*Picture is of Muskegon State Park. My husband I set out for a hike in the woods but decided to go back along a dune ridge trail marked “challenging”. Okay, in case you don’t know, hiking up steep hills in shifting sand is 10X harder than in the woods. I needed lighter shoes and shorts. I was really suffering!
After next week’s election in Israel, Democrats in Washington will face a decision. They can continue the longstanding practice of imploring Israel to improve its behavior in the region and imposing no consequences. Or they can identify pressure to exert when they return to power in Congress and ultimately the White House.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, remains in office, an outcome that would be worse for Israel, the Palestinians and the United States. In and out of power over the past three decades, Mr. Netanyahu has turned a growing majority of Americans against his country, made himself a partisan actor in our politics and accelerated Israel’s global isolation.
The decision will get more complicated if Mr. Netanyahu loses to an opposition that will most likely be led by Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff. It would be counterproductive, some will argue, to penalize a new and more promising government for the sins of its predecessors, especially if, as seems possible, it takes early steps in the right direction.
Yet while both critics and supporters of Israel should welcome the prospect of Mr. Netanyahu’s defeat, they should not expect major changes on issues that matter most to Americans. During the current campaign, Mr. Eisenkot has encouraged more people to settle in the West Bank. Some of his potential coalition partners have called for the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority. He and his allies have attacked Mr. Netanyahu for going soft on Iran and for once entertaining the possibility of a Palestinian state, a prospect he has long since abandoned and that Eisenkot describes as “delusional.”
These positions, once considered extreme in both Jerusalem and Washington, should not be dismissed as mere electioneering, but rather as reflecting a difficult truth: Israelis across the political spectrum may be deeply divided about Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership and integrity, but they broadly support his policies. Their views have only hardened since the Oct. 7 attacks.
Americans are moving in the other direction: 60 percent expressed negative views of Israel in a recent poll; 80 percent of Democrats did. The fact that younger generations in each country are the vanguard of these divergent trends shows the divide is only growing.
Despite the Right flank of the Party insisting any effort to hold Israel accountable for breaking both international and US law again and again is a offense against the Sainted Joe Biden or anti semitic or an evil plot by DSA, the author of this piece is…
Mr. Finer was the principal deputy national security adviser under President Joe Biden.
80% of Democrats want the United States to start following the international and US law that we keep beating our chests about in the case of Putin’s slaughtering Ukrainian civilians but earnestly ignore, deny or smear anyone who says we have to be consistent and hold Israel to the same standard.
The establishment centrists in the Party can deny this shift is happening all they want, but they will lose that fight - they already lost it. Joe Biden with his “just give Israel two more weeks!” and Hakeem Jeffries with his “wait until Israelis decide to reject the far Right majority at some future date” is not acceptable.
Israel can do what they want to do. They can make their own decisions about their own country. But the United States does not have to passively stand by and continue to financially support war crimes, ongoing ethnic cleansing and rampant and repeated lawbreaking, including murdering 9 American civilians in the West Bank. We can enforce our own laws. That’s permitted. In fact, it’s essential if we’re to have any credibility on anything else.
I’d once again like to applaud the US students who were the first to raise Gaza and refuse to be silenced, even when Hillary Clinton, who works at a fucking college, smeared them all as stupid and naive.. Their awful careerist professors and craven college administrators were too scared to back up their right to political speech, so many of the students were subjected to political prosecutions and ridiculously harsh sanctions. A lot of that shameful retribution for speech is now being overturned by federal judges on appeal as obvious 1st amendment violations, but I for one will never forget how our university system punished 19 year old kids for the crime of being right too soon:
COLUMBUS – Earlier this month, a federal court entered a permanent injunction in favor of the ACLU of Ohio’s client, Guy Christensen, in a lawsuit challenging the Ohio State University’s decision to expel him for engaging in protected political speech. This result marks a major victory for academic freedom in this era of heightened pressure, surveillance, and censorship of public colleges and universities.
On January 14, a federal judge in the Southern District of Ohio ruled in favor of Mr. Christensen and granted a preliminary injunction, finding that his expulsion likely violated his First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights. On July 13, the ACLU of Ohio filed a motion requesting that the court convert the preliminary injunction to a permanent injunction. As part of a settlement agreement, the university agreed not to oppose the conversion. The injunction requires Ohio State to expunge any of Mr. Christensen’s student records claiming that he violated the Code of Student Conduct, committed any disciplinary infraction, or presented any risk to university safety. Additionally, the agreement provides for recovery of attorneys’ fees from the University.
The ACLU of Ohio filed the lawsuit in September 2025 after campus officials summarily disenrolled Mr. Christensen without a hearing, following a series of videos he posted on his personal social media pages expressing opinions related to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
I’m glad I’m no longer paying for a kid in college. I don’t know if I could write that giant check after this.
