On Tuesday, November 20, 2012, then-Representative Ed Markey called us asking for a favor.
A week earlier, the genocidal terror group Hamas, the Murder Incorporated enterprise that controls the Gaza Strip, had once again launched thousands of rockets into Israel, and Israel had retaliated by striking Hamas targets. On Monday, November 19th, several thousand people had packed a Boston area synagogue in support of Israel. Prominent Democrats like Governor Deval Patrick and Joseph Kennedy III participated to show their solidarity.
After Tuesday morning’s media coverage of the rally, Markey called and said that he wanted “my own rally” – a rally supporting Israel that featured him.
We told him that it was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and it would be difficult to organize another rally.
But Ed insisted. So, that Sunday we organized another pro-Israel rally which, at his request, featured him, and he gave his standard stump speech before Jewish audiences, full of appreciation for the fundamental fact that Israel is surrounded by non-state and state actors committed to annihilating it. “If Hamas lays down its arms,” Markey thundered, as he had so many times before, “there will be no more war. If Israel lays down its arms, there will be no more Israel.”
True then, even truer now. Back in 2012, then again in 2014, 2018-2019, 2021 and 2022, Hamas “merely” fired what amounted to thousands of missiles into Israel. On October 7, 2023, 5000 Hamas gunmen invaded Israel, slaughtering 1200 Israelis. The very next day, Hezbollah, another genocidal enterprise with 150,000 rockets on Israel’s northern border, began firing thousands of them at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas.
You might imagine that the guy who passionately proclaimed that “If Hamas lays down its arms there will be no more war; if Israel lays down its arms there will be no more Israel” would have understood Israel’s excruciating predicament.
But by late 2012, Markey was running for an open Senate seat. Ever the shrewd political practitioner, he knew that he needed to avoid a primary challenger on his Left. He foresaw that sympathy for Israel among Democrats had started to erode, and that it was now in his political interest to stiff-arm it. If that meant abandoning what he knew to be true, so be it.
Since October 2023, attacks against Israel have become increasingly intense, and hostility toward it increasingly reflexive, increasingly required of Democrats seeking office. Even in campaigns for positions that have nothing to do with foreign policy, politicians doing what politicians do outdo one another to level charges against Israel, even if they are over the top or unjust – because it is politically fashionable to do so. They compete with one another to disassociate from Jewish organizations, or from American citizens who support our country’s friendship with Israel.
Recently, Markey has opposed arms sales to Israel, claiming that depriving Israel of arms would encourage peace, rather than send a message to those who want to exterminate the Jewish state to keep trying.
He knows better. In fact, it would strengthen the hand of Iran and its proxies and those who desire the destruction not only of Israel, but of America and, for that matter, the West.
But in fairness, he isn’t alone among the all-Democratic Massachusetts Congressional delegation, who also know better, but who bow to a Democratic base that has bought hook, line and sinker the line that Israel – the victim of a genocidal invasion – has committed a “genocide.” Every one of them voted in July to block military aid to Israel, knowing as they do that – whatever one thinks of Benjamin Netanyahu, however much one is repulsed by extremist terror in the West Bank and however concerning the suffering in Gaza that Hamas’ invasion and its brutality triggered – leaving Israel on its own does not lessen the violence. It guarantees it.
Their vote was no doubt smart politically, given the current, fevered anti-Israel fashion. But it was dumb.
Exactly for the reason that Ed Markey stated back at that rally he requested in 2012.
Barry Shrage was the long-time head of the Jewish Federation of Greater Boston. Jeff Robbins was a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission under President Clinton.