Media

  • The First Draft of Biden’s Israel Policy

    “It will be up to the Biden team to resolve the contradictions between progressive activists and the pro-Israel establishment. Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) and a Jewish Currents contributing writer, told me she suspects that Biden and Blinken ‘want to avoid making Israel/Palestine an issue in the election.’ The tug of war over the platform, then, may best be understood as a struggle to determine what the campaign considers safe.”

  • The Nation: Will the Left Get a Say in the Biden Doctrine?

    “Lara Friedman…excoriated Blinken for his statement during a webcast in May that ‘Joe Biden believes strongly in keeping your differences—to the greatest extent possible—between friends behind doors,’ referring to how Biden would handle disagreements with Israel. The event was hosted by the Democratic Majority for Israel, a super PAC funded in part by people who have donated to Republicans and that has targeted progressive candidates, including Sanders, with negative ads. ‘It’s quite striking,’ said Friedman. ‘They didn’t put this out in August. They put this out in May, before the July 1 annexation date,’ referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to annex parts of the occupied West Bank this summer, in violation of international law and against pre-Trump US policy. (As of this writing, the process had not formally commenced.) ‘He’s saying aid will never be used as leverage of any kind. He’s promising to protect Israel at the United Nations, which I have a hard time reading as anything other than a shot at Obama’—a reference to Obama’s decision not to veto a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank in December 2016. Friedman was pessimistic about a Biden administration’s willingness to listen to pro-Palestine activists. ‘If they’ve already annexed by the time you come in, how much political capital are you going to spend trying to undo or unwind annexation?’ she asked.”

  • Settlement & Annexation Report: July 24, 2020

    Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement & Annexation Report. To subscribe to this report, please click here. July 24, 2020 Annexation Watch: Gantz Pushes for Status Quo,…

  • The pro-Israel lobby is smearing Black Lives Matter as a ‘terrorist’ movement

    “In the statement, Greendorfer called for the US government to look into the alleged ties between BLM and Palestinian ‘terror’ groups: ‘We urge the Department of Justice to take action to fully investigate the ties among Black Lives Matter, their BDS partners and foreign terror groups that are promoting violence and unrest in the United States.’ Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace responded to these outrageous smears by saying, ‘If you weren’t expecting this you weren’t paying attention.’ This is clearly part of a pattern.”