Trump vs. The Squad, a forerunner of 2020?

After a House Foreign Relations Committee hearing last Tuesday, I was standing in the corridor outside the committee room next to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. A fellow reporter asked her to clarify something she had said in the hearing: When she quoted former prime minister Ariel Sharon to the effect that Gaza was under occupation, had she taken into account that he said this prior to the disengagement?

Omar answered affirmatively, but surprised us both when she added: “I intend to go there and find out for myself.” Only moments before, she had declared in the Foreign Relations Committee that she would present a resolution supporting “every form of boycott” — i.e., including the BDS movement.

Theoretically, there is no connection between Omar’s resolution and her intended visit to Israel. But to play the conspiracy theorist for just one minute, it’s not at all impossible that Omar is aware of the Israeli BDS law, which empowers the Interior Ministry to deny entry to anyone supporting sanctions on Israel.

By presenting the BDS resolution immediately before announcing a visit to Israel, Omar is effectively saying: “Hah, let’s see you try to keep me from coming.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Prime Minister’s Office considered the offer carefully. Ron Dermer, the ambassador in Washington, was able to affirm by Friday morning that “out of respect for Congress,” Israel would allow Omar’s entry, as well as that of another BDS supporter, Rashida Tlaib.

It was a choice between two very unattractive options. For the Israeli government to deny admittance to the congresswomen would constitute a direct affront to the US government. On the other hand, allowing them to come ensures we’ll have to endure provocative acts like tours with various pro-Palestinian groups.

I turned to Omar’s office to ask what she intended to do in Israel. They answered that details are not available yet. It will be interesting to see whether she uses the visit to reconcile with the Jewish community — by visiting in Yad Vashem, for instance — or if she uses it to trigger a confrontation with the Israeli government that leads to an embarrassing diplomatic situation between Jerusalem and Washington.

Whatever the case, President Trump’s generous intervention last week ensured that everyone in America now knows that Omar, Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley are nicknamed “the Squad.” Trump tweeted the words, “go back to the countries from which you came,” and thereby caused a firestorm. The tweets were widely assumed to be directed against the congresswomen (three of whom were born in America), and drew wide condemnation, from both sides of the political aisle.

Afterward, Trump claimed that he couldn’t stop the crowd at his rally when they chanted “send her back.” In any case, Trump’s actions — whether you support them or not — were very well calculated. He managed to take four congresswomen, none of whom, excepting AOC, have any real influence, and make them the face of the Democratic Party.

But more than that, his attack on them was so venomous and aggressive that the Democratic establishment — which is not enthusiastic about the quartet, to put it mildly — had no choice but to embrace and defend them. A first taste of the 2020 dynamic.

As former Obama advisor David Axelrod tweeted, “With his deliberate, racist outburst, [Trump] wants to raise the profile of his targets, drive Dems to defend them and make them emblematic of the entire party. It’s a cold, hard strategy.”

CNN news anchor Jake Tapper quoted an anonymous House Democrat (“House Dem 1”) who conceded Trump had landed a telling blow. “The president won this one,” said House Dem 1 of the Trump-versus-Squad showdown. “What the president has done is politically brilliant. Pelosi was trying to marginalize these folks and the president has now identified the entire party with them.”

Trump is determined to portray the Democrats as a pack of bizarre radical extremists who want to grant health insurance to illegal immigrants, who support open borders and an economic policy that will bankrupt America. I covered a demonstration by progressive Jewish organizations on the National Mall, not far from Congress, who cried “Abolish ICE” — disband the immigration police. These are exactly the people Trump delights in putting down.

The Democrats, for their part, find it hard to present a united front against Trump, as he has pinpointed their party’s wedge issue: the argument about whether it is a centrist liberal party with appeal to the whole electorate, or a socialist party attracting mainly millennials and far-left activists. If the party chooses the second option, it will be very difficult to win the presidential election next year.

This generational divide in the Democratic Party was reflected very strongly last week at the House Foreign Relations Committee hearing, where five laws relating to Israel were debated. The way older and more mature representatives like Eliot Engel (D-NY), Brad Sherman (D-CA), and Ted Deutch (D-FL) spoke of Israel stood in sharp contrast to how younger and more progressive representatives spoke.

These three particular representatives happen to be Jewish, but that’s irrelevant to this issue. Almost everyone who has served a decade in Congress will tell you his support for Israel is rock-solid, no matter which prime minister sits in Givat Ram or which president sits in the Oval Office.

This generation speaks with evident longing of past visits to Israel, and obviously well understands the strategic importance of Israel’s alliance with America. This group is also pretty contemptuous of the vocal bunch on the far left of the party. Last week, for instance, I asked Brad Sherman about Omar’s new BDS proposal. He reacted dismissively, adding that he had just been at a hearing in which Mark Zuckerberg was questioned about Facebook’s new digital currency, Libra, which the administration has not welcomed.

“That’s an issue,” he told me. Meaning: Enough, don’t even pay attention to these radical leftist proposals.

But the younger generation in the Democratic Party appears less committed to these core principles. From their prospective, Israel is an ally of the Republican Party, not of America.

Many of the senior Democratic figures in Congress are quite elderly. Soon the new guard will replace the old. A worrying prospect for future Israeli governments.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 770)