Bipartisan support for Israel is dead — and that’s a good thing
It’s become a ritual. Every time Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu do something that outrages Democrats, centrist commentators warn that they are committing a grave offense: They’re making Israel a partisan issue.
The accusation has been nearly ubiquitous since the two leaders last week conspired to deny Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar’s request to visit the West Bank.
“Trump and Netanyahu are…eroding the bipartisanship that is so critical to the U.S.-Israel special bond,” former Middle East peace negotiator Aaron Miller told The New York Times last Friday.
That same day, Times columnist Thomas Friedman accused Trump and Netanyahu of “making support for Israel a wedge issue in American politics. Few things are more dangerous to Israel’s long-term interests than its becoming a partisan matter.”
The day before, former Obama administration ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro lamented in The Atlantic that “Trump’s racism and Netanyahu’s dependency have driven a bulldozer through the bipartisan consensus.”
But why, exactly, is “the bipartisan consensus” on Israel a good thing?
Bipartisanship is not a virtue like justice, freedom, or safety. It’s simply agreement between America’s two major political parties.
Sometimes bipartisanship produces disaster: The 1965 Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which empowered Lyndon Johnson to escalate America’s war in Vietnam, passed the House of Representatives 416-0. [Continue reading…]