( JTA ) — MILWAUKEE — The final version of the Democratic Party platform preserves the pro-Israel language of previous versions and lacerates Hamas for launching the current war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The pledge in the platform to keep funding for Israel’s defense assistance as “ironclad” — a word President Joe Biden has favored — came after the platform committee heard testimony from witnesses who testified in favor of sustaining and expanding the defense assistance, and others who recommended cutting defense assistance altogether.
The platform, yet to be released but leaked to reporters, was approved by the party’s platform committee. Platforms never commit parties to action once they are in government, but are still seen as reflective of a party’s values.
“President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States,” says the Middle East section. “Their commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.”
The MOU refers to the $3.8 billion in annual defense funding, a then unprecedented amount, agreed upon during the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president.
The language should allay concerns among some pro-Israel groups alarmed at the increase in calls among some Democrats to suspend aid to Israel, but it will likely not put the matter to rest. Pro-Palestinian groups have said they will protest the Democratic convention in Chicago next month, where the platform must be approved — and may yet be changed.
Pro-Israel Democrats praised the language. “It echoes key attributes of the 2020 platform, including reiterating the goal of a two-state solution, opposition to Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” the Democratic Majority for Israel, an advocacy group with an affiliated political action committee, said. “We’re confident that those Democrats running on it will earn the votes of a decisive majority of Americans.”
The Jewish Democratic Council of America’s CEO, Halie Soifer, one of the witnesses who appeared before the platform committee, had appealed for its past pro-Israel language not to be diluted. “We care pleased to see it was not diluted, it was strengthened,” the JDCA said.
The section on the Middle East and North Africa runs nearly three pages long, a contrast with the Republican platform affirmed this week at the party’s convention in Milwaukee, where the region gets two sentences.
The war in Gaza gets its own subsection, and blames Hamas for launching and continuing the war, putting the party on the side of pro-Israel groups who say that the terrorist group’s responsibility for the carnage should not be obscured by the extent of Israel’s retaliation. Pro-Palestinian groups and lawmakers have said that the focus should be on stopping the war, citing the close to 40,000 Palestinians believed to have been killed so far.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris have unequivocally denounced Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, condemned the gruesome violence — including conflict-related sexual violence — demonstrated by Hamas and made clear that the United States wants to see Hamas defeated,” said the platform.
The platform includes nods to Israel critics, noting the sanctions the Biden administration has imposed on Israeli extremists since the war’s launch, and its efforts to facilitate the delivery of aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. It does not criticize Israel for not doing enough to allow the aid in, although Biden has leveled such criticism .
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