Sen. Tom Carper, D- Del., speaks during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the FDA foreign drug manufacturing inspection process on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 2, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool via AP)

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), a deeply religious Christian who looks forward to weekly Bible study, has frequently told friends and colleagues that he prays every night for a peaceful end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And over the past few months, Carper, 74, has indicated he is pursuing a new and more distinctive path on Middle East issues, one that is frustrating many of Delaware’s pro-Israel advocates, reports Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.

‘Puzzling’ vote: In early February, Carper was only one of three senators — alongside Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — who voted against a budget amendment preventing the U.S. government from moving its embassy outside of Jerusalem or downgrading it to a mission. Carper’s vote came as a surprise in large part because he says he supports keeping the embassy in Jerusalem. “I was puzzled when I saw that he was with Warren and Sanders,” former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who was recently enlisted by Carper to help with the D.C. statehood effort, said in a recent interview with JI. “I just generally had the impression that he sort of had a mainstream, Democratic, pro-Israel position.”

Taking a stance: In March, Carper signed a letter asking that the Biden administration “urge the Israeli government to do more to help the Palestinians” with vaccine distribution “in the occupied territories.” And a week later, Carper abstained — as he did the previous year — from signing onto a letter denouncing the International Criminal Court’s newly launched investigation of Israel for alleged war crimes. Taken together, this trio of seemingly principled stands represents a “troubling” direction for Carper, according to David Margules, a member of Delaware’s tight-knit pro-Israel community. Yet as Carper throws his support behind “statements coming from the fringe of the Democratic Party,” Margules was at pains to explain the senator’s motivations. “I’m really not quite sure, to be honest with you.”

‘Always ambiguous’: Barry Kayne, a pro-Israel advocate in Delaware, was equally mystified. “I can’t understand why he’s taken the positions that he’s taken,” he told JI. “I mean, it’s absolutely infuriating to me. But I don’t have an explanation.” Such bewilderment underscores a sense of mounting frustration among some in the state who say they have long struggled to make sense of Carper’s approach, which until recently had been somewhat more muted. “Tom has been a conundrum for me for over a decade,” Kayne added. “I’ve lobbied him for years. I’ve written to him relative to pro-Israel legislation or U.S.-Israel legislation, and he’s always ambiguous.”

Explanation: In a statement to JI, a spokesperson for Carper defended the senator’s embassy vote as “a principled stance on the belief that President Joe Biden — like presidents before him — should have the ability to develop and pursue his foreign policy agenda in any area of the world without limitations set by Congress, especially just a couple of weeks after taking office.” The spokesperson said the senator’s vote was aimed at ensuring “the Biden administration is not constrained in its ability to conduct its own foreign policy… Sen. Carper supports the decision not to move the embassy.”

In his words: In a lengthy email to JI, Carper clarified his underlying philosophy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a function of what he described as deeply held religious views. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no easy feat to address,” he wrote. “But in the process of working towards an equitable resolution, we must never lose sight of the people — on both sides of the conflict — that are affected every single day,” Carper continued. “When it comes to our foreign policy in the Middle East, and the multitude of issues the United States and our allies face and have to consider, we must never lose sight of the innocent men, women, and children that are impacted by the decisions that are made.” Carper, who has visited Israel several times throughout his career in public office, told JI that: “Israel and the United States are connected by a shared set of democratic values and I’m proud to have a voting record that clearly shows my commitment to Israel’s security and prosperity.”

Read the full feature here.

Face to face: Carper, chair of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, is slated to meet President Joe Biden at the White House today to discuss his infrastructure proposal.

Joshua Cohen

The long arc of Jewish history can be summed up in two words: exile and return. And so can the essence of American author Joshua Cohen’s new historical novel, The Netanyahus, whose central character is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s father Benzion, a politically charged historian who was denied a job at Hebrew University for his views — later to be redeemed by the success of his son. “[Benzion] was a resentful, intelligent man trembling with rage at being excluded from history, at being denied what he regarded as his rightful place in history, and he raised children to take the glory that was denied him,” Cohen told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a recent interview about the book, which comes out next month. “Be careful with the people you reject, because their sons will come and rule you.”

Sparknotes: The book — whose subtitle, “An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family,” hints at some of its comic dimensions — is set in the 1950s at a liberal arts college in western New York. Professor Ruben Blum, a professor in the fictitious Corbin College’s history department, studies taxation — but as the only Jewish faculty member at the school, he is assigned to host Benzion, his wife, and their three children, including a young Benjamin, when Benzion interviews for a position at the university. Blum, whom Cohen called a “weak conformist,” must contend with his own unsettled attitude toward this very proud, loudmouthed historian while also dealing with a flood of well-intentioned if deep-rooted antisemitism from his employer.

True story: The book is based on a true experience that legendary literary critic and Yale Sterling professor Harold Bloom, who died in 2019, shared with Cohen before he died. Cohen said “it was a sort of minor episode” in Bloom’s life, but “it really stuck with me.” Cohen would bring bagels from New York City’s Russ & Daughters to Bloom’s home in New Haven, checking in on him while letting Bloom, a mentor whom he met late in Bloom’s life, share stories from his life. “His body was failing, but his mind was as penetrating as it ever was,” Cohen recalled. He never got to discuss The Netanyahus with Bloom before he died.

Revisionism on the rise: Benzion Netanyahu is better known for his embrace of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and revisionist Zionism than his scholarship on the Spanish Inquisition. Right-wing politics may be dominant in Israel now, but in the 1940s and 1950s, Jabotinsky’s vision of “Greater Israel” was unpopular. “During the most consequential decades of modern Jewish history, the ‘40s and ‘50s, where is Benzion Netanyahu? He’s not being slaughtered in Europe, and he’s not in Palestine, founding the State of Israel,” Cohen noted. “He’s in New York and suburban Philly. He has essentially been exiled from Hebrew University, because he is a Jabotinskyite, because he doesn’t believe we have to wait for the British [or] for any great power to grant us a land. We have to take it.”

Safe spaces: Cohen, 40, likes to think of The Netanyahus as “a book about campus politics and identity politics.” Although set more than 60 years ago, Cohen said its plot has implications for the complicated issues playing out on campuses today, on topics like intellectual diversity and liberal values and concerns about safe spaces. “In many ways, Benzion Netanyahu would be in agreement with a lot of the politics going on on American campuses today and these sort of self-segregating ideologies. I think that in many ways, he wanted to found a safe space, but he wanted to call that safe space Israel, and he wanted to make a safe space with a nuclear program,” Cohen explained. Campus progressives might have more in common with one of the forefathers of Israeli right-wing politics than they may think. “I wanted to see how the left would feel when I associated them so closely with the right.”

Read the full interview here.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Jeff Merkeley (D-OR)

A group of Democratic senators is urging President Joe Biden to follow through on commitments to reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and the Palestine Liberation Organization mission in Washington, D.C. — both of which were closed under the Trump administration, reports Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.

Major mission: The PLO mission, the letter obtained by JI reads, “long served as a critical point of contact… providing a range of core diplomatic services for Palestinians in the United States” and “helped facilitate the U.S. role as a mediator… and was an important component of the United States’ commitment to advancing a two-state solution.” The PLO mission was shuttered in 2018 by former President Donald Trump. Before taking office, Biden pledged to reopen the PLO mission, but the effort has faced obstacles, as the Palestinians would become liable for more than $650 million in financial penalties in U.S. courts if they establish an office in the U.S. due to legislation passed in 2019 and signed into law by Trump.

Go East: The East Jerusalem consulate, the senators wrote, is “essential to effectively conducting U.S. Palestinian bilateral affairs, while demonstrating that the relationship is not ancillary to or in any way subsumed by the U.S. bilateral relationship with Israel.” Biden has pledged to reopen the consulate in East Jerusalem, which was closed in 2019 as part of a consolidation effort with the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, which opened a year prior. The senators also claim that foreign service officers in Jerusalem have said that the consulate’s closure has handicapped U.S. efforts to engage with the Palestinian Authority and provide information on the situation within the Palestinian territories.

Signatories: The senators lay out their request in the letter which has been circulating since mid-April and will close for signatures on Friday. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) organized the letter, which has also been signed by Sens. Pat Leahy (D-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Read more here.