As Israel faces an existential war, the 2024 U.S. Presidential election is shaping up to be the most important the Jewish people and State of Israel have ever had.
With the stakes as high as they can be, Kamala Harris has chosen Israeli-born Ilan Goldenberg as her Jewish outreach director. Goldenberg who joined the Biden Administration in 2021 will serve as “the campaign’s main liaison with Jewish community leaders and stakeholders and advise the campaign on issues related to the U.S.-Israel relationship, the war in Gaza and the broader Middle East.”
Goldenberg supports a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders and dividing Jerusalem, opposed American recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, supports sanctions against the Jewish State and a freeze on settlements. These radical viewpoints suggest that a Harris Administration will express hostility towards the Jewish state and American Jews who support Israel.
In a 2020 op-ed Goldenberg wrote that he supports a return to the indefensible pre-1967 lines that would be an existential threat to Israel; a divided Jerusalem; advocates that Jews be removed from their homes in Judea and Samaria; and supports a freeze on settlement activity by “ending the practice of shielding Israel from international consequences.”
In 2017, Goldenberg opposed the Trump Administration recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the Embassy to Jerusalem. He believes in a divided Jerusalem and advocates for a Palestinian state with a U.S.-Palestinian embassy in Jerusalem, and supports reopening the PLO mission in DC (which was closed because the PA supports illegitimate anti-Israel actions at the ICC).
Further, Goldenberg supported Obama’s abstention of the anti-Israel Security Council Resolution 2334 and Secretary Kerry’s speech at the end of the Obama Administration which accused the Israeli government of “risking future prospects for peace with the Palestinians” and said that by allowing settlements, “Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both – and it won’t ever really be at peace.” As Israeli minister Yuval Steinitz speaking after the vote said, the U.S. had “abandoned Israel, its only ally in the Middle East” and its behavior was not that of a friend.
Goldenberg wrote that settlements “swallow up more land and, the more plugged into the Israeli economy and infrastructure they become, the more difficult they are to physically remove. They also become accepted by Jewish-Israeli society as part of Israel and raise the domestic political cost of removing them.” He asked, “How will Israeli society come to terms with the relocation of hundreds that would likely be part of a two- state solution.” (We won’t support racist ideas to make the biblical land of Israel Judenrein – that’s how.)
Kamala Harris’s new Jewish advisor also came close to legitimizing a boycott of the Jewish state, noting that Resolution 2334 calls “on states to ‘distinguish, in their relevant dealings’ between Israel and the occupied territories – a far cry from attacking tech companies in Tel Aviv.”
Boycotting the settlements is something the radical American Jewish left has long advocated for. Similarly, in the Biden-Harris Administration Goldenberg has recently worked to sanction Israelis as part of an interagency initiative to produce sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals. If Israel doesn’t follow what America wants, then Goldenberg advocates for boycotts and sanctions. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Goldenberg supported the terrible Iran deal, opposed leaving it, opposed imposing maximum sanctions on Iran and supported rejoining the deal. This capitulation to Iran has weakened the entire region, strengthened Hamas and sees us on the brink of Iran obtaining nuclear power.
Goldenberg further opposed the Taylor Force Act to end U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian Authority for its so-called pay-for-slay policies in support of terrorism which sees terrorists being paid for killing Israelis.
Goldenberg supported restoring funding to UNRWA, who we now know consists of terrorists who killed Jews on October 7 and supports “a political process that simultaneously pursues the reintegration of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a long-term ceasefire between Israel and a group of Palestinian factions that include Hamas and Fatah and that has the blessing of the PLO.” He also says the U.S. will “need to find a way to work with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas,” and the U.S. should “press Israel to allow voting in East Jerusalem.”
J Street – the radical left-wing organization – was quick to praise the appointment. “Ilan Goldenberg is one of the most respected, thoughtful people in Washington working with the Jewish community and on Israel-Palestine,” J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami. “What a great pick by the Harris-Walz campaign for this sensitive assignment.”
If Goldenberg was still a voting Israeli – he renounced his citizenship – he’d vote on the far left of the Israeli political spectrum and he represents the radical left of the American Jewish community.
Lenin famously referred to those who work against their people’s own best interests in support of their enemies as “useful idiots” – and shamefully Ilan Goldenberg is one of them.
