The Sheer Stupidity of the Iron Dome Vote
Giving an unnecessary victory to AIPAC and its cutouts
I don’t know whose dumbass idea it was to try to strip funding for Israel’s Iron Dome from the government funding bill. Naturally the effort failed 420-9.
But why would the Democratic “progressives” who were behind the idea even try? The Iron Dome is a defense system designed to protect Israeli towns and cities from mortars and other missiles launched at them from Gaza.
Without Iron Dome Israeli kids in school and at home would have been killed. I only wish Gaza had an Iron Dome too but that is inconceivable. We supply the weapons the IDF uses to kill Palestinian kids. We’re hardly going to put an Iron Dome over their heads (maybe paper or saran wrap.)
Opposing Iron Dome was stupid. With all the awful things Israel does with the money AIPAC secures for them from a donor dominated Congress, could anyone expect Congress to oppose a purely defensive system?
Fight the offensive weapons we give. Support linking all US aid to Israel behavior. (A rich country, they don’t need our “aid” anyway). And condemn every Israeli attack on Gaza civilians and its apartheid policy on the West Bank.
But oppose Iron Dome? No.
Nonetheless, the vote matters. One, the overwhelming vote for the Iron Dome will be used by the Israel lobby as proof that Israel remains popular among Democrats and Republicans. Not true. Republicans (including its growing anti-semite caucus) support Israel because (1) Israel kills Muslims, (2) Israel needs to survive in order to be destroyed when Christ returns, and (3) they don’t give a damn one way or another.
Democrats are divided. The overwhelming majority support a secure Israel but not the occupation. A few (mostly Jewish members who learned everything they know about Israel in Hebrew school) and a few more non-Jewish leadership types like Steny Hoyer and Hakim Jeffries consider AIPAC donors the best source the Democrats have to keep them in the majority. A few more, like Rashida Tlaib, just can’t stand Israel no matter what its borders look like. Others like AOC are not anti-Israel per se but are being used by fellow Squad members who are.
In any case, this vote gives the impression that Israel has the support of Congress no matter what it does. And that is just not true. The types who say, with Joe Biden, that “there must be no daylight, no daylight, between the US and Israel” on anything are about Biden’s age. Younger Democrats (including, most notably, our Senate star, Jon Osoff or the latest Levin, Sandy’s son, Rep. Andy Levin, don’t see things that way. And they reflect younger Jews who tend, according to the polls, to be as concerned about Palestinian rights as about Israel’s.
So why give AIPAC and Israel this illusory victory? Who knows? But I do know that AIPAC should thank the Squad Members who came up with this cockamamie idea and each of the, what, 9 House members who supported it. They scored a big one for the other team.