The Washington Post - 03.03.2020

A8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020

election 2020

BY MICHELLE BOORSTEIN

Members of IfNotNow, a group
that opposes Israel’s military oc-
cupation, are used to being called
fringe and anti-Semitic. What’s
unfamiliar is having major presi-
dential candidates publicly agree
with them.
The 2020 campaign is the first
time top contenders — Sens. Ber-
nie Sanders and Elizabeth War-
ren — h ave boycotted the massive
American Israel Public Affairs
Committee policy conference, a
signature event on the American
Jewish calendar.
The conference, which runs
through Tuesday, brings 18,
people to the District under the
umbrella of the pro-Israel lobby-
ing group.
“I was glad to see that we
actually have people running who
are willing to respond to this call
for moral leadership,” said Noah
Wagner, 23, who sneaked into the
Walter E. Washington Conven-
tion Center with six other IfNot-
Now members Sunday and un-
furled a banner that read: “A IPAC
provides a platform for bigotry,
we have a choice! Skip AIPAC!”
Wagner in particular praised
Sanders (I-Vt.), who accused
AIPAC of providing a forum for
bigotry last week when he said
why he was declining to speak at
the conference. It’s meaningful to
see a candidate willing to “chal-
lenge establishment views that
brought about a broken status
quo,” Wagner said. “He’s follow-
ing the lead of groups like ours.”
The boycott AIPAC movement
launched by IfNotNow and other
young activists has triggered
much debate: Are American Jews
changing their relationship with
Israel? Has AIPAC c hanged? Have
Democrats?
Longtime watchers and activ-
ists agree that the activists repre-
sent a new generation of Israel
critics that differs in key ways
from the pro-peace movement of
the 1990s.

That earlier movement fo-

cused on a two-state solution to

the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,

buoyed by witnessing the Madrid

Peace Conference and the Oslo

accords, when the world saw

Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin

shake hands.

The new groups are the prod-

uct of post-millenial liberal poli-

tics, with antipathy toward na-

tionalism of all kinds and a hun-

ger to tear down the entire system

of money in politics.

“What we said was: ‘There’s

another way to be pro-Israel, you

don’t have to support whatever

the [Israeli] government does,’ ”

said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president

of the group J Street, which

formed in 2009 as a devoutly

liberal but still pro-Zionist alter-

native to AIPAC. “Younger groups

are saying: ‘You don’t have to be

pro-Israel, you should be pro-hu-

man rights, and everyone should

have a state.’ ”

Ben-Ami said the sharper

ethos of the new groups is the

result of Israel’s continued and

expanded settlements and other

developments, including the in-

creased alignment between the

Israeli government and the Re-

publican Party — even as 65

percent of U.S. Jews identify as

Democrats or lean Democratic,

according to an August Gallup

poll.

“It makes me extraordinarily

sad. These incredible young peo-

ple are my kids and their friends,

who have the best values in the

world,” Ben-Ami said. “It’s very

painful and a distancing of this

segment of American Jewry.”

Many members of the newer

groups were in college chapters of

J Street, Ben-Ami says. He’s ac-

customed to intense discussions,

sometimes fissures, about how to

push for a solution to the conflict.

J Street and the liberal New

Israel Fund don’t, for example,

support or advocate boycotts of

AIPAC or of Israel itself.

IfNotNow launched this year’s

#SkipAIPAC campaign a month

ago. Warren’s announcement at a

New Hampshire town hall that

she was intentionally not attend-

ing came shortly before. The

group was joined by MoveOn and

the Working Families Party, two

left-leaning groups that don’t fo-

cus primarily on Israel.

A few days later, members of

IfNotNow videotaped themselves

confronting former vice presi-

dent Joe Biden about AIPAC’s

opposition to the 2015 U.S.-Iran

nuclear deal. Biden s aid he would

go to the conference “to convince

them to change their position.”

In the end, Biden sent a video

message, telling delegates that

Israel’s annexation plans and set-

tlement activities were “choking

hopes for peace.”

IfNotNow was founded in

2014, in the wake of the war

between Israel and the Hamas-

ruled Gaza strip, and it has 16

chapters in the United States and

Canada. Members hold a range of

views about Israeli policy and

Palestinian statehood, group

leaders say. Many have close ties

to Israel and went to Jewish day

schools.

Their institutional tone is con-

frontational. A news release said

Biden would address AIPAC,

“alongside racist billionaire Mike

Bloomberg and other bigots.”

While experts agree that the

movement is important to watch,

they say its size is small and its

impact hard to predict, especially

with most American Jews still

saying they are very or somewhat

attached to Israel.

Halie Soifer, executive director

of the Jewish Democratic Council

of America, said the effort to

boycott AIPAC comes from “very

left-leaning groups and doesn’t

represent a meaningful voice in

the Democratic Party.”

Ben-Ami called the new groups

“not an emerging majority, but

large and loud.”

On Sunday, a dozen activists

handed out fliers outside the con-

ference noting that scheduled

speakers included Austrian

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who

has formed a coalition with his

country’s far-right party.

David Harris, chief executive of

the American Jewish Committee,

said some in the Jewish commu-

nity have grown frustrated with

the “fundamental and perma-

nent” tension generated by the

long-standing conflict between

Israel and its neighbors.

“If Israel could wrap its arms

around Gaza, Syria and Lebanon

and sing the song of peace, it

would,” he said. “This permanent

clash unsettles some American

Jews who can’t reconcile the in-

ability to align core Jewish values

with realities of statecraft.”

Soifer said that despite the

attention paid this year to which

presidential candidates do and

don’t address AIPAC, most Amer-

ican Jews will base their vote for

the White House “on issues like

access to affordable health care,

rejection of [the Trump] adminis-

tration, climate change, gun safe-

ty.”

“There are vocal minorities on

both sides that don’t represent

what could be perceived as a

silent majority,” she said. “Some-

thing we know about the over-

whelmingly majority of Jews is

... they are not voting on Israel.”
[email protected]

A new Jewish activism confronts AIPAC: ‘Large and loud’

MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST

Lauren Manus, a member of IfNotNow, which launched this year’s #SkipAIPAC campaign a month ago, hands out information to people

attending the conference Sunday. The event brings 18,000 people to the District under the umbrella of the pro-Israel lobbying group.

Antipathy to nationalism

and money in politics

drives liberal groups

S0129-6x

Retropolis

Stories of the past, rediscovered.

washingtonpost.com/retropolis

BY AMBER PHILLIPS

Super Tuesday is the day when
the most states hold contests to
pick a presidential nominee, the
most voters have a chance to go
to the polls, and the most dele-
gates will be allotted. More than
a third of all delegates for the
Democratic National Convention
are up for grabs on this one day.
Super Tuesday is a popular day
to hold a primary because so
many states want an early say in
who gets the nomination. So
they’ve clustered as early as they
can without stealing any thunder
from the first four states.

When is Super Tuesday?

It’s today, March 3.
Vermont’s polls close first at 7
p.m. Eastern, and California’s
last at 11 p.m. Eastern. We won’t
know all the results Tuesday,
because the tabulating of votes
could go late into the night.
California’s final results will take
days, at least, as mail-in ballots
must be postmarked by primary
day.

How many delegates are at
stake?

Fourteen states and one terri-
tory vote, t o award a total of 1,
delegates.
It’s the delegate total that
counts when figuring out who
wins a party’s presidential nomi-
nation. The first candidate to get
a majority of the nearly 4,
delegates wins the nomination.

Before Super Tuesday, less than 5

percent of delegates will have

been allotted. After: 38 percent.

The day i s even more consequen-

tial this year because California,

with its big delegate haul, moved

its primary up.

Why is it especially

important this year?

The race did narrow in the last

couple of days.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has

seized the lead in the liberal lane,

in delegates and i n recent nation-

al polling.

The competition in the other

lane, for a more moderate alter-

native to Sanders, remains mud-

dled. Former vice president Joe

Biden won in South Carolina on

Saturday, putting him in the

driver’s seat for that. Shortly

afterward, three candidates

dropped out of the race — former

South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete

Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar

(D-Minn.) and investor To m Stey-

er.

When the not-Sanders compe-

tition was still so murky in late

2019, former New York mayor

Mike Bloomberg jumped in the

race. Super Tuesday is the first

time he will appear on presiden-

tial ballots. His late entry strate-

gy was to skip the early states,

and he has spent hundreds of

millions of his own money on

campaign ads. His standing in

the polls rose, making his candi-

dacy one more wild card in this

race.

The candidates’ strategies

Sanders is making a big play

for California, and polling sug-

gests it could pay off. But lots has

happened in the race in the few

days before Super Tuesday, and

Biden was already polling well

enough in California to contend

for some of the state’s delegates.

That becomes more likely if Butt-

igieg’s and Klobuchar’s former

supporters boost him.

The candidates are also fo-

cused on Te xas and a thriving

Democratic Party there. A CNN

poll released Friday found Sand-

ers with a big lead in both

California and Te xas.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-

Mass.) is still in the race despite

not having won any contests so

far, and she is hoping to at least

win her home state.

Bloomberg specifically tai-

lored his message to appeal to

black voters in states like North

Carolina. A poll in the state

released Friday shows him

bunched up with Sanders and

Biden. But some of his support-

ers fear that if Biden does well

with black voters, it could ding

Bloomberg’s chances in the

South on Super Tuesday.

A brief history of Super

Tuesday

It was born out of a desire by

Democrats in the 1980s to nomi-

nate a moderate candidate, said

Richard Berg-Andersson of the

Green Papers blog. In 1984,

Democrats nominated Walter

Mondale, who got crushed in the

general election. For the next

election, Southern states moved

their primaries en masse to

March to try to have the more

conservative wing of their party

chime in sooner. (It didn’t work:

Democrats nominated then-

Massachusetts Gov. Michael Du-

kakis, also a liberal, who also

lost.)

To day, Super Tuesday is more

geographically diverse. Each

state wants a say early in the

nominating contest.

Super Tuesday can be decisive

and signal the end of a primary,

like it was for both parties in

2000, said Josh Putnam, a politi-

cal science professor who runs

the elections blog Frontloading

HQ. “But they can also show

whether things are evenly divid-

ed or evenly enough to keep

primary season going for a lon-

ger time,” he said in an email.

[email protected]

Super Tuesday’s importance: The most delegates up for grabs in a single day

MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Political signs are seen along Commerce Street in Dallas on Monday. Texas is among 14 states and one

territory voting in the Super Tuesday contests, with a total of 1,357 delegates to award.