Party Favors

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re you familiar with the name Eliot Engel? Readers who follow politics closely should be, but the rest might draw a blank. And there’s a lesson in that too.

So who is Eliot Engel? I’ve been familiar with his name for a long time because since the late ’80s, he’s been a Congressman representing the Bronx political district in which I grew up. With the Democratic Party routing the Republicans in the November 2018 election, Engel moved from being the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to becoming its chairman.

On most issues of domestic policy, Mr. Engel is a reliably liberal vote. On issues relating to Israel, he has always been one of the most reliably and outspokenly pro-Israel members of Congress, including bucking his party’s president to oppose the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Now he chairs the committee that addresses those issues.

When Somali-born freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused American supporters of Israel of dual loyalties, Mr. Engel called it a “vile anti-Semitic slur” that was “outrageous and deeply hurtful” and demanded she apologize and “commit to making her case on policy issues without resorting to attacks that have no place in the Foreign Affairs Committee.” He also pushed for the House resolution denouncing anti-Semitism that was later watered down to a bland denunciation of many forms of hatred.