News

Israel at War: Statement on Hamas attack on Israel

Like the many organizations in the Jewish and non-Jewish world across our nation, Democrats for Israel

California and its many affiliates across the state of California condemn the Friday night attack by the Iranian-backed terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza on Israel.

The brutality of Hamas terrorists is being documented in real time. Women and children beaten and then taken hostage. Kibbutz residents who have worked for peace with the Palestinians for their entire lives butchered by the terrorists. Thousands of rockets launched at random at Israeli cities, villages and kibbutz have killed Israeli children, women and men and injured hundreds more, while Hamas terrorists on the ground have killed hundreds more.

DFI-CA joins its affiliated clubs in condemning this senseless and unprovoked attack on Israel and its citizens, and calls on all members of the Democratic Party and all Americans to rally in support of Israel, as President Biden and his administration has done.

There will be time for investigations about how just such an attack by Hamas was planned and implemented, catching the Israeli Security apparatus by surprise, just as there will be plenty of time for political and military analysts to determine just how much the unrest in the West Bank contributed to this situation. But for now, it is time for Americans to rally behind Israel, the only democracy in the region, in opposition to the terrorism of Hamas and Hamas allies Iran and Hezbollah

Governor Newsom issued a letter to educators urging them to avoid the "bias, bigotry or discrimination" that is present in some "Liberated Ethnic Studies" programs.  The letter comes after requests from Jewish lawmakers, JPAC (supported by DFI-CA and several affiliated clubs) and the Santa Ana school district adopting a related vendor that advocated for courses that portray the Jews as white colonizers, ignoring the large Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish communities and violating the state's education antisemitism "guardrails" in the ethnic studies guidelines.

Earlier in the week State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond held a meeting and panel with prominent Jewish leaders to further enforce these guidelines called "Education to End Hate: Countering Antisemitism."  

Thank you to our state Democratic officials leadership for being responsive.

Thank you to House Democratic Leadership who released the statement below repudiating Rep. Jayapal's statement that "Israel is a racist state."  There can be policy disagreements between governments and even members of the Knesset both in and out of the governing coalition, but to broadly tarnish an entire nation this way was unacceptable, even at Jayapal later tried to walk it back and apologize.  Thank you to our House Leadership for standing firm with Israel as a country.

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Los Angeles -  Democrats for Israel California, the official chartered council of clubs for California Jewish Democratic Clubs finished the 2023 California Democratic Party Reorganizing Convention a resounding success.

Over 100 delegates attended the DFI-CA General Membership meeting, voting to affiliate with JDCA and hearing from candidates and amazing speakers such as:

• U.S House Caucus Chair Rep. Peter Aguilar
• State Senate President Pro Temp Toni Atkins
• California Jewish Legislative Caucus Vice Chair State Senator Scott Wiener
• Congressman Adam Schiff
• Augusta Christensen - Political Manager Democratic Majority for Israel

Over 300 delegates attended the Jewish Community Ice Cream Social, cosponsored by DFMI, California Jewish Legislative Caucus, DFI-LA, Silicon Valley Jewish Dem Club, Westside Democratic HQ, West LA Dem Club, CYD Jewish Caucus, Blue Wave Dem Club, American Jewish Committee, and Region 18 Director Connie Sullivan Barasch.  Resolutions reiterating support for the Two State Solution and opposing the rise of ultra-nationalist regimes were advanced by the Resolutions Committee and one anti-Israel resolution was found to be out of order.

As Democrats, we are greatly alarmed by the potential harms to Israeli society by Israel’s new governing coalition, the most right-wing in its history.

The values of the California Democratic Party (CDP) are clear. The CDP’s 2022 Platform states its support for Israel’s future as a secure democratic Jewish state and provides Israelis and Palestinians the right to live with independence, sovereignty, and dignity within their own viable states free from persecution, terror, or incitement.

Consistent with our values and those of the Democratic Party, we continue to support the right of Israel to live securely as a Jewish and democratic state, as it has since 1948.

As we have seen in the rise of other right-wing nationalist governments in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Italy, the recent elections in Israel have veered the country sharply to the right and away from the democratic principles espoused by its founders — principles that have placed the Jewish state among other western democratic nations.

When Donald Trump was elected President, millions of Americans mobilized to oppose his policies, but they did not advocate for the end of the United States. They mobilized because they loved their country. As American Jews, we are not citizens of Israel, but we recognize that Jewish identity remains intertwined with Israel’s existence.

Criticism of harmful Israeli policy that bears on its democratic character is appropriate as long as it does not embrace antisemitism or seek to delegitimize Israel’s existence. The way to support Israel and its democratic values is to stand with the more than 200,000 Israelis regularly coming out to protest the current government's attempts to undermine its democratic principles. Indeed, as Democrats and as Zionists, we express great alarm at the current government’s proposed policies and stand in solidarity with Israelis of all religions and orientations who seek to protect a democratic Israel.

We stand in solidarity with a democratic Israel because the current far-right government is advancing a proposal to eliminate independent judicial oversight, which would enable members of the government to refuse to comply with the law whenever they choose. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is standing trial on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust while leading a campaign to destroy the very judicial system responsible for his criminal prosecution, dismantling the separation of powers, eroding the independence of Israel's judges and giving politicians unfettered control.

To accomplish this requires extremist alliances. Enter Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and others, who seemingly have no qualms about dismantling Israeli democracy, disregarding the rights of the LGBTQ community, women, secular Israelis, Reform and Conservative Jews, and other minority groups. This extremist coalition government is ignoring the concerns of the millions in Israel who oppose this anti-democratic judicial overhaul, and members of this extremist coalition government have refused to slow the process and sit down and negotiate reforms that would be acceptable to the vast majority of the Israeli public.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be wiped out because a terrorist shot and killed Israelis at a settlement nearby. Shortly thereafter, a mob of settlers attacked and torched the town. Further, another member of the coalition government objected to the arrest of Israeli settlers who are connected with the attack. Ben-Gvir has been convicted of incitement to terrorism on multiple occasions. He is a follower of the late rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of Kahanism: a violent, extremist ideology that advocates for and has inspired acts of terror. He and his disciples were rightly banned from Israel's legislature in 1988 on the grounds that their ideology is “racist and undemocratic.” As recently as November 2022, Ben-Gvir attended a commemoration ceremony for Meir Kahane.

We stand in solidarity with a democratic Israel because Israel’s ruling coalition seems bent on imposing radical change to Israel’s political system. We Democrats in the United States have witnessed how a rightward shift of the Supreme Court has impacted the rights of immigrants, expanded Title 42, and reversed Roe v. Wade. A majority of our U.S. Supreme Court Justices have also signaled a readiness to challenge voting rights, election law, and affirmative action. The erosion of minority protections in our own country is deepening and, as noted by Israeli legal experts, the proposed dismantling of the checks and balances of an independent Israeli judiciary would have a similar effect. Democracy is not the power of a temporary, thin legislative majority to permanently —without recourse — oppress and remove the rights of its citizens. We cannot stand by quietly as democratic protections are eroded in both Israel and the United States.

We stand in solidarity because we are concerned for the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people, who desire their own viable, independent state living in peace next to Israel. We are particularly concerned with a guiding principle of the new coalition, which seeks to greenlight unilateral annexation, making a two-state solution virtually impossible and making the establishment of a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians equally impossible. Worse, the goals of this coalition government would normalize a unilateral form of Jewish hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, creating no options for consenting Palestinians to retain basic human rights of self-determination and taking away the option of their own state. The ruling coalition is in contravention of the national Democratic Party platform, which expressly supports a two-state solution and opposes unilateral actions by either party—whether it be Israelis imposing a single state via annexation or Palestinians attempting to force Israelis into a single-majority Palestinian state through an international campaign of delegitimization and a wildly overbroad interpretation of right of return laws.

As Democrats, we stand in solidarity with those seeking a democratic Israel by standing in opposition to the extreme proposals of Israel’s current coalition government, which are in stark contrast to our party platform and the values enshrined in Israel’s founding Declaration of Independence. Israelis are raising a clear and broad voice to oppose these proposed policies. These voices cannot be ignored.

We stand with the will of the Israeli people to find solutions that benefit all Israelis, protect democracy, and work for a sustainable peace.

● Democrats for Israel California, a council of Jewish Democratic clubs
● Progressive Zionists of California
● Democrats for Israel Los Angeles
● Jewish Democratic Club of Silicon Valley
● Jewish Democratic Club of Solano County

DEMOCRATS FOR ISRAEL CALIFORNIA CONDEMNS GOP CONTROLLER CANDIDATE LANHEE CHEN’S 2016 WALL STREET JOURNAL OP-ED FOR REPEATING TRUMP-STYLE ANTISEMITIC TROPES 

Los Angeles, CA October 24, 2022. Democrats for Israel California, the California Democratic Party chartered voice of the Jewish community to the California Democratic Party called out GOP Candidate Lanhee Chen for using antisemitic tropes in a co-written 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing “progressive proselyting” for why Jews and Asians vote Democratic titled “The Mystery of Jewish and Asian-American Democratic Loyalty.”

The article, co-written with former Bush Deputy HHS Secretary Devi Troy, encourages young voters to vote Republican, stated that because Jews and Asians make more money they should vote Republican and then repeats the falsehood that only the Republican party supports Israel, arguing that for both selfish economic reasons and out of a loyalty to Israel, young Jews and Asian-Americans should vote Republican and would do so but for the “proselyting” of teaches and academics, following a recent trend of anti-intellectualism in the Republican party.

DFI-CA President Andrew Lachman made the following statement:

“It is ant-semitic to imply that the American Jewish community is part of some economic elite.  There are large segments of both the Jewish and Asian-American community that experience poverty and they both share a long history of experiencing discrimination that Chen seems to have forgotten such as the educational quotas and immigration restrictions in place well into the 1960s.

Notwithstanding the fact that Democrats continue to overwhelmingly support the democratic Jewish state of Israel, for Chen to imply that American Jews should forfeit their duty as American citizens to uphold their values because of Israel is very similar to former President Trumps recent claims that the American Jewish should hold a greater loyalty to Israel than their support for the American democracy he and his supporters tried to overthrow on January 6, 2021. Both Asian Americans and Jewish Americans are frequently targets of the dual loyalty trope and for these two to play right into the same arguments shows how the Republican party set the table for the white supremacy of Charlottesville a long time ago. 

It is because Republicans like Trump and Chen do not share the same values as American Jews that they vote Democratic, as 75% of them did in 2020.  In light of the rise in antisemitism and anti-Asian violence under the most recent Republican administrations, we call on Chen to apologize for this article and the insulting implication that young voters are not capable of critical thought.”

In the June 15, 2016, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Troy and Chen criticized Jews for supporting Obama, noting that “78% backed Barack Obama in 2008, and 70% did in 2012, and then falsely claiming that this took place “despite a foreign policy that at best could be described as rough on Israel.”   The op-ed also implies that Jews are “disproportionately represented” at elite schools and blames academic influences at these schools for why young Jewish (and Asian) voters despite “socioeconomic factors that might suggest greater support for conservative causes and candidates.”  The only “socio-economic factor mentioned in the op-ed, is the claim that Jewish and Asian-Americans have higher incomes.  The op-ed’s closing paragraphs imply that money (and Israel) should be the only reasons to vote Republican with the ominous warning “…it’s not too soon for Jewish and Asian freshmen to start thinking about where their long-term interests lie.” 

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Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mystery-of-jewish-and-asian-american-democratic-loyalty-1465943377  (full reprint from Hudson Institute - https://www.hudson.org/domestic-policy/the-mystery-of-jewish-and-asian-american-democratic-loyalty)

Democrats for Israel California strongly supports Iron Dome funding.  Iron Dome is an anti-missile system which is a critical defensive measure against Hamas' rockets. After the most recent Hamas attacks of nearly 2,400 rockets, President Biden pledged to replenish the amounts in a supplemental appropriation. The attempt to pull it from the Debt Ceiling/Continuing Appropriation will not prevent the funding as Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro has already introduced legislation to provide the funding and unlike the Debt Ceiling (which Republicans repeatedly try to turn into a partisan issue and it always backfires), the DeLauro bill will have strong bipartisan support as Israel has enjoyed for decades and will continue to do so.

It is telling that the Congressmembers who opposed Iron Dome funding are choosing a defensive tool that protects against a Hamas and Hezbollah attack tactic that has been repeatedly cited as violating international law. Unlike JDAMs (guided missiles that explode underground to target bunkers and tunnels), Iron Dome is a purely defensive weapon and U.S. security aid is a critical part of Israel's military advantage. This year's total US security assistance to Israel is about equal to approximately 4% of Israel's total annual budget.  It is also telling when any member of Congress puts this sort of issue ahead of funding the U.S. government.

At the end of the day, this is meaningless empty action, as are Republican attempts to politicize the issue as they oppose the Debt Ceiling Bill either way and have already voted against appropriations bills funding Israel three times year.

DFI-CA and its 7 Democratic clubs were proud to help fight the Recall that resulted in a blowout against Republican efforts. 

DFI-CA club members donated thousands to the official anti-recall efforts and club members participated in phone banks run by county Democratic organizations, Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Grassroots HQ.  The SoCal Jewish News published an op-ed opposing the recall by DFI-CA President Andrew Lachman.