Analysis | What Trump Accidentally Got Right on Israel and Congress

He got it all wrong, but accidentally said something right Credit: AP Photo/LM Otero

As if turning in Jesus to the Romans, using Christian children’s blood to make Passover matza, inventing capitalism, inventing communism, owning international banking, controlling the world media and using space laser guns (very dangerous, by the way) to start fires in California wasn’t enough of a burden to carry around, now Donald Trump, aka former U.S. President Donald Trump, claims that Israel owned the U.S. Congress.

 
Yes, you read that correctly. Israel owned the Congress of the United States of America.

 
Trump, an avid historian and noted facts aficionado, eloquently explained: “The biggest change I’ve seen in Congress is Israel literally owned Congress – you understand that – 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And it was so powerful. It was so powerful. And today it’s almost the opposite,” he told conservative radio talk show host Ari Hoffman last week.

Trump also knows who’s to blame for this unfortunate turn of events and adverse change of ownership: progressive Democrats.

 
“You have between AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and [Rep. Ilhan] Omar – and these people that hate Israel, they hate it with a passion – they’re controlling Congress and Israel is not a force in Congress anymore. I mean, it’s just amazing; I’ve never seen such a change,” congressional scholar Trump continued, all but rendering a death verdict on long-standing Israeli policy and practices in the United States.

“And we’re not talking about over a very long period of time, but I think you know exactly what I’m saying,” he added. “They had such power; Israel had such power – and rightfully – over Congress, and now it doesn’t. It’s incredible, actually.”

 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking in the Capitol last month.Credit: Drew Angerer - AFP

Obviously it’s not just Israel but, by extension, also U.S. Jews who did not vote for him: “If you look at the vote [in the November election], it’s incredible that I didn’t get the kind of a vote from Jewish people that you would think I would get. Jewish people in this country, many of them, do not like Israel. You look at The New York Times – The New York Times is vicious against Israel, and it’s just a terrible thing to watch.”

Naturally, being in New York makes The New York Times a Jewish institution, like bagel and lox or the Anti-Defamation League.

Years after being accused of hijacking U.S. foreign policy for Israeli interests (through AIPAC) and outsize Jewish-American donations to politicians to win influence and input in Congress, now the whole truth is out there. Until 10 years ago, Israel “rightfully” had power over Congress. Not the American people. Not the huge defense corporations, the big oil companies, multinational pharmaceutical firms, giant information and internet companies, or the NRA. Not them, Israel.

The knee-jerk reaction was to accuse Trump of his habitual blurting of incoherent nonsense and, more importantly, uttering antisemitic tropes. That is probably not the case. Trump is not a classic antisemite, but an ignoramus who buys into conventional biases, prejudices and ethnic typecasting of Jews and Israel, and then repeats them while whining and sulking, not necessarily with malice.

 
These kind of remarks from Trump are not new. He described Jews as people he expects to take care of his money. He called Israel “Your country” to an audience of American Jews, essentially casting them as “dual loyalists,” and then accused them of not loving Israel enough, otherwise they would have voted for him. And later he famously described neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people.”

 
As is the case with this recent ludicrous and untethered-from-reality remark on Congress, it’s all about politics and political tantrums.

 
It’s a waste of time paying any attention to his juvenile, however prevalent, misuse of the word “literally” in describing something that is literally not true. Let’s assume that by “literally” he meant to emphasize the seriousness of the argument. But what is he really suggesting here?

 
If Israel “owned” Congress until last year, is he blaming Benjamin Netanyahu for failed policies that caused this? Of course not. Is he admonishing congressional Republicans in the last decade? Surely not. Is he determining that one capable AOC changed the dynamics of the U.S.-Israeli relationship? Absolutely not. Has he just read “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? No. He doesn’t read.

 

Rep. Ilhan Omar speaking in Washington last month.Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

What Trump is probably, inadvertently, pointing to is a change in the dynamic of Israel’s relationship with Congress over the last decade – and that is accurate and true.

 
In the last few years, the much cherished, heralded and praised “Bipartisanship on Israel” seems like an empty relic of yesteryear. The combination of hyper-partisanship in the United States, the evaporation of the political center, the toxicity of the political discourse, and the politics of disruption and undermining, together with a deliberate Netanyahu policy to align with the GOP and distance his government from the Democrats, not just “progressives,” has turned Israel into a wedge issue.

 
This is coupled with major demographic changes in the United States, a more educated and critical generation that strongly trends Democratic and a changing political culture. Instead of either making the imperative adjustments or keeping out of the political mix altogether, Israel made a choice.

 
Decades of careful, delicate, laborious and savvy Israeli policy of trying to maintain bipartisanship and keeping above the American political fray have been replaced by a patently clear political inclination: brawls with then-President Barack Obama; disassociation from centrist Democrats; alienation from progressive Democrats; distancing from the vast majority of American Jews, 75 percent of whom vote Democratic on average; an affinity with evangelical Christians; a partnership with the tea party; and, since 2016, a bromance with Trump.

 
Domestically in the U.S., changing demographics and generational political evolution led to a strengthening of the “progressive” discourse on foreign policy and growing criticism of Israeli policies. Much of it is misinformed and some of it is plainly anti-Israel. But Israel did nothing to address this development.

 
Trump is wrong and misleading in attributing this to the congressional “Progressive Caucus” – a loose association of 95 House members, most of whom are ardent Israel supporters. But he is right that Israel’s clout in Congress has changed over the last decade.

 
No, Israel never “owned” Congress, neither “literally” nor figuratively. No, AOC didn’t do this.

 
Israel did this, with a lot of help from Republicans and Democrats.