Will the Democrats Stand on Their Israel Platform?

Democrats will on Monday vote to approve their party’s platform, the text of which was released yesterday. It references President Trump no fewer than 150 times, and the Times reckons that it “offers plenty of political comfort food” to feed the party faithful. Will its section on Israel, though, cause indigestion for the growing faction of the left who are dead-set against the Jewish state? That will be a tension to track amid the kumbaya at Chicago this week.The draft platform insists that the “United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas” and that “Hamas sought to destroy” a future of peace on October 7, but that they “will not succeed.” It also promotes the “right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own” and involves a “political horizon for the Palestinian people.” Not mentioned is that Israel is burnishing that horizon by dismantling Hamas. Democrats are no strangers to platform fights over Israel. In 2012, the boo birds came out on the convention floor when language declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was removed and then reinstated. This year, though, could make that ruckus look like tiddlywinks. Already, in a sop to the “Uncommitted,” the Democratic National Committee has scheduled a “Panel for Palestinian Human Rights.” That appears unlikely to appease.Platform aside, the Democrats are divided over whether to abandon Israel as a result of its war against Hamas. The Times trumpets that the “Democrats’ Unity Convention Has One Giant Exception: The Gaza War.” Pro-Hamas protesters are gathering outside the United Center, and violence and vandalism are expected. Their consensus is that “Israel also has no right to exist as a racist, white supremacist, settler-colonialist, apartheid, Zionist state.”The question is whether the Democratic grandees who step to the podium this week will side with the platform or the protesters. The party is now trying to have it both ways in the hopes that fudging can be a prelude to beating Trump in November. Many Jews, though — and not only Jews — are growing alarmed by what they are seeing from the party of Truman. A recent poll showed the 45th president pulling 43 percent of the Jewish vote in Pennsylvania. Another survey, in New York, discovered that Trump earns 46 percent of the Jewish vote in New York. Vice President Harris could have assuaged some of these concerns had she picked Governor Joshua Shapiro as her vice president. He came under sustained attack from the very elements of the party who are pushing for a divorce from Israel. She instead chose Governor Tim Walz, whose selection was hailed by the likes of Senator Sanders.The Republican platform endorsed at Milwaukee simply states that “We will stand with Israel, and seek peace in the Middle East.” Democrats would be well-advised to adopt a similar stance, sans caveats. It is up to Vice President Harris, though. Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden are yesterday’s men. She seeks to lead now. So far, her signals have been worrisome — skipping Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech at Congress, to name one.Ms. Harris has said that she “will not be silent” on the war’s cost at Gaza. Will she, though, be mum with respect to the rising tide of antisemitism, which follows the anti-Israel movement as day follows night? Trump said this weekend that “there has never been a more dangerous time since the Holocaust if you happen to be Jewish in America.” There is a direct line between the forces Ms. Harris is courting and the rising danger to Jews — and America.

Will the Democrats Stand on Their Israel Platform?

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