If you listen to President Obama’s Jewish surrogates, you hear them tell you that Barack Obama is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. According to the president’s Jewish detractors, he is one of its worst foes and his re-election could lead to its destruction. Where does the truth lie?
Let’s start with one clear fact. Israel’s survival does not depend on who is elected president of the United States. As important as the U.S.-Israel alliance may be — and it is absolutely vital to the state of Israel’s well-being and security — the Jewish state will not collapse if Barack Obama is re-elected. Nor will it enter a new golden age if Mitt Romney wins. Responsibility for Israel’s defense falls primarily on the shoulders of someone who is not on the ballot on Tuesday: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If the president of the United States seeks in the next four years to pressure Israel to do something that will undermine its security, Netanyahu — or one of his opponents, should he fail to be re-elected in parliamentary elections that will take place the day after the American president is inaugurated — can say no, just as his predecessors have done. Israel’s leaders have rarely been shy about taking unilateral or pre-emptive action to forestall a threat, and that won’t change. It should also be pointed out that the infrastructure of the U.S.-Israel relationship is so deeply entrenched into America’s political culture that even should the president seek to significantly alter or undermine that alliance, the political price for such a decision would be so costly as to deter all but the most fanatical ideologue.
That said, there would be significant differences between a second Obama administration and a first one for Romney in terms of the impact on Israel.
The first and most obvious difference will be in terms of the tone of the relationship. Though Democrats have spent the last year trying to make the public forget about it, President Obama has spent most of his time in office feuding with the Israeli government about a number of different issues.
Though Obama has not overturned and has, in fact, strengthened the security relationship between the two nations in some respects (something for which he deserves credit but which was nothing more than a continuation of the policies of his predecessors, as his defenders claim), Obama came into office determined to reverse what he thought was his predecessor’s mistake in being seen as too close to Israel. He succeeded in putting more daylight between the two allies, but that was about all he accomplished. His foolish decision to push hard for another round of talks with the Palestinians just at the time that the latter had signaled their inability to negotiate a peace deal on any terms was his first misjudgment. He compounded that error by pushing the Israelis to make unilateral concessions on settlements that did nothing to appease Arab demands, but ironically put the Palestinian Authority in the position of having to sound as tough on Israel as the Americans. Even when Netanyahu agreed to a settlement freeze, the Palestinians balked at talking.
Even worse, the president established a position on the status of Jerusalem in 2010 that did more to undermine Israel’s claim on its capital than that of any previous American administration. That led to unnecessary and quite bitter fights with Netanyahu that strengthened the Israeli at home and convinced the majority of his people that Obama wasn’t their friend.
Then in 2011, Obama tried to push hard on Israel to agree to the 1967 lines as the starting point for future negotiations. This was a slight, though significant, alteration of previous American positions that was made worse by Obama’s repudiation of Bush’s promises to respect the changes on the ground since 1967 (i.e. the major settlement blocs and new Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem).
Even the Iranian nuclear threat, an issue on which Obama has always paid lip service to Israeli concerns, the president managed to turn agreement into dispute by refusing to agree to Netanyahu’s request for “red lines” that would put some limits on the time allowed for diplomacy before action was contemplated. While there are genuine differences between the two allies on Iran, this was one point that could have been finessed had Obama wished to do so. But even after nearly a year of an election-year charm offensive, the president refused to meet with Netanyahu and produce even a limited consensus on the issue.
The irony is that Obama’s spats with Israel were completely unnecessary, as the Palestinians took no advantage of his attempts to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction. Nor have the Iranians used the time Obama has granted them, first by his engagement policy and then by a belated sanctions regime that has allowed them to get closer to a nuclear weapon, to come to an agreement that would remove the possibility of a conflict.
Since Netanyahu is the odds-on favorite to be re-elected in January and, barring an unforeseen development, be in office for all of the next four years, should Obama win, the one thing we can be certain of is that relations between the two countries will not be smooth. The variables involve how much Obama has learned from the failures of his policies over the past four years and how much they would differ from what Romney would do.
On the first point, there is room for debate.
It is entirely possible that Obama has learned his lesson, at least as far as the Palestinians are concerned. Anyone who believes that Mahmoud Abbas has the will or the ability to actually negotiate or sign a peace accord hasn’t been paying attention to anything he’s done during the eight years of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. There is even less reason to believe Abbas’s Hamas rivals will be willing to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. Would Obama really be so foolish as to risk another bruising battle with a re-elected Netanyahu for the sake of a peace process that even he must know is doomed?
Maybe. Given Obama’s loathing for Netanyahu and his lack of general sympathy for Israel (as Aaron David Miller memorably put it, he’s the only U.S. president in a generation “not in love with the idea of Israel”), it’s a certainty that he will be picking more fights with the Israeli if he is re-elected.
While, as we have seen, the alliance can survive even four years of near-constant tension, one shouldn’t underestimate the damage these battles do to Israel. They encourage, as they have in the past four years, Israel’s Palestinian antagonists to be even more intransigent. They also help isolate Israel at a time when a rising tide of anti-Semitism is causing Europe to be even more hostile to the Jewish state.
There is little doubt that, despite the ardent defense of his pro-Israel bona fides by Democrats, a re-elected Obama will be inclined to be even more intolerant of Netanyahu and Israel’s insistence on standing up for its rights in the peace process and on the question of the Iran threat. Though Romney’s relationship with Netanyahu is probably not as close as some Republicans imply, it is a given that there will, at least for a time, be more cooperation and a lot more trust between the two governments, even if the vital security relationship won’t be altered all that much.
In part two of this post, I’ll discuss the impact of a second Obama administration on the question of Iran. In part three, I’ll go into more detail about whether a President Romney might be any different.
It is crucially important to understand that Obama has no more love for the 'Palestinians' than all the other Arabs do. They are merely, to Obama a convenient bludgeon to beat the Jews over the head with. Obama has spent his entire adult life quietly on the fringes of extremist antisemitism and since he's been President he quietly has encouraged them into his administration. You can't be a far left President with far left friends and far left speeches and far left policies and for some inexplicable reason NOT be as virulently antisemitic as the rest of the far left and this moreover is the ONLY thing which distinguishes you from your fellow travelers. It does not pass the smell test. It's not a sane or reasonable conclusion to reach. n nFrom his nominally religious church life to his schooling both in the US and outside the US from his mentors, parents, values and cultural and political norms HE SAYS he has there is nothing there to suggest that he has the least regard for Israel and is anything but AS LEAST as hostile to Jews as all of those people and values and history already freely admit they are. And while it's a stretch to say he 'hates' the US and Israel, in that he hates the idea that they have a history and existence, it's not a stretch to conclude he hates the US and Israel to the extent they don't mesh with his internal utopian totalitarian fantasy of how he'd like to see them be or exist. In Israel's case he clearly would like to be the President who 'solves' the Mideast by eliminating Israel as a potent and recognizable political entity in the world and would prefer to see it essentially overrun with the rest of the 'Arab Spring' he's halfheartedly worked to foment.
Obama's ant-Zionism is as rootless and shallow as that of most African Americans. It doesn't rise to a level worthy of intelligent discussion. So ignore the ironies and insights and what ifs. n nConcentrate on throwing the bum out.
yes, black folk are a uniform and scary undifferentiated mass. When I see one I just get on a bus and ride it until the end of the line.
Leaves you in Canarsie, Besht. What is there to see or do in Canarsie? n nMe, I take the time to talk to black folk. I've yet to hear anything especially enlightening or insightful in response. But hey, it's only been sixty-six years. No doubt there are a black Einsteins by the dozen right around the corner. Or camped out at the end of the line in Canarsie. Hope springs eternal.
The outer boroughs do not define America, black or white, not in sixty-six years, not in a thousand. Or Detroit. Or the American justice system. It all depends on the African-Americans in question. Who they are and where they are going. For many of us African-Americans are not around the corner or on it, we don't always edgily circumnavigate urban turfs or, on the other hand, go on learning expeditions as exercises in tolerance, not next door, not to Canarsie. imo you find enlightenment everywhere or you find it nowhere at all. Because what made Einstein special wouldn't rub off on either of us anyways.
I dunno, Besht. Einstein didn't rub off on me but my middle daughter and several others in the family are mathematicians and computer scientists. And,yes, I enjoy forays into the various ethnic hoods. n nAs for "edgy," I don't hesitate to ask plain questions. If I'm barhopping on McKinley avenue in Yonkers where Irish illegals abound and brogues are thick, I don't hesitate to ask my fellow drinkers why Sunday night is entertainment night in hardcore Irish bars. n n"Friday night is singles night and Saturday is for couples but only the Irish prefer to party on Sunday night," I say. "Don't the Irish have to go to work Monday morning like everyone else?" n nThe stare back at me, glassy eyed. The question never occurred to any of them. n nOn a stoop in Hunts Point, the Puerto Ricans tell me about the world of their fathers and grandfathers who divided their time between the mainland and PR–six months of work in the US followed by six months in PR. That was the rhythm of Puerto Rican life before statehood. n nBarack Obama has Spanish blood, a Puerto Rican friend assures me. And Obama is fluent in Spanish. Also, Obama and Michelle grew up in poverty. Nothing I say can shake his conviction. n nAnother Puerto Rican tells me about the double homicide that put him in jail. I ask him if he ever loses sleep over the two men he killed over a childish insult. He laughs at the notion and insists they deserved it. One of them shot him first but the guy only had a twenty-two so he went back to his car, got his niner and killed them both. n nHe knows I'm Jewish so he makes sure to tell me that if it wasn't for his Jewish lawyer he would have gone down for life. His Jewish lawyer got him off in twelve. Jews are smart he lets me know me at another point. Jews don't pay taxes. n nA stunning black dominatrix provides details from conversations with her all white clients who express graphic contempt for their wives' physical attributes and characters and numbing disappointment bordering on dislike for their kids. I ask if any of them are Jewish . She assures me that some are but I can see she's not sure. Religion, I guess is not a hot topic of conversation for depraved white masochists. n nA black state trooper at the state park in Harlem where I swim expresses murderous hatred for his fellow white state troopers sitting in a car ten feet away. At another point, he dismisses Obama for a spoiled white boy. Over breakfast, he shows me nude shots of himself with multiple women from his annual f*** holiday in Brazil. Assures me he is a strict vegetarian. n nNot earthshaking knowledge, Besht, but it beats television. And all of these people are more forthright and honest regarding matters racial and ethnic than you are.
Ku Kluxers are even more forthright.
Maybe. But these are ordinary folk speaking as they ordinarily do. They are without an agenda. White folk have become a shrinking self-censoring group denying themselves freedom of speech.
"…eight years of his four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority…" npriceless wording. n nadding that Romney just said "single moms/women" in his PA speech today as many times as Obama said "Israel" in the final debate. n nJerusalem. Obama never will learn why Jerusalem is not a settlement. nThe pressures from the Saudi-GCC must be intense on him, and will also be on the next president.
You start by stating that things have not been tragic for the first 4 years (and last, G-d willing) of Obama and then go on to show how tragic they really have been. They could be much worst and will be if Obama is reelected together with all his KAPO cronies. Not only does he not have another election to primp for, but Iran is now fast getting to be a pending disaster. Ford, Carter, Reagan, daddy Bush, Clinton, and even sonny Bush (particularly with the evacuation of Gaza – no thanks to Sharon) have been bad, but the Iranian crisis is on the boil and that is a big one.
Who will be the next US president, Obama, Romney or Netanyahu? n nThe man who desperately wants to continue to run American foreign policy for the next four years is the same man who has virtually decided it for the past four years – Binyam Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel – the man to whom all Members of the House of Representatives were obliged to give ‘a standing ovation’ when he addressed them in Washington, not so long ago. n nThe plain fact is that AIPAC, Netanyahu’s powerful Israel lobby in America, vets every Congressman and woman, and any one who refuses to accept the agenda of the Lobby is most unlikely to become, or to remain, a member of Congress. That means that the House of Representatives is representative of AIPAC not of the American people. That is not democracy! n nPresident Obama will now have the opportunity, during his second term, to change this paradigm whereby a foreign state has unwarranted influence over US foreign policy – policy that affects much of the rest of the world. Whereas the Republican party are quite happy with this state of governance by an unelected lobby, the Democratic party of America is not. n nThat is why the world watches with such interest this election and why anything but a second term for President Obama would be a tragedy for democracy, for the global economy, for justice and for peace. It is the responsibility of the elected president to run America together with Congress – not the job of a lobby that represents a foreign state. n n________________________________________ n