy decisions fulfilled Adelson and Netanyahu’s wish list. Trump backed out of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and supported Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. The Trump administration also broke with previous U.S. policy by declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are no longer illegal, That effectively gave Israel a green light to expand and annex West Bank settlements.

And that brings us to 2024.  Netanyahu has repeatedly scuttled Biden’s efforts to work out a cease-fire deal and the conflict now threatens to escalate into a Mideast war. And lest there be any doubt about which candidate Netanyahu supports, this Oct. 21 story in Slate. should raise alarm bells. 

Slate wrote:

Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, mainly about the Middle East wars. According to Trump, the Israeli leader said he disregarded President Joe Biden’s warning to keep troops out of Rafah in southern Gaza, a decision that resulted in the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a shootout in the area. Trump also said Netanyahu asked him for advice on how to respond to Iran’s missile attack on Israel—to which Trump said he responded, “Do what you have to do.”

This is an extraordinary tale. If it’s accurate (and Israeli officials have since confirmed Trump made the call), the former-and-possibly-future American president admitted that he committed not only an act of diplomatic recklessness but also, quite possibly, a federal crime.

Slate said that Trump’s actions could be a violation of the Logan Act, dating back to 1799, which bars private U.S. citizens from having, “directly or indirectly,” any unauthorized “correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government … in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States.”

Slate added:

If Netanyahu did say on the phone call that he’s ignoring Biden’s warning about restraints on the use of armed force, he may have done so in response to a request by Trump: Don’t accept any cease-fire deal offered by Biden. If I win in November, I’ll offer you a better deal.

Slate reminded readers that there is an ugly but relevant precedent for this. Back in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to start Vietnam War peace talks in part to help the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Republican candidate Richard Nixon found out about the impending peace talks and through an intermediary got South Vietnam’s president to cancel the first session. Nixon promised a better deal if he won the election. He won a narrow victory and the Vietnam War continued for another seven years.

This year, Miriam Adelson, a physician and former officer in the Israel Defense Forces, has put $100 million into Preserve America, a pro-Trump Super Pac she founded, and is now asking other billionaires to help keep the group going through Election Day, The New York Times reported.

New York magazine, in a profile on Adelson, posed the question: What will she expect in return for making a major donation to Trump:

Beyond unconditional support for the Israel-Hamas war, one can assume she’ll press for the unfinished items of Trump’s Israel agenda from last term. Top of that list: Israel annexing the West Bank and the U.S. recognizing its sovereignty there.

That would effectively mean an end to the long-standing U.S. policy of supporting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

After the donation was made, The New York Times wrote that Adelson’s spokesman denied that she was urging Trump to publicly support an Israeli annexation of the West Bank in exchange for her donation. But it also quoted Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a long-time friend of the Adelsons, as believing that she supported annexation and considered so-called “land for peace” deals to actually be “land for war.”

Contributing writer Uri Friedman, in an opinion piece for The Atlantic, wrote:

Compared with the Biden administration, a second Trump administration would probably be more permissive toward the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and less inclined to bring U.S. leverage to bear in shaping Israeli conduct (as the U.S. government recently did by warning Israel that it could lose military assistance if it doesn’t provide more humanitarian aid to Gaza).

And that raises the question of whether Trump would do anything to rein in Israel if the ultra-nationalists in Netanyahu’s government are able to enact their most extreme policies.

Earlier this week, Smotrich and Bezalel spoke at an ultranationalist conference on the Gaza border that called for the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza.

Smotrich said the Gaza Strip was “part of the Land of Israel” and that “without settlements, there is no security.” Ben-Gvir advocated encouraging Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza to other countries, calling this “the most ethical and the most correct solution.”

And yet there are some on the left, such as socialist Kshama Sawant, a former Seattle City Council member, who are supporting Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Sawant, speaking at an event in Dearborn, Mich., a city with a large Arab-American population, said it’s “a top goal” to prevent Harris from winning the critical swing state “because she is supporting the genocide” in Gaza.

But as MSNBC Opinion Writer Zeesham Aleem observed:

​​If the efforts to abandon Harris en masse succeed, then the activists behind it will have done a great disservice to their cause: Trump will undoubtedly lead to more suffering in the Middle East. …

Trump hasn’t signaled that he views anything Israel has done as wrong or that he would put any limits on Netanyahu.

And Aleem concluded:

A vote against Trump is not only an action that will reduce harm, but will also ensure a less hostile activist terrain for actually achieving the longer-term goal of ending unconditional U.S. support for Israel. There is a tremendous amount of political organizing and protesting that needs to be done in the U.S. to build a mandate for the U.S. government to change its policies in the region. That organizing is going to have a much higher chance of working against a Harris administration than a Trump one. Not only is Harris more likely to concede to protesters if they develop a big enough movement, but she’s less likely to repress them as harshly as Trump has reportedly promised to do.

Seeking to "punish" Democrats might make some people feel pure. But if it succeeds it's going to make the horrifying situation in Gaza even worse.

We've already seen the consequences of the last Israeli election. Supporters of the Uncommitted Movement should not make the same mistake by abandoning Harris.