Israel Held Hostage - By Congress
It is unthinkable to hold Israel, Ukraine, Gaza and Taiwan hostage to this election-year craziness. And they are all connected.
On Tuesday, as California continued to endure yet another of those "1,000 Year Storms" that seem to occur weekly, something equally rare was happening in Congress. An aid package for Israel was being voted down. Not just any aid package, but an emergency aid package.
And in another once in a blue moon rarity, I was glad to see it fail. In fact, I've never rooted harder for an Israel aid package to not pass, and I’m angry to have been forced to that position by cynical leaders who do not care a whit about Israel.
Israel needs this aid, but not in a standalone package. Military assistance is also needed by Taiwan and Ukraine, and aid is needed by Gazans for humanitarian purposes. All of these things are crucial for US foreign policy, for international stability, for the restoration of a sense of moral clarity - and for Israel itself. Fending off the craven geopolitical aspirations of Putin, Iran and the Chinese and saving Ukraine are all in Israel's best interests.
I do feel uncomfortable to see Israeli aid linked to other policy matters - my fear of it being tied to security at the border was borne out. So ordinarily, I would not have wanted Israel and Ukraine to be linked. But the two matters have such strategic and moral urgency, and given the superpower chess game going on between Putin, Iran and the West, they are interrelated. Gaza aid is as well.
Given the current stalemate on the Hill, the most important reason to link the three is to force everyone off the fence, progressives who might be wavering in their support for Israel and conservatives who might be wavering in their support for Ukraine. That's why it is in Israel's best interests that the standalone package failed. And it is crucial that the combined bill passes as soon as possible.
It is distressing to me that some of Israel's supporters tried to ram through the standalone, which had the effect of doing exactly what we've long tried to avoid - it turned Israel into a partisan, wedge issue. So we can add that to the collateral damage of Tuesday’s vote. It also put another significant dent in the armor of Israel's supposed invincibility on Capitol Hill. All of that was bad, but passing the standalone would have been worse.
I am praying that the House and Senate pass the full package pronto, with or without border security provisions. There is no time to waste, no time for these political games. It is unthinkable to hold Israel, Ukraine, Gaza’s civilians and Taiwan hostage to this election-year craziness and Donald Trump’s nihilistic goal of burning it all down.
Lest we forget, there are real hostages still out there, and they are dying.
Bismarck is known for the expression “ Politics is the art of [ achieving] the possible .” It seems now that a cohort, a minority splinter group, of Republicans in the House, has taken the view that politics is the art of benefiting from the impossible, creating obstacles in order to leverage their limited numbers. In effect, they seek to turn the majority of the Republicans in the House into political hostages and to extend that hostage logic to include the Senate and block any change in US border policy. Tyranny, or at least cynicism, of the minority has run amok.
I would add this later excerpt from David Brooks's Feb. 8 NYT essay on Trump's takeover of GOP souls:
"Showmanship has eclipsed even simple governance. Republican senators just ditched a compromise that could have passed, and they are already heroically parading behind ideas that have no shot at getting 60 votes. As Mitt Romney put it: “Politics used to be the art of the possible. Now it’s the art of the impossible. Meaning, let’s put forward proposals that can’t possibly pass so we can say to our respective bases — look how I’m fighting for you.” "
More so than Democrats, who seem more sensitive to the fragility of their majority in national races, the loudest Republicans in Washington have molded a truly baseline party: their rhetoric and issue stances are often base and follow a line that is direct at first but then cross it into a foul territory devoid of moral or political depth.