{"id":2768,"date":"2026-07-10T14:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2768"},"modified":"2026-07-10T14:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:12:14","slug":"rahm-emanuel-has-disgraced-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2768","title":{"rendered":"Rahm Emanuel has disgraced himself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I liked Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0He was tough, competent, and unapologetic about it.\u00a0\u00a0I counted him as one of the last credible centrist Democrats left in a party that keeps drifting farther from the center.\u00a0\u00a0That is why his speech at Tel Aviv University this week is so disappointing.<\/p>

Read more A spoonful of sugar helps the poison go down<\/a><\/p>\n

Emanuel told his audience that America\u2019s support for Israel should no longer be unconditional.\u00a0\u00a0He said Prime Minister Netanyahu has led Israel to a dead end and called the country increasingly isolated by choice.\u00a0\u00a0He floated a \u201c23-state solution\u201d and warned that unconditional support has let Israel deny food and medical relief to Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Every part of this is wrong on the facts.\u00a0\u00a0Support for Israel has never been unconditional.\u00a0\u00a0Arms sales go through the same export restrictions as every other country.\u00a0\u00a0Congress votes on aid every single year.\u00a0\u00a0Presidents from Reagan to Biden have withheld aid when they disagreed with Israeli policy.\u00a0\u00a0The memorandum of understanding that governs U.S. assistance sets a floor, not a blank check.<\/p>\n

Emanuel knows all of this better than almost anyone in American politics.\u00a0\u00a0He grew up in a family with deep ties to Israel, spent time volunteering there during the Gulf War, and has spent decades in Washington immersed in the details of the relationship.\u00a0\u00a0He is not making an honest mistake born of ignorance.\u00a0\u00a0He is making a political calculation and dressing it up as candor.<\/p>\n

Emanuel also compared Israel to Japan, South Korea, and Germany, suggesting that Israel should fall in line the way those allies do.\u00a0\u00a0The comparison does not hold up.\u00a0\u00a0Those countries host thousands of American troops on American bases, costing the United States tens of billions of dollars a year to defend them.\u00a0\u00a0The $3.8 billion Israel receives annually is not stationed anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0It is spent entirely in the United States, mostly with American defense contractors.\u00a0\u00a0Israel is not the free rider in this relationship.\u00a0\u00a0If anything, it is the better deal for American taxpayers and American industry.<\/p>\n

The timing is worse than the substance.\u00a0\u00a0Israel has elections in a matter of months, and the polls already show Netanyahu in trouble.\u00a0\u00a0An American politician flying to Tel Aviv to lecture Israelis on their own politics accomplishes nothing except handing Netanyahu a foil to run against.\u00a0\u00a0Obama tried something similar years ago.\u00a0\u00a0It backfired then, too.\u00a0\u00a0Israelis do not like being told what to do by American officials any more than Americans would like the reverse.<\/p>

Read more Government monetary poilcy means \u2018no hamburger for you\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is the part that should embarrass Emanuel most.\u00a0\u00a0J.D. Vance is now making nearly identical arguments from the other side of the aisle, warning that Israel risks losing its last sympathetic allies in Washington.\u00a0\u00a0When a Democrat weighing a 2028 presidential run and a Republican vice president are singing the same tune on conditioning support for Israel, that is a signal of how far the ground has shifted under both parties, and not in a good direction.\u00a0\u00a0It should worry anyone who cares about the U.S.-Israel relationship regardless of which party he votes for.<\/p>\n

Some will argue that this is not really a left-right story at all, that the deeper problem is an Israeli governing coalition steering the country toward international isolation on its own.\u00a0\u00a0There is something to that.\u00a0\u00a0Netanyahu\u2019s coalition bears real responsibility for how isolated Israel has become.\u00a0\u00a0But that argument cuts against Emanuel, not for him.\u00a0\u00a0If the coalition in Jerusalem is the problem, the answer is for American allies to let Israeli voters sort it out in their own elections this fall.<\/p>\n

Emanuel spent thirty-five years building a reputation as a serious, hawkish, pro-Israel Democrat, going back to his work for Bill Clinton and his tenure as Barack Obama\u2019s chief of staff.\u00a0\u00a0He cashed that reputation in this week for a speech that looks a lot like an opening bid for 2028, distancing himself from Israel before Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, or Josh Shapiro can be tagged with the same label by the party\u2019s progressive wing.\u00a0\u00a0It will win him no one on the left and cost him real credibility with everyone else.\u00a0\u00a0Progressives will not forget his record, and centrists and pro-Israel voters will not forget this speech.\u00a0\u00a0That is not courage.\u00a0\u00a0That is a career politician reading the wind on a presidential primary and getting it badly wrong.<\/p>\n

Israel does not need lectures from American politicians auditioning for a national ticket.\u00a0\u00a0It needs allies willing to say plainly that the country\u2019s right to defend itself did not expire on October 7, 2023, and that the blame for this war lies with Hamas, not with the ally trying to survive it.\u00a0\u00a0Rahm Emanuel used to understand that.<\/p>\n

Josh Kantrow is a lawyer in Chicago, where he focuses on technology, privacy, and complex commercial litigation.\u00a0\u00a0He writes on law, politics, and culture at his Facebook page:\u00a0facebook.com\/share\/1BLwcus4PR.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

Read more Money can\u2019t buy reading<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"<p><em>Image:<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Image: Rahm Emanuel.\u00a0\u00a0Credit: Daniel X. O\u2019Neil via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I liked Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0He was tough, competent, and unapologetic about it.\u00a0\u00a0I counted him as one of the last credible centrist Democrats left in a party that keeps drifting farther from the center.\u00a0\u00a0That is why his speech at Tel Aviv University this week is so disappointing. Read more A spoonful of sugar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,263],"tags":[1121],"class_list":["post-2768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign-policy","category-israel","tag-related-topics-israel-rahm-emanuel"],"yoast_head":"\nRahm Emanuel has disgraced himself - Interstate Logistics Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interstatelogisticshubs.com\/?p=2768\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rahm Emanuel has disgraced himself - Interstate Logistics Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I liked Rahm Emanuel as mayor of Chicago.\u00a0\u00a0He was tough, competent, and unapologetic about it.\u00a0\u00a0I counted him as one of the last credible centrist Democrats left in a party that keeps drifting farther from the center.\u00a0\u00a0That is why his speech at Tel Aviv University this week is so disappointing. 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