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Sanders camp introduces ‘occupation’ amendment to Democratic platform

At a meeting in St. Louis on Friday, June 24, the committee responsible for drafting the Democratic Party platform rejected an amendment calling for “an end to occupation and illegal settlements” by Israel in the West Bank.
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June 26, 2016

Party platforms can be somewhat obscure documents with little real-life impact. Nonetheless, they create a space for partisans to engage in ideological proxy wars.

So when presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders appointed two noted critics of Israel to the committee that drafts the Democratic Party platform, he sparked fears that Democratic support for the Jewish state could come under attack.

Those fears took form at a meeting of the drafting committee in St. Louis on June 24, when committee members appointed by Sanders proposed an amendment calling for “an end to occupation and illegal settlements” by Israel in the West Bank.

The five Sanders appointees to the 15-member committee were the only ones to vote in favor of the amendment, which was rejected 8-5. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, a Clinton appointee, was absent for the vote, and Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee chairman, did not vote.

Introduced by James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, the amendment also would have removed a platform reference to Jerusalem as “an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths” and stripped out language critical of the United Nations and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Zogby and fellow Sanders appointee Cornel West are both outspoken supporters of the BDS movement.

Watch: DNC body debates Israel amendment

The amendment made reference to the Gaza Strip: “We also call for an international effort to rebuild Gaza, which the U.N. warns could be uninhabitable by 2020 and where poverty and hopelessness undermine peace and security for both Palestinians and Israelis.”

Zogby said Sanders had worked directly on the language of the amendment.

“The reality is — and Sen. Sanders has made clear — that there are two peoples in this situation, and two peoples who need to be understood and whose pain needs to be recognized,” Zogby said late Friday night after introducing the amendment nearly nine hours into the drafting session.

Former Los Angeles Congressman Howard Berman, a member of the drafting committee, called the amendment “one-sided” for singling out Israel as a target of criticism.

“Some people want to sort of make the contention — many of them for partisan reasons — that the Democratic Party is turning against Israel,” Berman told the Journal by phone the morning after the vote.

He said the strong support for Israel’s security displayed by Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is the “the prevailing view of the Democratic Party,”

“It’ not the unanimous view, but it’s the prevailing view,” he said.

Clinton’s foreign policy team worked closely with the drafting committee members, Berman said, and made strong, supportive language for Israel a priority.

“There are other areas of the platform where they tried to make negotiations with the Sanders folks,” he said. “On this one, they were not prepared to negotiate.”

Berman cautioned that there is “a long way to go” before the Democratic National Convention convenes on July 25 in Philadelphia. The platform still needs to pass the platform committee, a 187-person body that can modify it. That group will meet on July 8 in Orlando, Fla.

But leaders of the local Democratic establishment were quick to disavow the minority amendment.

“I don’t believe the Democratic national platform is a place where that very complicated issue should be litigated,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman representing parts of West Los Angeles.

He said he believes “enormous bipartisan majorities in support of Israel” will remain the norm in Congress.

“I don’t think support for Israel will ever become a partisan issue,” he said.

Clinton stalwarts point out that the platform language is a sideshow compared with the policy positions of their nominee, whom many see as strongly pro-Israel.

“The platform gives us something to argue about in Philadelphia,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat and Clinton ally who defeated Berman in a 2012 congressional race. “But the real platform is Hillary Clinton’s record and her positions, and those are very strong pro-Israel positions.”

Nonetheless, Sherman criticized Sanders for seeming to pick a fight on Israel.

Speaking to the Journal from Washington, D.C., he said, “It is unfair to get thousands of delegates talking about breaking up the big banks and changing our campaign finance system and then to use that power to do something on the Middle East.”

Henry Waxman, Lieu’s predecessor in Congress from West L.A., on June 22 pre-emptively criticized attempts to modify the platform language.

“Make no mistake: Inserting unnecessarily contentious changes to the platform would serve only to hurt our nominee in November and undermine the prospect of a two-state solution during the next administration,” he said in a statement.

Waxman, who is Jewish, put his faith in the party’s nominee to maintain its pro-Israel message.

“I have spent my entire life fighting for progressive values and a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. With Hillary at the helm of the party — and soon, I hope, the country — I know both are in good hands.”

Howard Welinsky, a Warner Bros. executive from Los Angeles, is a veteran of the platform process. He served on the platform committee in 2000, 2004 and 2008, and plans to travel to Orlando on July 8 and to participate in the Democratic convention again this year.

He told the Journal that the Clinton campaign is “much more organized on the platform process” than previous Democratic presidential campaigns.

Whereas in earlier years he felt “pro-Israel forces were on our own to negotiate,” he doesn’t expect that to be the case this time around.

Nonetheless, he said, “I am prepared for any eventuality.”

Welinsky noted that 25 percent of the platform committee could vote to include a “minority report” on any given issue, which would then be forwarded to the larger convention.

Additionally, even without another Sanders-led effort, “there’s always the possibility that some of Sanders people are operating independently” and could introduce language critical of Israel, he said.

Before the drafting committee met, an accord between the Clinton and Sanders camps seemed emergent.

On June 23, Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Sanders appointee, and Gutierrez released a joint statement through the left-leaning Jewish organization J Street, playing down talk of a rift within the Democratic Party.

“Some have speculated about divisions within our party over the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East,” they wrote. “The truth is that when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we’re on the exact same page.”

Liberal critics of Israel’s actions see the Democratic platform as a venue for sparking a national dialogue on the subject.

“There’s a blockade of Gaza and there’s blockade in Southern California and the nation of having honest conversations about Israel-Palestine,” Estee Chandler, the Los Angeles head of Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Journal.

She added, “I hope that those conversations would happen at both party conventions.”

Correction [July 5, 12:58 p.m.]: A previous version of this story erroneously reported that Howard Welinsky served on the platform committee in 2012. He was a member of that committee in 2000, 2004 and 2008, but not in 2012.

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