How a New Jersey Corruption Scandal Could Harm Israel in the Halls of Congress
By a TIJ Writer
For the duration of its existence — or at least since the 1950s — American support of Israel has been a bedrock of the foreign policies of both nations. Israeli military dominance over its neighbors is due in large part to the edge American weaponry provides, and Israel is routinely one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid. At the center of this relationship is the American legislative system, the slow, deliberate branch of the American government. While the executive branch boils down to just one individual, the president, the halls of Congress require broad consent to alter policy. As such, relying on the President to keep policy consistent for decades, the way proponents of the American-Israel relationship want, is a fool’s errand. One antagonistic executive can torpedo the work of years of foreign relations policy, hardly a model of stability. Keeping the Senate pro-Israel, therefore, is the cornerstone of any domestic effort aimed and keeping the American aid to Israel flowing, a fact broadly accepted by both pro and anti-Israel institutions. Groups from AIPAC to JStreet to IfNotNow target their funding on congressional campaigns, with varying degrees of success.
Recently the policy of unconditional American aid to Israel has run into some snags on Capitol Hill, although most of the trouble has been from the House of Representatives. On the left side of the House sit politicians like Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have advocated for attaching conditions to the aid Israel receives, pending fulfillment of certain human rights goals. In a letter written by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, she called for Israeli settlement freezes in exchange for the continuation of military aid. “We will include human rights conditions and the withholding of funds for the offshore procurement of Israeli weapons equal to or exceeding the amount the Israeli government spends annually to fund settlements, as well as the policies and practices that sustain and enable them,” she wrote. Representative Ocasio-Cortez, along with eight other left-wing Representatives, recently voted against a resolution declaring Israel not to be a racist state (that is, they voted to affirm it as a racist state). On the right, the opposition has been similarly fierce. Isolationists like Thomas Massie routinely vote against funding Israel, and many members of the Freedom Caucus call for an end to all foreign aid. So the headaches in the lower body of Congress are substantial, which makes the recent uproar in the Senate all the more fascinating.
While the Senate has remained largely steadfast in its support for Israel, maintaining powerful allies in that body remains a priority for those supporting an a fruitful relationship between Israel and the United States. The stability of this famously conservative institution was shaken on September 22, when Senator Bob Menendez was indicted on bribery charges. Senator Menendez (D-NJ) has served in the Senate since 2006, and chairs the powerful Foreign Relations Committee. In this role, Menendez has a massive amount of control over American arms sales — a key part of Israeli-American relations — and oversees all foreign aid. In this role, the Senator has been incredibly pro-Israel. Although he has been critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, Senator Menendez has defended Israel in the toughest of spots. After a 2021 war in Gaza during which an airstrike hit a press building Senator Menendez said “We must do what friends do: Stand by them when they are under attack and speak the truth. We must find the nuance; we are capable of doing so. And we owe it to our own values and the values have formed the basis of that friendship.” Losing Senator Menendez would be a blow for the pro-Israel community.
The allegations against Senator Menendez are far from idle talk. The federal indictment accuses the Senator of receiving “cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle and other items of value,” in exchange for favors to the Egyptian government. The indictment shows thousands of dollars in cash and gold, which the Senator has claimed were taken from his personal account. The Senator, born in New York, claimed that “the history of [his] family facing confiscation in Cuba” was the reason for the massive amount of cash and gifts. Menendez has also decried the attacks as racist, saying “It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere.”
At the time of this writing, 31 Democratic Senators have called for Menendez’s resignation, a number that will likely continue to grow. I do think it’s likely that Senator Menendez will find himself unemployed sooner rather than later, and the focus for the pro-Israel movement should be on who the next chair of the Foreign Relations Committee will be. While there is no word yet on who could take the Senator’s spot, the other Democratic members of the SFRC are all staunch supporters of Israel. If anything, this saga underscores the importance of an institutional, not a personal, approach to Israel advocacy. As Senator Menendez is proving, the individual is often fallible.
