photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

Before being accepted to a fraternity or sorority, inductees must take a pledge to uphold its beliefs such as loyalty to fellow members. Similarly, before accepting members to its movement, American progressives are demanding a pledge that they take a stand against Israel.

For example, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a charter member of the so-called progressive Squad in Congress, says if you don’t believe Israel is an “apartheid state,” then “it’s become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values.”

Wait a minute. Israel an apartheid state? The Israeli Declaration of Independence calls for a nation that “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” Today, the country is 73% Jewish and 27% non-Jewish. No law restricts non-Jewish citizens to certain neighborhoods. If cities and towns where Arabs live tend to be poorer, that’s comparable to the situation in the United States where 17% of Black people live in high-poverty neighborhoods as compared to 4% of white people. Both countries have work to do. Neither is an apartheid state.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another founding member of the Squad, has accused Israel of genocide, defined by Dictionary.com as “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” Genocide does indeed underlie the current Hamas-Israel War. But AOC has a topsy-turvy understanding of the conflict. Genocide is the war aim of Hamas, not Israel. The Hamas Covenant calls for Islam to “obliterate” Israel and to “vanquish” all Jews. Hamas does not deny it. When an interviewer on Lebanese TV asked senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad whether Hamas’s war aims include the “annihilation of Israel,” Hamad responded, “Yes, of course.”

Israel’s stated war aims are to free its hostages held by Hamas and put an end to its military and political power. Israel has said it would stop fighting if Hamas releases its hostages. Thousands of Gazans, at great danger to themselves, are now protesting against Hamas with calls for release of the remaining Israeli hostages. At the end of March, Oday al-Rubai was abducted by gunmen in Gaza City and murdered after taking part in such a protest. His family blames Hamas. So, there are protests against Hamas by Gazans but not by American progressives?

The United States Palestinian Community Network attacks “so called” progressives for support of Israel, which it deems “illegitimate” because of its “white settler-colonialism.” Illegitimate? The State of Israel was established by a 1947 vote of the United Nations. White? Almost half of Israel’s Jews trace their recent ancestry to the Arab and Muslim world and another 3% from Ethiopia. Twenty-one percent of the country are Arabs. Colonialism? If anything, Jews are the indigenous people of the Holy Land, having been there for over 3,000 years.

Another member of the progressive Squad, Rep. Ilhan Omar, has attributed support of Israel to the “Benjamins, baby.” She’s referring to political contributions by pro-Israel Americans — hundred-dollar bills bear a picture of Benjamin Franklin. If Omar were going to follow the byword of the Watergate scandal — “follow the money” — she’d find a foreign country trying to suborn American democracy with “Benjamins.”

In their recent article “How Qatar Bought America,” Frannie Block and Jay Solomon outline how the small Persian Gulf nation spent almost $100 billion over the last two decades “aiming to shape U.S. policy — or shield themselves from it.” Qatar spent “three times more in the U.S. than Israel did on lobbyists, public-relations advisers, and other foreign agents in 2021.” It also supported Hamas with over $1.8 billion over the years. Recently visited by President Donald Trump, Qatar offered him a 747 jet as a gift and is the prospective site of a new Trump luxury golf resort.

A key plank in any progressive platform is support for LGBT rights. Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, holds Asia’s largest gay pride parade each year with up to 250,000 participants. (It was canceled last year, though, in respect to the hostages still held by Hamas.) In Equaldex’s LGBT Equality Index, Israel is ranked 39th, seven slots behind the U.S. Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank, is ranked 158th. Which country should progressives be supporting?

Even if progressives believe what they are saying about Israel, why have they singled it out when more outrageous behavior exists elsewhere in this world of ours? Actual settler colonials from China are today taking over Tibet, which was invaded and conquered by China in 1950. The United States has also found China guilty of genocide for subjecting Uyghurs to imprisonment, forced labor, torture, rape and sterilization. What about Russia, which launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine and abducted Ukrainian children? What about Myanmar, where, according to the State Department, the government “launched a brutal campaign against Rohingya — razing villages, raping, torturing, and perpetrating large-scale violence that killed thousands.”

Why are progressives protesting only against a multiethnic democracy, fighting in a war started by a terrorist group bent on genocide? Because they don’t think Jews, 0.2% of the world population, deserve their own nation? The French do, the Russians do, the Americans do, but not the Jews whose roots in Israel go back three millennia? There can be an Islamic Republic of Iran and an Islamic Republic of Pakistan, but not a Jewish State of Israel?

Does a strain of antisemitism run through so-called progressives in this country?

I do not support Trump’s policies attacking education, undermining due process, ignoring court orders and embracing authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, I am a proud American patriot.

I am no fan of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and fervently wish it did better in feeding the hungry and avoiding deaths of noncombatants. Still, I support the State of Israel in defending its right to exist against its genocidal, terroristic neighbor.

And most of all, I support what ought to be the most important plank in any progressive agenda — a lasting peace.

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.