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In Tel Aviv speech, Rahm Emanuel to tear into Netanyahu for leading Israel to ‘dead end’

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Rahm Emanuel, a top Jewish Democrat and likely candidate for the party’s US presidential nomination in 2028, will denounce Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv this week and deliver a bracing message that the country’s relationship with the United States is “at a crossroads.”

“It cannot stand or survive as it has been,” Emanuel will say at Tel Aviv University on Wednesday, according to remarks obtained by The Times of Israel. “To maintain the strength of our ties, we need significant changes and a new direction.”

In an interview ahead of his speech, Emanuel told The Associated Press that Israel’s continued military response to Hamas’s October 7 onslaught has been “reckless and careless in the treatment of Palestinian life — not only the military campaign but using food and medicine as an instrument of your military goals.”

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Israel has adamantly rejected allegations that it has used food as a weapon in the war against Hamas, pointing to its facilitation of large amounts of aid into Gaza throughout the war. But it did withhold that assistance for nearly three months last year, as it sought to pressure Hamas to release hostages.

Asked whether Israel had committed genocide — an accusation leveled by some human rights organizations and rejected by the Israeli and US governments — Emanuel said the question should not be considered in isolation without also examining conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan.

“I’m ready to have that discussion,” he said, “but I don’t think it should be politicized, and then dilute the power of what genocide means.”

Taken together, the interview and upcoming speech from a stalwart of the Democrats’ centrist wing are another demonstration of how far the party has shifted away from its historic support of Israel, almost three years after a war sparked by a Hamas-staged invasion and massacre of southern Israel.

About 58% of Democrats say the US is “too supportive” of the Israelis, according to a new survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research — up from 45% in January 2024. Roughly half of Democrats believe that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the war with Hamas.

Emanuel’s proposals in the speech will include sanctions on settler extremists who attack Palestinian civilians and property, along with companies and banks that support settlements considered illegal by most of the international community. He also wants to end US subsidies to Israel’s defense budget, arguing the country “should be able to buy American arms under the same financial terms, the same restrictions, and the same requirements as every other trusted ally that abides by our laws.”

In addition, Emanuel will blame Netanyahu for driving Israel to a “dead end,” emboldened by poor decisions from American leaders.

“For too long, American policy toward Israel operated under the assumption that the best thing Washington could do for Jerusalem was to blindly and silently stand behind your government, without conditions, without demands, and without consequences when we disagreed,” he will say. “That has been our mistake. Unconditional support has produced a prime minister who has presumed that his strategic interests would incur no cost if he ignored America’s concerns.”

There’s little precedent for an American with presidential ambitions to travel to another country, much less one as fraught as Israel, to deliver such a stinging rebuke of its political leadership. Centrist figures like Emanuel have been more reluctant than the Democrats’ progressive base to question longtime US support for Israel in recent years.

How will Netanyahu react?

His remarks could prompt a similarly fiery response from Netanyahu, who famously once called Emanuel — who had ambitions of being the first Jewish speaker of the US House — a “self-hating Jew.” Netanyahu faces his own battle for reelection in October, and the veteran leader may try to use a confrontation with Emanuel for political gain by appearing to stand strong in the face of international criticism.

Emanuel, who arrived in Israel on Sunday ahead of the Wednesday speech, told the AP that he’s intentionally avoiding interactions with Israeli elected officials during his visit to not interfere with the country’s upcoming elections. Instead, his agenda includes visiting Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, known for serving Israelis and Palestinians, meeting with the family of a Hamas hostage, visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and meeting with President Isaac Herzog.

For possible Democratic presidential contenders gauging how to address the fallout from Israel’s war in Gaza and Netanyahu’s perceived tilt toward the Republican Party, led by President Donald Trump, the speech represents an especially frontal strategy.

The war has disrupted political coalitions in both major political parties in the US, with younger voters recoiling at Israel’s approach to the conflict, pressing American leaders to take a tougher stand. The issue has roiled some Democratic congressional primaries this year and could continue to be a dividing line in the contest for the party’s presidential nomination in 2028.

Castigating Netanyahu for doing little to advance diplomatic efforts to end the war, Emanuel will note that “support for Israel is plummeting around the world.”

“You’ve lost Europe,” he will say. “Your scientists face exclusion from international research networks. Your artists and academics are shut out of exhibits and conferences.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomes then-White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emmanuel at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem,on May 26, 2010. (Ariel Jerozolimski/Flash 90)

Support for Israel has waned

While Netanyahu has forged generally strong ties with Trump and the Republican Party, Israel’s support among Democrats has slipped in recent years. But in portraying Israel as increasingly isolated, Emanuel’s comments have echoes of recent remarks from Vice President JD Vance, a sign of how criticism of the country is taking hold in both parties.

Speaking recently from the White House briefing room as the US worked to close a deal to end the war with Iran, Vance said Trump was “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”

For all his tough words, Emanuel, who is Jewish and whose father was born in Jerusalem, will offer notes of sympathy and understanding. He will acknowledge the death toll of the October 7, 2023, attacks in which Hamas-led terrorists launched air and ground strikes on Israel, slaughtering nearly 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. He will also note disappointments from previous rounds of peace talks with Palestinian leaders.

“But even while acknowledging that history, the path forward cannot be held hostage to a past defined exclusively by recriminations,” he will say.

He will call the two-state solution “discredited” and instead push for a “23-state solution” that includes Israel, a reformed Palestinian Authority and the 21 other members of the Arab League in a peace deal.

“The 21 Arab nations that have exploited Palestinian rights as a slogan for decades now need to roll up their sleeves and stand up a governing authority capable of accepting the historic Jewish connection to this land,” he will say.

While no prominent Democrat has formally entered the 2028 contest, that could change soon after the November midterms with a field that could ultimately swell into the dozens. Few have been as open about their intentions as Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff, congressman, Chicago mayor and US ambassador who has spent much of the past three decades holding one public office or another.

Absent such a post now, he’s gained attention by releasing a string of policy proposals, biking through the early voting state of New Hampshire, appearing on podcasts and stepping up his social media presence.

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