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By Melanie Phillips
(JULY 21 ,2023 / ARUTZ SHEVA) Far from the diplomatic triumph that some are making it out to be, Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to Congress this week left a bad taste in the mouth.
Certainly, the audience punctuated his remarks with repeated applause and standing ovations. For many members, warmth towards Israel is genuine and for some even profound. The Democratic Party, however, is sliding into increasing hostility.
Seven Democrats in the House of Representatives, along with the independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, boycotted Herzog’s address. Last Saturday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told a group of Palestinian supporters, “Israel is a racist state.”
After she was forced into a mealy-mouthed retraction, the House overwhelmingly passed a Republican-sponsored resolution, with nine Democrats voting against, stating that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state.”
Is Israel really supposed to be grateful for this? If a member of Congress had said “Jews are child-killers” does anyone think an adequate response by Congress would have been a motion declaring “Jews are not child-killers”?
The House should have strongly condemned Jayapal and dissociated itself from her. But, of course, that wouldn’t have had anywhere near overwhelming support. Indeed, when White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was invited to condemn Jayapal, she refused.
When it came down to it, Herzog failed in his most important task.
In the continuing furor over Israel’s judicial reforms, with the Biden administration outrageously telling the Israeli government to abandon its policy and snubbing Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by failing to invite him to the White House, Herzog needed to avoid being played off against the prime minister. He needed to demonstrate there wasn’t so much as a cigarette paper between them.
But he didn’t do that. Instead, he spun the “heated and painful debate” over judicial reform as “the clearest tribute to the fortitude of Israel’s democracy.”
Is that really how Israel’s president sees the mass disruption to public life resulting from the demonstrations, not to mention the protesters’ intimidation and harassment of government ministers?
Is that really how he sees the outrageous threats and blackmail by IDF reservists that they will refuse to answer the call to defend their country unless the judicial reforms are abandoned?
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