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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Eric Garcia

Moderate Democrats now changing tune on Israel over starvation of Gaza: ‘Moral obligation’

Moderate Democrats who have staunchly backed Israel have begun to question Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza as images come out of the region showing children starving, Politico reported.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) has been one of the most vocal defenders of Israel during his time in Congress, quitting the Congressional Progressive Caucus partially because of it. But he’s begun to question Netanyahu’s Gaza response two years on from the Oct. 7 Hamas terror strike on Israel.

“All parties, including the U.S. and Israel, have a moral obligation to do everything in our power to ease the hardship and hunger that’s taken hold in the Gaza Strip,” Torres told Politico last week.

The New York Democrat’s tone represents a larger shift. Last week, a handful of moderate Democrats joined Sen. Bernie Sanders’ motions to restrict weapons sales to Israel.

Along with more progressive members like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), moderates like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) joined the motions. In the end, a majority of Democrats supported both resolutions, with three Democrats not voting on them.

“The facts on the ground are that militarily, they have significant tactical advantages and are sufficient enough to be able to effectively deliver food. So the question arises, why can’t you get food in there and health care services and basically follow humanitarian laws,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told Politico.

Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, had previously opposed similar motions to restrict arms sales to Israel by Sanders.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who is Jewish, also excoriated Israel. Specifically, he criticized the use of the US-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, to handle distribution of food.

“They kicked out all the organizations that know how to do this, they stood up a new organization that's never done this before, that's mostly comprised of military contractors, and it is flatly failing, and people are dying” Schatz told The Independent last week.

Multiple people have been killed at aid distribution sites, either by being trampled, stabbed or shot at. The Israeli military says that it only fires warning shots and GHF says it only uses pepper spray or fires warning shots to prevent crowding.

At the same time, moderate Democrats like Torres want to keep attention to the hostages who remain in Gaza after Hamas launched a surprise attack on October 7, 2023 that led to them killing 1,200 people and taking 251 people captive. Some of the hostages have already died in captivity.

“The world’s silence about the deliberate starvation of Israeli hostages—at the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad — is as deafening as its hypocrisy,” Torres said on X.

Pro-Israel Democratic consultants and donors also seemed to give Torres a pass and not say he was being a hypocrite for his actions.

“It’s precisely because Congressman Torres has been so proactive about calling out antisemitism that masquerades as antizionism that when he has constructive advice about Israel it’s listened to in a way that a statement from the member of congress who reps an adjacent district isn’t,” Stu Loeser, a New York-based consultant who worked for former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, told Politico.

Loeser’s words were a dig at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the outspoken democratic socialist who has called Israel’s war against Gaza a “genocide.”

Some former Biden administration officials have said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s execution of the war have driven the shift among Democrats.

“Yes, the political incentives for Democrats are shifting, but even more powerful for many Democrats is the recognition that a blank check approach to Israel, especially with this Israeli government, is fundamentally in contravention to our interests and values,” Ned Price, who served as a spokesman for the State Department during the Biden administration, told Politico.

Another reason for the split: Democratic voters are breaking with Israel. A Gallup poll released last week showed that only 32 percent of Americans back Israel’s actions in Gaza and only 8 percent of Democrats do.

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