Chuck Schumer is Netanyahu’s ‘useful idiot’ in Jewish community — Tom Friedman

Chuck Schumer is Benjamin Netanyahu’s “useful idiot”, because he yucked it up with the rightwing leader so as to publicize their closeness in the American Jewish community, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman says.

“I saw pictures yesterday of Chuck Schumer smiling, yucking it up with his old pal Bibi [Netanyahu] in the parliament,” Friedman said Wednesday, referring to the photo above. “And my attitude is, You are a useful idiot, Chuck, you are a useful idiot. Just to get some picture back home in the Jewish Week in New York, you know that might get you a few votes, like– would you be yucking it up with Kevin McCarthy right now? Would you be up yucking it up with Tucker Carlson. Well, what are you doing yucking it up with him? Useful idiot!”

Friedman spoke to the liberal Zionist organization Americans for Peace Now on March 1 and made a few points about U.S. politics:

–Secretary of State Antony Blinken should publicize Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call for a Palestinian village to be “erased” and use his global “megaphone” to discredit Smotrich.

–Joe Biden is adhering to an old playbook of never criticizing Israel so as not to alienate Jewish donors and AIPAC, but he needs to come out against the Netanyahu government even if it goes against his political “DNA.” That means openly denouncing the new Israeli settlement plans and threatening not to defend Israel in international forums if it goes through with judicial overhaul.

–The leading Israel lobby organizations AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee opposed the Iran deal in 2015 and defied President Obama because Netanyahu told them to do so. AIPAC is Netanyahu’s “sock puppet.” (And they got away with it; and I say, why shouldn’t AIPAC have to register as a foreign agent!)

–The American Jewish community is shifting from lockstep support for Israel to liberal Zionist criticism of Israel, but U.S. politicians have not gotten the memo and they think they have to visit Israel and get the photo-opp to get donations. This is especially true of Biden, who does not know how the ground has shifted and is afraid to alienate the pro-Israel community in any manner.

Here are some of those quotes.

On Smotrich, Friedman said he hoped the Biden administration considers not allowing him to travel to the U.S. in mid-March for an Israel Bonds dinner, but:

I think the most damaging thing is actually to call it out publicly by the Secretary of State. Let the whole world know. Use our megaphone, that everywhere this guy travels, that quote should travel with him.

On the Jewish politics in the U.S. giving Netanyahu a stronger hand than Biden:

Netanyahu thinks he knows America better than anybody. And in some ways he might in this sense, Ori that he is counting on the fact that Republicans will stand up for him. Evangelicals will stand up for him. There’ll be enough Democrats worried about Jewish votes and Jewish donations, AIPAC, which is his sock puppet, will say whatever he needs, and so even if the administration comes out against him, look, this is a guy who defied President Obama and got himself invited to speak to a joint session of Congress to attack a sitting president. And I’m not here to tell you he’s wrong.

But Biden needs to come out stronger against Israel and U.S. Jews will support him.

[The White House has] lost the habit of having an adult conversation with Israel. So what we do is Israel announces 10,000 more settlements and we issue a statement of chagrin, of disappointment, of concern. And so they don’t take it seriously, and they shouldn’t take it seriously. And I think this is a real come-to-Moses moment for the Biden administration. What are you going to do? And I think they’re beginning to realize that the old constraints, AIPAC, American Jewish votes– I think if you took a vote among American Jews, a vast majority would support the administration standing up for democracy in Israel. So I don’t think it’s an electoral issue, but these are totally new habits…. The administration … they just don’t feel steady on this. They don’t know what ground they’re standing on.

Biden could throw down the gauntlet to Netanyahu and “get in the ring on this” and get away with it, Friedman argued. (This is similar to J Street’s line on the Jewish community; but J Street doesn’t raise nearly the money that Democratic Majority for Israel and AIPAC’s pac do).

U.S. Jews should be vocal as liberal Zionists to oppose AIPAC:

I think the most important thing to do is to let the Democratic Party know, your Senator, your congressman, that you’re not happy where this is going. And this is not business as usual. And just because they go over to Israel for a week and get a picture with the Prime Minister and flash it to you at their talk at your synagogue, you’re not interested, because you’re interested in the fate and future of Israel. And I think conveying that is what will then give legislators the sense of empowerment again, because AIPAC, you know, thinks it’s got all these guys. And AIPAC is Bibi sock puppet, you know, I mean, it’s, um, it never had an independent view from Netanyahu.

AIPAC and American Jewish Committee opposed the Iran deal in 2015 because Netanyahu told them to do so:

These are organizations that came out against the Iran Deal under Obama, with no expertise on this deal whatsoever. They did it because Netanyahu told them to do it. And then what did we discover? How many Israeli generals and intelligence people were for the deal. Okay. But Netanyahu completely monopolized the conversation. These groups just took it and suddenly weighed in against the President of the United States on that issue, and I found that really offensive because they didn’t know what they were talking about.

Recall that at the time Obama was smeared as antisemitic — even in the New York Times — for speaking of the financial clout of the Israel lobby and AIPAC. Recall that Obama called out the lobby when he said that only one country opposed the deal but it would be an “abrogation of my constitutional duty” to defer to Israel– again without any support from the press in making that a scandal. Recall that Obama’s top aide Ben Rhodes later disclosed that he had to meet with a few Israel lobby organizations all the time and more than with all other interest groups combined, even though they were mouthpieces for Israel, because of the political donations. But again, that was only a scandal on our site.

Back to Friedman. Biden should not withhold military aid from Israel, as some liberal Zionists have recommended. But he should indicate that Israeli immunity is over due to Netanyahu’s effort to nullify the courts:

I just would not go there… I would keep it right on this issue. And that it’s about our concern for Israel’s place in the world, how its soldiers will be received, as they say, in places like the Hague, and at the UN, and we can’t defend this. And you should know that, and we aren’t going to defend it…. If it is no longer democracy, we will be there for your security no matter what, at least in the near term. But we will have to have a reassessment.

Bear in mind that Gerald Ford sought a reassessment of the Israel relationship and he was a one-term president. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush also took on Israel and they only got one term; and that’s the political wisdom that Joe Biden has absorbed here (as Friedman has himself observed in the past).

Friedman expressed a lot of Zionist ideas in the interview, including that Israel is a model democracy; that Islamist political leader Mansour Abbas who respects the idea of a Jewish state is “kind of Israeli Arab citizen you would want to make common cause with;” that Palestinians need to be separated from the Israeli Jews in a two state solution before there can be coexistence; and only when there’s a fence between Israelis and Palestinians will Israelis acknowledge what they all know, there was a Nakba. But I’m not focusing on his conservatism here.