AIPAC knew that they could secure passage of a harsher resolution only at the cost of exposing a growing rift in the Democratic party over Israeli war crimes and apartheid. So they presented this draft, which at least furthers the mission of criminalising BDS by increments. Tulsi Gabbard is not stupid. She knows all this. She also knows that one of the resolution's key aims was to isolate the core of support for Palestinian rights in Congress down to the very people Trump has told to "go back where they came from".

When she tells us in her video that she voted for the resolution as an expression of support for a two state solution, she cannot have failed to appreciate that such an outcome is entirely impossible, having been rendered moot by the Israeli and U.S. governments long ago. And how yet another formal profession of adherence to the cause of Israel contributes to that goal is left unexplained. The rest of her statement consists of threadbare flannel of a very faded pattern.

She's running for President, and it's understood that concessions will be made along the way. That she felt the need to signal her acquiescence to Israel at so preliminary a stage in the race cannot be a comforting development for her early supporters. They rallied to her campaign believing she represented a new direction in foreign policy.

Finally, with regard to whether we "recognise Israel's right to exist", we're entitled to ask, "In what form?" Because if the racist supremacist regime of the past 71 years is meant, the answer will have to be, "No".

There is a better way to live than bloody apartheid, and this, too, Tulsi Gabbard knows. Which marks her submission on this matter as all the more craven and, I hope, professionally unrewarding.

Her defense of her vote is right out of the book "1984." "War is peace" - "The Ministry of Truth" is the institute of lies to serve the government. For Gabbard voting against BDS, which is a step toward criminalizing support for BDS, is a defense of free speech. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. Her face is the face of opportunism.

@ "Israel and its lobby routinely demand that Palestinians and others explicitly recognize Israel’s purported 'right to exist as a Jewish state.'”

In reality, that right does not exist. The claim is derivative of another right claimed in HRes 246 itself: "Whereas the Global BDS Movement does not recognize, and many of its supporters explicitly deny, the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination[.]"

There is no Jewish right of national self-determination. Under the U.N. Charter, the people of all mandate territories are to have the right of self-determination of their form of government. See Article 73. That is a right belonging collectively to all citizens of the former Mandate Territory of Palestine, not to a Jewish subset.

"States have consistently emphasized that respect for the territorial integrity of a non-self-governing territory is a key element of the exercise of the right to self-determination under international law. The Court considers that the peoples of non-self-governing territories are entitled to exercise their right to self-determination in relation to their territory as a whole, the integrity of which must be respected by the administering Power. It follows that any detachment by the administering Power of part of a non-self-governing territory, unless based on the freely expressed and genuine will of the people of the territory concerned, is contrary to the right to self-determination." Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, International Court of Justice (25 February 2019), pg. 38, https://www.icj-cij.org/files/...

The alleged "Jewish right of self-determination" is fraudulent, as is Israel's claimed right to exist.

I'll now apply BDS to Tulsi. Wish I could get my money back.

She just lost me too.

Aloha! I’m grateful for your personal reply. Knowing how busy you must be, I wasn’t really expecting to hear back.

Someone had told me about Tulsa’s video but thanks to you sending the link, I finally got to watch it.

HR246 is a travesty and Tulsi can no longer have my support.

I understand politics enough to know the enormous and unchecked influence the Israeli lobby has on Congress. So, I assume Tulsi has determined she has to play ball.

To formally call out a young, little grass roots movement like BDS, however, for promoting

“principles of collective guilt, mass punishment, and group isolation, which are destructive of prospects for progress towards peace and a two-state solution”

among other false accusations, and to not call out the biggest obstacle to peace and security, namely the long succession of Israeli governments since 1948 and our own country’s uninterrupted support is fatally damning to her credibility. Everything critical in that resolution could and should be said about Israel times a 1000.

I used to take Tulsi as authentic, principled and coming from the heart. Voting for legislation that so glaringly misplaces blame and demonizes conscientious Americans while ignoring and therefore obfuscating a foreign entity’s generations of internationally recognized crimes against humanity is itself a crime.

The net result is that I will wish Tulsi, the person and not the politician, well-being and forgo any material or spiritual support.

I’m used to being let down by politicians but my disappointment, shared by many, is so much greater for it seemed as president Tulsi would have stopped our reckless military interventions. Now I see she’s no different from Trump and the rest, picking winners and losers based on political pressures at the time.

Again, thank you for your response.

In all due respect to the CNN-based Electoral CollAge, I must rise as a bit off the old byte of the Electronic Intifada in defense of the Palestinian people in calling out Tulsi Gabbard as a legitimate critic of US regime change wars although I will re-consider my opposition if she will erase all the EI's doubts (so clearly expressed above) if she can be seen wearing a kafia while surfing into the shores of the Gaza Strip singing the Palestine National Anthem!

Controlled Opposition - Not for the first time.