After a floor fight with Arab-American delegates, pro-Israel forces succeeded last weekend in getting the Texas state Democratic convention to adopt a platform plank affirming the special relationship between the United States and Israel.
“When it was time to stand up, our friends stood with us,” said Marc Stanley, chairman of Texans for Justice and Freedom, a 3-year-old group that promotes grass-roots support for Israel.
“The language reaffirms the Democratic party’s 44-year support for Israel,” said Steve Gutow, director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. “The entire pantheon of this party” stood up and declared that the friendship between America and Israel “is a cause worth fighting for in this country,” he said.
The Middle East plank was largely agreed upon before the convention. It applauds the Arab-Israeli peace process, calling it “a real opportunity” for “a just and lasting peace, with security for Israel and the realization of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”
But after a floor fight with Arab-American Democrats, the platform committee adopted additional language that went further.
“The Democratic Party believes that the U.S. and Israel share a longstanding relationship based on shared values, a mutual commitment to democracy and a strategic alliance that benefits both nations; and therefore, our foreign policy in the Middle East should reflect the special nature of this relationship,” the platform now reads.
The floor fight was triggered after Arab-American delegates distributed anti-Israel leaflets, a move Texas Democratic Party Chair Bob Slagle decried before the delegates as a violation of the pre-convention agreement.
That agreement called for a “certain code of conduct which ruled out provocation from either side,” said Stanley. But there were “several indications” that the Arab-Americans “were not playing it straight,” he said.
Stanley said those who rallied around Israel included labor activists, teachers, Hispanics and African-Americans.
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, dismissed the leaflet distribution as a pretext used by pro-Israel forces to derail what he said could have been a historic compromise.
Zogby, who was not at the convention, said Arab-Americans had been betrayed at the convention and that pro-Israel groups were intolerant and unwilling to cooperate.
For Stanley, the weekend was a victory and an affirmation. “The Jews are a fundamental part of the Texas Democratic Party and the national Democratic Party,” he said, “and the Democratic Party is a good home for the Jews.”
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