Democrat hopeful delivers a warning to Israeli extremists

Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff and mayor of Chicago, has ambitions to become US president and hopes to compete in the 2028 presidential primary. As a student of politics, this possible Democratic Party contender seems good at reading the political landscape.

Emanuel has a strong Israeli background. His father grew up and is buried in Israel, and he has been a strong pro-Israeli Zionist throughout his political career.

To even have a chance in the Democratic primaries, Emanuel knows he needs to walk away from the party’s traditional position. The 2024 defeat of Kamala Harris, who gave lip service to the Middle East while a genocide was taking place, must be front and center in his calculations. What Emanuel needs is either a change in the right-wing hawkish Israeli policy or at least a chance to differ from Israel without being attacked as a self-hating Jew.

The policy speech on the US-Israel alliance that Emanuel gave at Tel Aviv University last week therefore needed to show sympathy and solidarity with Israel, and to trash Palestinian aspiration for statehood, while insisting on a more moderate Zionist policy that ensures dignity rather than the rights of Palestinians. He needed to add a few more daggers to Netanyahu’s failed policies while continuing in commitment to the overall Zionist plans.

On the Palestinian leadership issue, Emanuel regurgitated the talking points that Palestinians have refused every credible Israeli offer. His only specific claim, that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered Palestinians 98 percent of their land, was false: the offer excluded East Jerusalem, which by itself covers more than 10 percent of the occupied area.

Emanuel did not come to Tel Aviv to talk about or defend Palestinian rights. He came to try to tone down Israeli actions and rhetoric, which he rightly understands are a huge obstacle to his ever being considered a viable candidate for the US presidency.

The most important aspect of the speech is that it reflects the growing anti-Israel sentiment highlighted by recent US polls and primary results

Daoud Kuttab

In one segment of his speech, Emanuel tried to show his Israeli Jewish friends the consequences of failing to accept his friendly advice. Sounding more like Donald Trump in his angry exchange with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Emanuel told Israelis they were doomed if they continued in the way they had been going. He indirectly legitimized the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement when he warned of the consequences of Israeli actions, especially against civilians: “Every Israeli found attacking Palestinian civilians or their property in the future will be sanctioned. Every Israeli official who supports such violence will be sanctioned. Every construction company or bank building or financing illegal settlements will be sanctioned.”

It is not clear now what the effects of this speech will be in Israel. Elections are due in October, and all indications are that Netanyahu will find it difficult to form a governing coalition. As Emanuel probably expected, some of the attacks directed against him focused on the fact that he lives thousands of miles away in Chicago and that his speech was condescending to Israeli Jews.

But the most important aspect of the speech is that it reflects the growing anti-Israel sentiment highlighted by recent polls and primary results. It also legitimizes the public positions of candidates for local and national office who are opposed to funding and arming the Israeli army and government. The attacks against them of being antisemitic will ring even more hollow now that a former White House chief of staff and mayor of Chicago has licensed such calls.

Will the speech help Emanuel break out of the pack in the presidential primaries? It is too early to say, but it is highly unlikely that this Democrat hopeful will be able to show that he is a credible and winnable candidate who can capture the swing states that doomed Kamala Harris.

• Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He is the author of ‘State of Palestine Now: Practical and Logical Arguments for the Best Way to Bring Peace to the Middle East.’ X: @daoudkuttab