When US President Harry Truman addressed a group of US diplomats stationed in the Middle East in late 1945, after they had urged him to withhold support for the Zionist project in Palestine because it would lead to protracted conflict in the Middle East and undermine their efforts to promote US interests, Truman spoke the following words:
"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."
It's now conventional wisdom that Truman's electoral calculations drove US recognition of Israel in 1948. Yet it is hardly the entire story, and a simplistic one at that.
Had the US diplomats managed to persuade Truman with their prophetic warnings that Zionist ambitions amounted to a recipe for permanent conflict and would inflict severe reputational damage upon the US in the Middle East, Truman, the only leader who had shown few qualms in authorising nuclear weapons, would not have hesitated to abandon the “hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism”, even had they numbered in the millions.
The above notwithstanding, US Zionists have for decades revelled in boasting about the electoral power of the Jewish community and its purported ability to make or break candidates for anything from president to municipal dog catcher. Truman is furnished as an object lesson in this regard.
In recent years, the much larger Christian Zionist constituency has come to perform an even more explicit role on behalf of Israel, as US Jewish attachment to Israel steadily wanes and opposition to its policies rises, particularly among the younger Jewish generations.
To be sure, there’s nothing illegal about any of this. In US politics, influence is the name of the game, and money rules the roost. It’s a plutocracy with voting rights, even if it insists it is the most perfect democracy on earth, kind of like the 'most moral army' in the Milky Way.
In European states, too, the pro-Israel vote extends well beyond the Jewish vote, and also does not encompass their respective Jewish communities and leadership without distinction. Christian Zionists, the far right, and Atlanticists, among others, are core and often larger constituencies.
Nevertheless, Zionist leaders and activists like to promote the impression of a unified and influential Jewish voting bloc, and to present it as one that requires the successful candidate to demonstrate unconditional support for Israel.
Against this background, the hysterical meltdown by Israel flunkies in response to the announcements by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that France and Britain may recognise the State of Palestine at the upcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly is a sight to behold.
The Hasbara Symphony Orchestra falls flat
As has been the case for several years, Israel and its flunkies continuously seek to present support for Palestine as a niche Muslim issue rather than the universal litmus test for humanity and moral decency it represents.
This has several advantages. It allows Israel to associate the Palestinian people with Islam and by extension the unprecedented Islamophobia that it and the Hasbara Symphony Orchestra have ceaselessly stoked, and thus delegitimise the concept of Palestinian rights; it maximizes support from the extreme right that has become Israel’s most loyal ally; and it promotes the illusion that ordinary and particularly white Europeans aren’t interested in the matter, and that mainstream politicians can therefore safely ignore it.
Thus, in their meltdown, Israel flunkies have singularly focused on the growing number of Muslim voters in Britain and France (and in the West more generally), often with detailed demographic information provided, as if it is the sum total of the explanation needed to understand the shifting winds in London, Paris, and other capitals.
It's as if these voters belong to fundamentally illegitimate constituencies that need to be expelled from political life for the proper order of things to be restored.
Indeed, these explanations have often been paired with alarmist and often hysterical warnings about the anticipated further growth in the number of Muslim voters.
As with Truman and the Jewish vote in the 1940s, Muslim votes do, of course, today play a role in the political calculations of leaders, and in some cases, even an important role.
But as with Truman, they are not decisive and do not outweigh geopolitical calculations. And as with the pro-Israel vote in decades past, the constituency supporting Palestinian rights extends far beyond the Arab or Muslim electorate, and is also not a decisive issue across the Muslim constituency – assuming for the sake of argument that the diverse population of Muslims (Arabs, sub-Saharan Africans, Iranians, Turks, South and East Asians) do form a coherent voting bloc concerning Palestine.
I suspect the panic in pro-Israeli circles reflects a broader fear. For decades, devotion to Israel has been a political and electoral asset, and support for Palestine a ticket to obscurity and a certificate of political death.
We are now, on account of seismic changes within the electorate as a whole, rather than the numeric increase of Arab or Muslim voters, entering an era where blind support of Israel is no longer the prerequisite to a successful political career, and where promotion of Palestinian rights is no longer an insurmountable political burden.
This, in the long run, is of much greater concern and consequence to Israel and its acolytes than whether or not France and Britain, both members of the United Nations Security Council and the G7, recognise the State of Palestine.
Europe U-turns on Palestine?
One case of particular interest is the Netherlands. It has, since last year, had the most radical, far-right government since the German occupation during the Second World War. Its de facto leader, Geert Wilders, has built his entire career around racism and xenophobia, in a manner reminiscent of the German occupiers in more ways than one.
Last month, the Dutch government, composed of a coalition of four parties, collapsed after strongman Wilders pulled the plug because it was insufficiently xenophobic and was unprepared to act as if the Dutch constitution were a piece of used toilet paper.
New elections are scheduled for this October, and in the meantime, the Netherlands is being ruled by a caretaker government, consisting of the remaining three parties that last year agreed to serve under Wilders.
To the surprise of virtually everyone, the caretaker government has taken positions against Israel that are unprecedented in Dutch history, a country that has traditionally been more pro-Israel than Israel itself.
It, for example, called for the European Union to launch a review of Israel’s compliance with its human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, and its most recent measure declared two senior Israeli officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, persona non grata.
The remaining coalition partners are themselves known for their extreme pro-Israeli positions, yet in the space of several weeks, have gone beyond what either the centrist Christian Democrats or centre-left parties ever implemented or even contemplated when in power.
Part of the explanation is, of course, the different context, represented by the Gaza Genocide.
Another part of the puzzle is that not only has The Hague been preceded by other European governments in adopting measures meant to demonstrate frustration with Israel, but Dutch public opinion has shifted so dramatically that it is today easier – much easier – to sell sand in the Sahara than Israel in The Netherlands.
According to existing polling, the movement led by Wilders, known as the Party for Freedom (PVV), even though it is not a political party since Wilders is its only registered member, is still topping the opinion polls.
Wilders himself is fanatically pro-Israeli, with positions well to the right of Israel’s governing Likud Party. He is also an exceptionally loud and vulgar politician. Every time the current government acts in a manner that is not thoroughly subservient to Israel or fully supportive of the Gaza Genocide, he goes visibly and very publicly apoplectic, Israeli flags and all. By comparison, Donald Trump is a master of subtlety.
It may just be the case that his former coalition partners believe that regularly reminding his voters that for all his nationalist rhetoric, Wilders consistently puts Israel first, and does so not despite the Gaza Genocide but because of it, that they can cut him down to size and eat into his voter base.
They are, after all, for the most part, competing for the same voters. And, in this particular case, those votes are neither Muslim nor Jewish in significant numbers. Just speculating.
Mouin Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
Follow Mouin on X: @MouinRabbani
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