The Israel-U.S. Quagmire

Netanyahu’s alignment with the MAGA Movement now calls an unforeseen question

R. Wayne Branch PhD
Fourth Wave
Published in
6 min readAug 23, 2024

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Long has it been that Black folks and Jewish communities have had a complicated relationship. The Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60’s could’ve never been as transformative as it was without the presence, support, resources, and deeds of Jews. Several gave their freedom, and in the case of one of my heroes, Michael Schwerner, their lives, for the cause of equal rights.

It’s also true, as noted author and social critic James Baldwin wrote in his landmark NY Times essay “Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White” that relationships between Blacks and Jews in the U.S. are, like his essay and the aftermath it created — full of tensions, misdirection, false and true accusations, anger, pain, and love.

Now, in no way am I going to try to summarize the complexities of Mr. Baldwin’s treatise on Black - Jewish relations in this essay, much less in a paragraph or two. I am going to say, and hopefully show you, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned already muddy waters into a quagmire. More, in his pursuit of winning battles, he’s put his country, again, on the precipice of losing allies and a very costly war.

“In 1980, (Moshe) Dayan questioned the ability of the U.S. Army, which had too many black soldiers ‘who have a lower education and intelligence.’”

Choosing Sides

As Democrats gathered in Chicago to affirm and celebrate a Black woman as their presidential nominee, the conundrum in which Netanyahu has placed Israel is now faced with a new reality: If Trump doesn’t win, how comfortable will the bed be that Netanyahu has built? And if Trump does win, how comfortable will the world be with Netanyahu’s choices?

Photo by Dmitrii Eliuseev on Unsplash

Many have not forgotten, still, when Netanyahu came to address Congress on March 3, 2015, at the invitation of John Boehner and his Republican majority, the specter of racism was made evident by the disrespect shown to the nation’s first Black president, Barrack Hussein Obama. After all no foreign leader had ever been invited to address Congress without first informing the country’s president.

Neither Boehner nor Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Ron Dermer nor the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had notified the President in advance of Netanyahu’s visit. Their secret negotiations prompted Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) to say what many Black people felt, “This is a real in-your-face slap at the president, and black folks know it. He (Netanyahu) wouldn’t have done it to any other president.”

When, in 2016, Prime Minister Netanyahu declined an offer to meet U.S. President Obama at the White House to hopefully strengthen U.S.-Israel relations the disrespect again rippled throughout the Black community. Netanyahu’s decision to cancel his U.S. visit was dismissive of Obama’s forgiveness of his affront the year before. The overture to heal the deep differences between the two made secondary to Netanyahu’s belief that he held enough Republican and Jewish support to weather Obama’s presidency.

“This is a real in-your-face slap at the president, and black folks know it. He (Netanyahu) wouldn’t have done it to any other president.”

Netanyahu’s demeaning tone in his March 28, 2019, Oval Office meeting cemented many people’s belief that he held no respect for Obama. During the meeting, President Obama asserted that peace talks should be based upon the borders drawn in 1967, before the Arab-Israeli war, allowing for some adjustments to be made for Israeli West Bank settlements. Netanyahu’s reply was chillingly terse, “It’s not going to happen.” In a Frontline documentary, Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser recounted, “I have never seen a foreign leader speak to the president like that, and certainly not in public, and I’ve never — certainly never seen it happen in the Oval Office.”

Netanyahu returned on July 24, 2024, to again address a joint meeting of Congress seeking support for U.S. arms and support for his war against HAMAS which has to date killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and almost obliterated Gaza. Though endorsement of the visit by President Biden was sought and gained, roughly half of all House and Senate Democrats skipped the speech, many in protest. Some of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics did attend including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian-American in Congress who wearing a keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, held up a sign saying “guilty of genocide” and “war criminal.”

Netanyahu’s U.S. strategy mimics the GOP’s Southern Strategy

I’d like to believe President Obama decided that Netanyahu’s day would come. That rational thinking would come to see that the only other way to prevent a full-scale nuclear war was to give Iran more leeway than Netanyahu wanted. That his, and other world leaders,’ reason would prevail if he gave the process time to enter into pragmatic debate.

Obama’s underestimation was the extent to which white supremacist ideals could be exploited in undermining the office of the president when a Black man occupies it. Or that people would realize that safeguards preventing Iran from using atomic weapons were strong enough to convince political leaders that weathering Netanyahu’s tirades was the best route to peace. And though the U.S. Iran Nuclear Deal got done, what could not be undone was McConnell and the GOP’s commitment to undermine his presidency. Even if that meant using the color line to do so.

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

Netanyahu’s use of U.S. culture wars has not ceased even though President Biden continues to send weapons being used for Gaza’s destruction and the murder of innocent Palestinians to Israel. Most recently, Netanyahu backed the pro-Israel political action committee, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), that spent enormous sums of money to defeat two of Israel’s most ardent critics, Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). Both progressives, members of a group of congressional leaders informally called “The Squad,” and both Black!

Bowman’s loss in what has been called by many as the most expensive House primary in history, where some say over 15 million dollars was spent, prompted Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to say, “I think all Democrats should be able to see how bad this is for Democratic politics that there’s a huge amount of money coming in to influence a congressional race in a Democratic primary.”

Photo by Wasif Mujahid on Unsplash (The coconut tree has come to symbolize V.P. Harris)

Al Fin: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” V.P. Harris’ mother on the context of our lives

Netanyahu has bet his, and Israel’s, future on the relationships he’s built with former President Trump’s MAGA wing of the Republican party. In doing so, any prospect that his past behaviors are solely attributable to political calculation must be dismissed as naivete. By aligning himself, and Israel by default, with far right leaning factions in the U.S. and their white supremacist beliefs he cannot be clearer about which side of the color line he stands on. A divide further strained by AIPAC, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) redefinition of antisemitism, and people like Bill Ackman who threaten students and elite university leaders.

Now, at a time when it seems the only intervention preventing significant calamity to Israel appears to be the United States government: a nation that could elect its first woman and second Black president; at a time when Generation Z, hailed as the most racially diverse in U.S. history, becomes a formidable voting block; when thousands gather outside of the Democratic National Convention demanding the U.S. cease military aid to Israel; when the U.N. despite the protest of the U.S. House of Representatives has declared Netanyahu a war criminal; and when anti-Israel sentiments grow as rapidly as West Bank land grabs, does alienating Black people in the U.S. matter?

I think it does! What about you?

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R. Wayne Branch PhD
R. Wayne Branch PhD

Written by R. Wayne Branch PhD

Social Psychologist/Educator; passionate about thoughtful discourse, magical moments, and my twins. Healthy stewardship are my windmills. Creativity is breadth!

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