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Rahm Emanuel’s Speech in Tel Aviv Breaks With a “No Daylight” Approach

Though the speech broke from a failed approach toward Israel, it was still based on flawed and tendentious attitudes and history.

The most important thing about Rahm Emanuel’s speech in Tel Aviv Wednesday is that it was a repudiation of decades of US policy toward Israel, and specifically of Joe Biden’s “No daylight” approach. “For too long, American policy toward Israel operated under the assumption that the best thing Washington could do for Jerusalem was to blindly and silently stand behind your government, without conditions, without demands, and without consequences when we disagreed,” Emanuel said. “That has been our mistake.”

Yes, many of us have been making this argument for years and faced relentless attacks for it from our own Democratic colleagues. It’s long been clear that, rather than giving Israeli leaders the confidence to take tough steps for peace, lockstep US support just gave them the confidence that they would never have to. But still: Welcome, Rahm! Successful politics is about addition.

Unfortunately, even as the speech broke from a failed approach toward Israel, it was still based on the deeply patronizing attitude toward the Palestinians and the same tendentious rendering of history that has undergirded it. It’s hard to see how a new and better policy can be built on that same old logic.

A side note—has any speech by a potential presidential primary candidate (who hasn’t even officially announced his candidacy yet) ever been more extensively and breathlessly previewed? Emanuel’s remarks received glowing anticipatory write-ups in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and multiple other outlets. Emanuel and his team clearly wanted to set this up as a landmark intervention in a highly charged debate, and a lot of journalists were willing to accommodate. Emanuel is setting himself up as the conservative Democrat who can solve the problems created by conservative Democrats, and much of the political-media establishment seems prepared to hail him as a savior for it.

There’s no question that the speech was significant. Emanuel, a longtime conservative Democratic stalwart with strong family connections to Israel, aggressively criticized Israel’s current government and outlined a much more conditional future US-Israel relationship. He reiterated his previously stated position that US military aid to Israel should end, a position that was still taboo just a few years ago but has quickly become mainstream. He included a bit of a hedge, however, saying that “Israel should be able to buy American arms under the same financial terms, the same restrictions, and the same requirements as every other trusted ally that abides by our laws.” If genuinely enforced, this would (and should) effectively result in an arms embargo, as Israel clearly does not abide by our laws which prohibit supplying arms to militaries engaged in systemic human rights abuses, restricting humanitarian aid or using arms for nondefensive purposes. It was the standard set on paper by the Biden administration, then breached to the point of arming a genocide. (Emanuel made no mention of the current effort in Congress to further intertwine US and Israeli military and intelligence sharing; someone should ask him about that.)

Emanuel also declared that Israeli settlers involved in violence, and officials who support them, should be sanctioned, along with “every construction company or bank building or financing illegal settlements.”........

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