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CNN's Phillip Calls Emanuel's Anti-Netanyahu Speech 'Turning Point For Mainstream Dems'
On Wednesday, Jewish Democrat Rahm Emanuel delivered a speech at Tel Aviv University, where he attacked Israel and their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring that Israel needs to make major changes if it wants to keep America as its top ally. The speech was a topic of conversation Wednesday on CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip, and it was used as a vehicle to further bash Netanyahu and Israel.
Phillip got the ball rolling by undoubtedly overstating the significance of the speech, and playing a clip of Emanuel.
PHILLIP: Tonight, a turning point for mainstream Democrats on U.S.-Israel relations. Speaking in Tel Aviv, potential Democratic Presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel said that unconditional U.S. support for Israel must end, warning that its leadership has turned into a territorial pariah.
EMANUEL: Israel does not have a problem in the Democratic Party. Israel has a problem in America and very specifically a generational problem under 30.... there's a poll out today, Mamdani is more popular with American Jews than your Prime Minister. I want that to sink in.
Phillip failed to inform viewers of other results from that AP-NORC poll, which shows that in fact, Israel does mostly have a Democrat problem. Just 20% of Democrats consider U.S. support for Israel "about right", 60% say the U.S. is too supportive. The numbers are reversed for Republicans.
She then threw it to former GOP congressman Peter Meijer who added insightful perspective to the Mamdani findings.
MEIJER: He's (Netanyahu) a very easy person to pin blame on for the consequences post-October 7th ...but 98% of the prosecution of the war would have been the same under any other Israeli government.... So I don't know how much you can read into it.
Phillip then gave the floor to a woke Middle East "expert," former ESPN-er Jemele Hill of The Atlantic.
HILL: Israel has kind of a narrative issue in this country.... There's a lot of people here who... just feel like.... he (Netanyahu) had one over on the President, and that he was somehow suckered into getting into this conflict. And so people just don't like the idea of Israel running the shots for us and controlling what we do....whether that is one rooted in fact or just one rooted in emotion....
People see the vast amount of money that we're pouring into Israel, and they don't like it. They don't like the idea that we are single-handedly writing blank checks to this country.
Don't tell Hill that we give Israel $3.8 billion per year, a figure that increased to $6.82 billion in 2024, and beyond, , due to the war in Gaza. Jordan and Egypt get $1.5 billion, and since the war, we have given Ukraine $195 billion. Don't worry, Phillip didn't tell her! She also didn't mention that Trump has denied that the Iran war was Netanyahu's idea, which allowed former Biden Senior Advisor Neera Tanden to bring up old, discredited talking points.
TANDEN: Marco Rubio, at the beginning of the war, pointed to Israel, that there's been reporting that essentially, Netanyahu talked the President into the in the Situation Room, talked him into this war....
She continued before Scott Jennings briefly interrupted her, making what would oddly be his only contribution to the entire segment.
TANDEN: I think the real problem here is that under Netanyahu, Israel has seemed like an aggressor nation and in a way that has undermined support for people. It's really pushing--
JENNINGS: Who was the aggressor on October the 7th, just for the record?
TANDEN: Absolutely, Hamas was the aggressor.... This is the reporting, that Netanyahu told the President that the war would be over in two weeks....And I personally think that Israel's role in the war with Iran is actually another reason why so many Democrats have turned against them.
In fact, as Netanyahu pointed out Tuesday, to Dana Bash, on CNN's Inside Politics:
I've looked at the the Gallup polls.... And you see the decline in support for Israel. And it's several years before the Gaza war took place.... The one correlation you see...is the penetration of TikTok and other social media in the United States. And as the penetration increases, the support for Israel decreases.
Of course Phillip did not mention this, and later, after bringing up the issue of increased Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, she made no mention of the fact that the Palestinian Authority, who shares responsibility of the area along with Israel, still pays their people to kill Jews.
Phillips used Emanuel's anti-Israel, anti Netanyahu speech, as an excuse to bash and trash Israel and Netanyahu. This is CNN.