Gantz tells AIPAC he won’t let Israel ‘become a partisan issue’ in US

WASHINGTON — On the eve of Israel’s third election in a year, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz told thousands of American Jews that he would not allow Israel to become a partisan issue in the United States if he is elected prime minister.

In an attempt to draw a contrast to his rival, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the former IDF chief of staff seized on the ostensible antipathy that leading Democratic candidates have expressed for the Israeli premier and his right-wing brand of politics.

“Under my leadership, Israel will never become a partisan issue,” he told 18,000 gathered for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference in Washington, DC, on Sunday morning. “I will effectively work with both sides of the aisle.”

Last week, Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders announced that he would skip the AIPAC confab — saying it gave a platform to “express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.” He also called Netanyahu a “racist.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is also skipping the conference, while former vice president Joe Biden, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar will speak via video address.

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is the only 2020 hopeful to address the conference’s attendees in person.

Netanyahu has been accused of alienating Democrats over the course of his tenure, first by strongly opposing former president Barack Obama’s  nuclear deal with Iran — including by delivering an address to Congress lambasting the accord — and by striking a strong alliance with US President Donald Trump.

Gantz sought to appeal to American Jews in other ways, too. He vowed to honor an agreement to expand a pluralistic prayer section at the Western Wall — an arrangement that Netanyahu froze indefinitely under pressure from the ultra-Orthodox parties in his coalition. The move infuriated liberal Jewry.

“When I am prime minister, every Jew will have a place in the Western Wall,” Gantz told AIPAC. “Every Jew should feel at home in Israel. Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. All the Jewish people.”

While Gantz lavished praise on Trump’s peace plan unveiled in late January — which he called a “promising” and “strategic” solution — he vowed to work to separate Israel from the Palestinians in a way that would ensure its future as a Jewish democracy.

Gantz also promoted his security bona fides, saying he wouldn’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal.

“I will prevent a nuclear Iran,” Gantz. “I am ready to do whatever it takes with this issue.”