Democrats are publicly criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to head off electoral blowback from their support of Israel during this November’s election.
In March, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for new elections to be held in Israel. A few weeks later, US President Joe Biden offered his sharpest public criticism of Netanyahu, saying “I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach.”
Those comments came in Biden’s first interview after three Israeli airstrikes killed seven World Central Kitchen workers in what the organization’s founder described as a “direct attack on clearly marked vehicles” that targeted workers “systematically, car by car.”
“The Democrats, they know that they will pay the price during the election. So, they are trying to stay away from Netanyahu,” journalist Mohamed Gomaa told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday. “On the other hand, they continue to support Israel, not Netanyahu, not the government. They speak on Israel [only].”
While the criticism from most Democratic politicians has largely shifted from the Israeli Prime Minister to protesting American college students, it was never focused on the actions of the Israeli and was never intended to stop the war in Gaza, but instead to placate voters.
“Anywhere there are protests against their government to stop supporting… Netanyahu, they [also] ask to stop [the] support of Israel, which,” will be difficult for those governments, Gomaa explained. “That’s why they changed their tone to criticize Netanyahu or criticize the government, [but] not Israel.”
College protests have broken out across the United States, with demonstrations against Israel’s actions in Gaza, and their universities’ investments in the Israeli government, taking place in nearly 400 campuses as of Sunday, a number that continues to rise.
More than 150 of those are listed as including a “police presence” and some have seen brutal police crackdowns and campus buildings being occupied by students.
Pelosi, just days after she called Netanyahu “an obstacle” to peace, called on protesters to add Hamas to their list of protests. “I’ve said to those [protesters]... do you care about what Hamas has done, do you care about what happened in Israel?”
On Monday, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to condemn the actions of the local and state police forces.
“We’ve seen the videos that have pretty much gone viral out there and I can’t speak to that. We might have more to say about those videos once we look into– we’d have to look into them. Just don’t have anything to share beyond that.”
When pressed she said the decision to bring police on campus is “up to the colleges and universities, that’s for them to decide.”
The refusal to publicly support student protesters likely will not help Biden’s poll numbers with young people, which have collapsed from 60% in 2020 to just 45% in the latest poll.
After the 1968 DNC riots in Chicago, Yippie activist and Chicago Seven defendant Jerry Rubin thanked Judge Julius Hoffman for his heavy-handed rulings during the trial.
“Julius, you radicalized more young people than we ever could. You’re the country’s top Yippie,” Rubin wrote in a copy of his book, which he gifted to Hoffman.
Democrats will have to hope the actions of law enforcement on college campuses today won’t create a new generation of radicals, something Gomaa says is already happening in Palestine.
“Now the Palestinians support Hamas because they're already under war, under bombardment every day or every moment. So, they will support Hamas,” Gomaa explained. “They will not be Hamas fighters, but they will not be against [Hamas] because they see that [they] are [being] killed,” even when they don’t support Hamas.
“So, if we are killed while we are normal people, why would [we] not be with them?” Gomaa asked, adding that Israel could not “imagine” their actions would cause more people in Palestine to support Hamas or result in more people in the United States to become more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.