With 187 of 193 voting Democrats signing, the letter to Trump released Friday is a pointed reminder of how divided the parties remain on how to define pro-Israel.
The overwhelming majority of Democrats in the US House of Representatives urged President Donald Trump to reaffirm the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as U.S. policy.
With 187 of 193 voting Democrats signing, the letter to Trump released Friday is a pointed reminder of how divided the parties remain on how to define pro-Israel. It comes on the eve of an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference that the lobby had hoped would be a signal of bipartisan support for Israel. [ISN’T IT FOR ISRAELIS TO DECIDE]
J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, lobbied for the letter, initiated by Reps. David Price, D-N.C. and Gerry Connolly, D-Va.
“It is our belief that a one-state outcome risks destroying Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, denies the Palestinians fulfillment of their legitimate aspirations, and would leave both Israelis and Palestinians embroiled in an endless and intractable conflict for generations to come,” said the letter, signed by 191 members. [ISN’T THAT FOR ISRAEL TO DECIDE]
AIPAC, which continues to back the two-state solution, did not have a position on the letter.
And while AIPAC found issues ahead of its March 26-28 confab that would unite the parties – including new sanctions on Iran, countering the Israel boycott movement and supporting foreign assistance – there is nothing in the legislative agenda its activists take to the Capitol on the final lobbying day of the conference that explicitly backs two states. The conference will nonetheless feature messaging that emphasizes two states, an AIPAC official told The Jerusalem Post.
In addition to the 187 Democrats, signers to the letter included two non-voting Democrats and two Republicans. All but one of the 21 Jewish Democrats in the House – Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey – signed the letter.
Republicans last year withdrew explicit backing for two states from the party’s platform. In February, President Donald Trump appeared to back away from a two-state solution, which was supported by predecessors over the previous 15 years.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leading the most hawkish Cabinet in the country’s history, is increasingly a lone voice in his government backing the outcome. He is under pressure from Cabinet ministers to his right to abandon two states and annex West Bank territory to Israel.
AIPAC officials, if asked, will affirm the lobby’s commitment to the two-state outcome. Other centrist pro-Israel groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, have taken a more robust posture defending two states, alarmed at retreats from the policy among Republicans and in Israel.
@ Russell:
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but the Arabs came out of the Arabian Peninsula, i.e. the region now known as Saudi Arabia.
The only aspirations the Arabs (herenamed falsely “Palestinians”) is the destruction of the Israeli nation and genocide against the Jewish people. Forget any solutions two state, one state. There should be no state for the Arabs as they have no right to any of Israel, not even Jordan can be considered a true nation as they re occupying Israeli land due to the betrayal of Israel by Britain. The only soluttion to this problem is a strong Israel telling the world to butt out and mind their own business. Then they should claim their historical homeland and kick the Arabs that dissent back to wherever they came from.
United States is “occupied” territory – Not Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria (The whole territory of the Historical Land of Israel)
Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc is far more of an “occupied” capital or territory than Jerusalem (Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria have thousands of years of Jewish history and habitation).
Europeans after creating new settlements, conquered an entire continent of North America, annihilated most of the natives, extracted its natural resources, kicked out the Mexicans and called it “America,” claiming first “Philadelphia” and afterwards, the city of Washington as its capital.
Over six hundred thousand people died in the American Civil War that prevented the South from seceding and breaking apart the United States.
As regards the rest of the world, Jerusalem is the oldest capital in the world, and it belongs to the Jewish people. The world does not recognize Jerusalem as the Jewish capital, because the world does not recognize the right of Jews to exist.
Those liberal Jews in USA and Europe and elsewhere who pander to the non-Jews by endorsing views that deny or compromise the Jewish sovereignty over The Historical Land of Israel and hoping that they would be “acceptable” are deluding themselves, they live in fantasy world, not reality. It did not help with Nazi Germany who exterminated over 6 million Jews, men, women and children; or in the past 2,500 years in the Diaspora, when the Jews were persecuted, tortured, murdered and discriminated and it will not help them today.
The Arabs/Muslims were allocated after WWI over 12 million sq. mi. with a wealth of oil reserves and the Jewish people were allocated 120,000 sq. km. of their historical territory and today they have only about 21,000 sq. km., but the Arabs/Muslims and the world nations begrudge even that small peace of our Jewish historical territory. The world nations stood idle and silent while The Arabs/Muslims terrorized, murdered and expelled over a million Jewish families with their children and confiscated all their assets, including personal valuables, businesses, homes and over 120,000 sq. km. of Jewish owned Real Estate for over 2,500 years (valued in the trillions of dollars); where was the world nations cries and demand for justice and return of Jewish Homes and Real Estate then and where are they now.
Most of the expelled Jewish families from Arab/Muslim countries were resettled in The Land of Israel, and today comprise over half the population. The European nations had better refrain from demanding that Jewish people in Israel should give up their historical land to the Arabs; since the European nations have taken over the Jewish assets, personal property (Gold, Silver, Artifacts, etc.), businesses, homes and Real Estate and many of those Jewish people and their descendants and heirs were also resettled in The Historical Land of Israel.
We the Jewish people returned to the occupied and desolate Land of Israel in the 1800’s and joined our Jewish brethren to re-blossom, revitalize and turn it into green pastures, with great economic infrastructure, industry and housing, after much toil and hard work with the help in infusion of capital and resources by our brethren in the Diaspora. We are proud and thankful to have back our historic sovereign Jewish country with an Army that can defend itself properly.
We will not surrender our land to nobody. (We should be thankful to the almighty that we are in a similar position today as we were during the time of King David). The world as whole needs Israel and The Jewish people, more than the Jewish people need the world.
Look at history every nation or society that let the Jewish people thrive and flourish, they thrived and flourished also. When a nation or society harassed, terrorized, murdered and discriminated against the Jewish people in their country, the country declined and its power and economy diminished greatly, if not disappeared altogether.
Today’s time is not like the Bolshevik era when Jews were persecuted and murdered or Nazi Germany when Jews tried to escape Nazi extermination Camps, they had nowhere to go for sanctuary; even The Jewish Land of Israel aka Palestine was illegally blocked by the British.
Today the Jews have the sovereign State Israel, with its strong defense, advance technology and Medical innovations that the whole world relies on.
May we be granted and merit the honor to live and see the rebuilding of The Jewish Temple in its previous holy site on Temple Mount also known as Mount Moriah.
YJ Draiman
No Jew or Jewish government has the right to evict Jews from their historical land in Greater Israel. “Israel, including Judea and Samaria, and the land east of the Jordan River has been the land of the Jewish people since time immemorial, over 30 centuries. Judea means Land of the Jews. Never in the history of the world has there been an autonomous state in the area that was not Jewish.” There has never been a Nation known as Arab Palestine. The Arabs received over five million sq. mi. – 12 million sq. km. of territory with a wealth of oil reserves, but that was not enough. Violating international law and treaty the British allocated over three quarters of Jewish allocated land to the Arabs as the new Arab state of Jordan. Now the Arabs want more; they will not stop until they have all of Israel without the Jews. The Arab countries expelled over a million Jewish families and confiscated all their assets including businesses, homes and over 75,000 sq. mi. (about 120,000 sq. km. which is 6 times the size of Israel) of Jewish owned land for over 25 centuries. The Faisal Weizmann Agreement of January 1919 stipulated that all of Palestine is Jewish territory. No Jews are allowed to live in Jordan or in the West Bank area controlled by the Arab Palestinian Authority – Now you see it is the Arabs who are committing ethnic cleansing, just like they cleansed over a million Jewish families from Arab countries and now they are cleansing the millions of Christians and others.
The Oslo Accord is null and void as Abbas stated in the summer of 2015 at the U.N.
You; the Arabs have murdered the Jews and others and now you want to inherit them?
In view of past history of persecution; Israel and the Jews have an obsolete obligation to defend themselves at all costs. NEVER AGAIN. It must be in action not just words. No capitulation to the bias world.
YJ Draiman
@ honeybee:
It wasn’t a total joke. Europe really did advocate a two state solution between the U.S. and the Confederacy. I observed that Lincoln refused peace talks because he understood that they would only serve the function of conferring international legitimacy on the Confederacy. That’s what “peace” talks do!
When Beilin, Peres and Rabin illegally opened up negotiations with the PLO, they were, in fact, guilty of the worst sort of treason. But, for that, the PLO would have been destroyed long ago. As was the Confederacy.
:
The role of the GOP is to deliver the DEM agenda to the American people, albeit at a less-rapid pace.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
I , Sir, am not joking.
@ honeybee:
I actually said something like that in an earlier post as a joke. Trying to find it through googling.
honeybee Said:
maybe it’s time for a civil war in ISRAEL, the JEWS who want an independent nation v’s those are happy being subservient to the rest of the world.
/ The Am. “demo” otherwise called crypto-socialists are fundamentally antisemitic! This of course includes the majority of liberal Jews.
They all suffer from Judeophobia; the opposite of what Islamophobia is about.
The socialists give the upper-hand to the IL Sunnis who can now reject ANY compromise they don’t like. The demo are allying themselves with the Eurantisemites.
This is the only way to preserve the no war no peace status quo.
The West should take a subscription with MEMRI. It is in English. No need to know what the Muslims say in Arabic.
With the assistance of Obama, J St has eviscerated AIPAC!
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Why do the Democrats want Israel to be two states when they are opposed the Conferadcy rising again.
Two Republicans, eh? And not even all the Dems; the articles I saw said, “bi-partisan bill.” Well, that’s a relief. More fake news. Here’s the only relevant Congressional Resolution and the only International Law:
“On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:
“Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.” [italics in the original]
On September 21, 1922, the then President Warren G. Harding signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
Here is how members of congress expressed their support for the creation of a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine – Eretz-Israel (Selective text read from the floor of the U.S. Congress by the Congressman from New York on June 30, 1922). All quotes included in this document are taken verbatim from the given source.
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
1922 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NATIONAL HOME
FOR
THE JEWISH PEOPLE
JUNE 30, 1922
HOUSE RESOLUTION 360
(Rept. NO. 1172)
Representative Walter M. Chandler from New York – I want to make at this time, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, my attitude and views upon the Arab question in Palestine very clear and emphatic. I am in favor of carrying out one of the three following policies, to be preferred in the order in which they are named:
(1) That the Arabs shall be permitted to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination, and with their civil and religious rights guaranteed to them through the British mandate and under terms of the Balfour declaration.
(2) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, they shall be required to sell their lands at a just valuation and retire into the Arab territory which has been assigned to them by the League of Nations in the general reconstruction of the countries of the east.
(3) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, under conditions of right and justice, or to sell their lands at a just valuation and to retire into their own countries, they shall be driven from Palestine by force.
“Mr. Speaker, I wish to discuss briefly each of these alternatives in order. And first let me read the now celebrated Balfour declaration of date of November 2, 1917, during the progress of the Great War, and afterwards incorporated in the preamble of the British mandate authorized by the League of Nations. The Balfour declaration was in the following language:
His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by the Jews in any other country.
“If this is not a condensed and at the same time a complete bill of rights both for the Arabs of Palestine and for the Jews who intend to remain in their present homelands outside of Palestine, I have never read or seen one. It is conceded by the Arabs themselves that the present government of the country under the British mandate and through the Zionist organization as an administrative agency is infinitely better than the government of the Turks who were chased out of the country by Allenby, the British general. It is probably better than any that the Arabs could create and maintain for themselves.
“I respectfully submit that the Arabs in Palestine should be and would be happy and content under the present government of that country if it were not for Turkish and Arab agitators, who travel around over the land stirring up trouble by making false representations concerning the true character of the Zionist movement, and by preaching a kind of holy war against the immigrant Jews who arrive from day to day. The Arabs are well represented in the personnel of the present Palestine administration, which has recognized their language as one of the official languages of the country, and has given official standing to the Moslem religion.
“In the second place, if the Arabs do not wish to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination there is plenty of room outside in purely Arab surroundings. The British Government and her allies made overtures and gave pledges to the Arab people to furnish them lands and protect their freedom in consideration of Arab alliance with the Allies during the World War. That pledge has been kept. The Hedjaz kingdom was established in ancient Arabia, and Hussein, Grand Sheriff of Mecca, was made king and freed from all Turkish influence. The son of King Hussein, Prince Feisal, is now the head of the kingdom of Mesopotamia [Iraq], and Arab predominance in that country has been assured by the Allies to the Arab people.
“Mesopotamia is alone capable of absorbing 30,000,000 people, according to a report submitted to the British Government by the Great English engineer, Sir William Wilcocks. Arab rights are also fully recognized and protected by the French mandate over Syria. There are also several flourishing Arabic cultural and political colonies in Egypt. In short, the Arab-speaking populations of Asia and Africa number about 38,000,000 souls and occupy approximately 2,375,000 square miles, many times larger than the territory of Great Britain. In other words under the reconstruction of the map of the east, the Arabs have been given practical control of Greater Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and parts of Egypt, which gives them an average of 38 acres per person. If the Arabs are compelled to leave Palestine and turn it over entirely to the Jews, it is admitted that the Arab race would still be one of the wealthiest landowning races on the earth. Therefore, I contend that if they will not consent to live peaceably with the Jews, they should be made to sell their lands and retire to places reserved for them somewhere in Arabia [Saudi], Syria, Mesopotamia, or Egypt, that suit them best, and where they can worship Allah, Mahomet [Muhammad], and the Koran to their heart’s content. After all is said, the fact remains that the Arabs have more lands than they need, and the Jews have none. I am in favor of a readjustment under the Balfour declaration, without too great regard to nice distinctions in the matter of the question of self-determination. This thought brings me to my third proposal heretofore mentioned, that the Arabs should be driven out of Palestine by the British and Jews, or by somebody else, if they will not listen to the voice of reason and of justice.
“I shall probably be told that, regardless of the question of land and property rights, the Arabs have an interest in the holy places around Jerusalem. Admitting that their claims in this regard are just, there should be no trouble along this line. There is no reason to believe that Jews and Christians would deny them access to the holy places in the pilgrimages that they might desire to make from their Arab countries. But if the rights of the Jews to their ancient homeland are to be made dependent, as a final question, upon Moslem interests in the holy places around Jerusalem, I am willing and prepared to repudiate these rights entirely and to shut the Arabs out altogether.”
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=100