How Israel democracy battle is challenging Biden ... and US Jews

When the Durham Jewish Community Center contacted Bruce Jentleson weeks ago about speaking to the group in late July, the Duke University Middle East expert accepted – but suggested to his host that few would attend “in the hot, humid North Carolina summer.”

Instead, more than 100 people showed up. The draw, Dr. Jentleson admits, was not so much him, but the fact his talk just happened to fall last Monday, the same day Israel’s Knesset passed with the slimmest of majorities the first piece of a judicial overhaul that has drawn huge protests in Israel for over half a year.

“People are trying to sort out their support for Israel,” says Dr. Jentleson, a former State Department policy specialist on Israeli-Palestinian issues. “Now it’s not just about what the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinians, but to Israel’s society.”

The turmoil in Israel and the deep political fissures laid bare by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul are challenging U.S.-Israeli relations to an unprecedented degree, many longtime experts in the relationship say.

Moreover, the rattling extends from the American Jewish community and the broader Jewish diaspora – traditionally crucial to Israel’s security and well-being – to the U.S. government. In the weeks leading up to approval of the law, President Joe Biden became increasingly public with his warnings to Mr. Netanyahu to pursue consensus and compromise on legislation that was clearly tearing Israeli society apart.

For some, the current questioning of support is bound to have long-lasting impact.

“It’s going to be difficult for Americans of all stripes to absorb the news coming from Israel – the unending demonstrations in the streets, a variety of average Israelis talking about the end of democracy in Israel – without it taking a toll over time,” says Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, a pro-Israel organization that supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“With it coming in a sustained way and from all sorts of sectors within Israeli society,” he adds, “it’s inevitably going to fundamentally change the way Americans view Israel.”  

The measure passed July 24 was championed by Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government as a necessary shift of power from an unelected Supreme Court to the elected legislative branch.

But for opponents from a broad spectrum of Israeli society who have protested for more than 30 weeks, the legislation dangerously weakens the check the judiciary has exercised on the legislature in what is effectively a two-branch governing system and opens the door to autocratic rule.

Allegations of interference

Once the overhaul was approved, Mr. Biden limited his response to deeming the one-sided passage “unfortunate.”

But even that measured comment added to the fire of those in the United States – mostly Republican members of Congress and conservative foreign policy analysts – who have condemned the administration’s public warnings on the reforms as interference in Israel’s internal affairs.

“The Biden administration should be very careful not to appear to be interfering in Israel’s internal politics, but it’s getting very close to going over the line, if it hasn’t already,” says James Phillips, a Middle East expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

“I’m skeptical that criticizing directly the Netanyahu government and taking sides in the political controversies inside Israel can do anything other than undermine our U.S. reputation for non-intervention in others’ domestic affairs,” he adds. “You’re not going to fix what’s going on in Israel with a [6,000]-mile-long screwdriver from Washington.”

He's also dubious of what he calls “exaggerated claims” that Israel’s democracy is in peril.

“Some would argue that the majority of the voters and the Knesset should be respected, and that denying them the right to approve this judicial reform is taking away democratic rights as well,” Mr. Phillips says.

Some critics of Mr. Biden’s public pronouncements say they reflect a progressive wing in the Democratic Party that has become increasingly vocal with its criticisms of Israel. They question why the president is zeroing in on Israel, when for example he had nothing to say about French President Emmanuel Macron ramming through an increase in the retirement age despite heavy public opposition and giant protests.

Values, and interests

But other experts and Jewish-American supporters of Israel say the Israel case is different because it calls into question the “shared values” of democratic governance at the core of the bilateral relationship.

“This is not just a policy question as it was in France, this is about the fundamentals of democracy, and it’s not the U.S. saying it but a huge swath of Israeli society saying this is a danger to democratic values,” says Dr. Jentleson. Noting how Mr. Biden has made U.S. support for democracies around the world a clarion call of his presidency, he adds, “I don’t see how he could have just said, ‘This is Israel’s own business.’”

Others say that any weakening of Israel’s democratic checks and balances and an increasingly unencumbered path to unilateral Israeli government actions could eventually impinge on U.S. vital interests in the region.

One key example cited: annexation by Israel of the West Bank. The Israeli Supreme Court has stood in the way of steps that could lead to that action. But the new law could pave the way for far-right ministers in the government to move forward on what would be in blatant opposition to U.S. policy supporting a two-state solution.

As for the notion that the U.S. and Israel steer clear of intervention in the other’s political affairs, Dr. Jentleson says it’s simply false.

“The reality is that we have long been involved in each other’s politics,” he says. He cites President George H.W. Bush cutting off loan guarantees to Israel over illegal settlement construction. Or Mr. Netanyahu’s 2015 speech to Congress condemning the Obama administration’s “very bad [nuclear] deal” with Iran.

Then there was Mr. Netanyahu’s tweet in 2017 endorsing then-President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico.

Yet just as Israeli opposition to the judicial overhaul is broad-based, criticisms in the U.S. are not limited to the political left.

“This is not just coming from the AOCs and the Ilhan Omars of Congress,” says Dr. Jentleson, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Representative Omar, two hard-line critics of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. “When you have rabbis from the Reform Jewish community issuing a statement saying … the most extreme members of the Israeli government do not represent Jewish values,” he adds, “that tells you this is different.”

Overcoming reluctance

Indeed, one remarkable feature of the broader U.S. response to Israel’s turmoil is how mainstream Jewish organizations long reluctant to involve themselves in Israeli politics have embraced more public profiles.

“As Jewish Americans who care deeply about the security and prosperity and social cohesion of the state of Israel, we may not have a vote but we do have a voice,” says Jason Isaacson, chief policy and political affairs officer at the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Washington.

Shortly after the July 24 vote, the AJC issued a statement expressing its “profound disappointment” at passage of the law – and warned the judicial overhaul “could weaken Israeli democracy and harm Israel’s founding principles.”

Such a weakening would be a deep concern to Israel’s supporters around the world, Mr. Isaacson says, including President Biden.

“The fact that Joe Biden is a longtime deeply sincere friend of Israel has to be considered when you evaluate how the president and his administration have expressed themselves on this issue,” he says. “The president has been clear that this is a matter for Israelis to resolve, but at the same time all of us – friends of Israel, the Jewish-American community, the Jewish diaspora – have a stake in the preservation of Israel’s democracy and preservation of minority rights.”

Still, Mr. Isaacson says the AJC does not agree with organizations like J Street, a Washington-based pro-Israel and pro-two-state-solution organization, that is calling for action and not just words from the Biden administration in the wake of the Knesset vote.

“That’s not the way friends behave,” he says.

Duke’s Dr. Jentleson cites a range of actions the administration could take to put teeth into its disapproval. Those could include “conditioning” certain parts of the $3.8 billion in annual assistance the U.S. provides, or limiting to core Israeli security matters the use of its Security Council veto.

Others say the U.S. should delay approval of a pending visa waiver program for Israel, something Mr. Netanyahu wants dearly to be able to trumpet.

“I frankly don’t foresee the Biden administration taking any of these steps,” Dr. Jentleson says, “but to me measures like that would be pro-Israel because they might help Israel not go down this dangerous path.”

Others say that despite all the pessimism about Israel’s democracy, they see a ray of hope in the political awakening on Israel’s streets – and in how the U.S. has helped uplift that consciousness.

“Over the past eight months what we’ve witnessed is a legal and democratic consciousness in the public that is growing and growing,” says Masua Sagiv, an Israeli visiting assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. “I think it will take us into the future in a very different way.”