The State of the Jews

It’s no secret Ha’aretz represents the left-wing fringe in Israeli politics, with columnists who openly question Jewish statehood and a reflexive assumption of Israeli responsibility for anything that goes wrong in the region.

Still, even for Ha’aretz, this is crazy. In an editorial titled: “Netanyahu, the US has given you a second chance. Use it.” the paper tries to argue that (a) the Americans are offering a “second chance” that, presumably, may not return, (b) “the US had demanded that Netanyahu … agree to deliberations on all the core issues,” and (c) that “Netanyahu will commit a grave error if he is tempted to continue the damaging clash with Obama, and if he uses the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to enlist the president’s political enemies to advance the positions of the Israeli right wing.”

The degree of disinformation contained in this piece is staggering, and begs the question: Are Ha’aretz’s savvy editors so disconnected from reality, or are they knowingly lying to advance their politics?

We’ve already noted that the Obama administration’s demands for a settlement freeze wreaked havoc on the peace process by undermining the moderate Palestinian leadership.

The demand was ridiculous – Obama wanted not just a geographic freeze to the size of settlements, which Bibi Netanyahu gave him, but a demographic freeze. Israel was not to build kindergartens for the 960 children born each year in settlements. And “settlements” included Jerusalem.

No Israeli leader, on Left or Right, could agree to this as a pre-negotiation concession. And once uttered by the Americans, no Palestinian leader could demand any less. By undermining the Palestinians, Obama has set back all of us.

Or so I believed.

But now I’m starting to wonder if my thinking on this may have been premature. Yes, the Obama administration goofed as only self-righteous fools can. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Dr. Alex Yakobson of Hebrew University, my teacher on these issues and a family friend, made some important points in Ha’aretz last week, suggesting that acceding to Obama’s demands now would leave Israel better off strategically even in the short term.

First, he notes, the American public’s support for Israel is strong and getting stronger:

…According to the poll, 64% of Americans continue to believe that Israel is serious about reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. By a 3:1 ratio, the American people express more sympathy with Israel than with the Palestinians: 45% to 15%.

This support, however, is based on the perception that Israel genuinely sought and continues to seek peace. The settlement debate, says Yakobson, is getting in the way:

The support of a majority of Americans is still a much more important factor than all the attacks on Israel and the calls for a boycott. The American people would never have awarded such support to a country they viewed as not pursuing peace.

This is an asset of enormous importance, and it should not be wasted on a dispute with the Obama administration over the expansion of the settlements. The settlements are the main cause for questioning Israel’s desire for peace and its willingness for a two-state solution. Even among our best friends in the United States and elsewhere, the great majority disagrees with Israel over this issue.

…

There is no real gap between the Obama administration’s positions on the settlements and those of the Bush administration. The only difference is that Obama has decided to focus public and diplomatic attention on this issue. From the moment this happened it became clear – beyond any ideological or political dispute – that it is an essential Israeli interest to find a way to reach an agreement with the Americans on a formula for a settlement freeze.

He concludes:

Such a prolonged and public dispute with the United States over the settlements harms Israel. It is a battle where even victory would be a serious defeat. Netanyahu understands America well enough to know that. The question is whether such a critical national interest is a good enough reason in his eyes to confront the extremists within his coalition and party.

Devil’s advocate for a moment: What can Bibi give Obama on settlements without paying an exorbitant political price? And is it worth the trouble just to make the Palestinians willing to talk?

Don’t worry so much about JStreet. That’s my advice to all the fretting over Michael Oren’s probable snub of the organization’s October 25 conference.

Like the Obama administration it so avidly supports, JStreet’s education on the Middle East has been swift and brutal. Created “to promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically,” the group was a cheerleader for President Obama’s disastrous policy of demanding a total demographic settlement freeze from Israel.

This policy was disastrous for Obama in Israel because it was spectacularly disconnected from reality. This wasn’t a demand for no geographic expansion of settlements (something Netanyahu has already committed to), but of no population growth.

Why is that shockingly stupid, you ask? For one thing, American officials publicly refused to distinguish between far-flung towns like Emmanuel and generations-old Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. For another, 960 children are born each year in settlements. Presumably Israel was expected to snatch these from their parents and sell them to the Chinese?

But none of that was as serious as the profound damage this elephant-in-a-china-shop policy did to the Palestinian Authority. With America demanding of the Israelis more than the PA seemed to demand, and then, because the demand was demonstrably stupid, suddenly withdrawing it, US diplomats left the PA with hat in hand facing an unprecedented wave of Arab excoriation for its “collaboration.”

I’m not saying Obama shouldn’t lead on peace, but he should do so competently and carefully. It wasn’t Bush’s Zionism that prevented peace in the past eight years, as Obama suggested to Jewish leaders back in July. It was Palestinian political dysfunction and ideological rejectionism. Remember the suicide bombings? Those were in Bush’s term, too.

Whether or not Obama gets this basic reality barely matters, since the Palestinians will explain it to him in short order. We know how to extract concessions from Israel for peace treaties, territorial withdrawals – even on the dismantling of settlements. Has anyone figured out how to extract a “yes” from the Palestinians?

So I couldn’t bring myself to share the excitement about JStreet, either for or against. It won’t bring peace because it’s barking up the wrong tree. But neither will it “undermine” or “betray” Israel’s security, since the ball will always stop, motionless, in the Palestinians’ court.

At some point, I figure, it is the Palestinians who will set the JStreet folks straight.

As I noted a month ago:

J-Street is not “Left” because its fundamental point of disagreement with AIPAC has nothing to do with the old division of peace vs. territorial redemption. Rather, J-Street stands out in the American Jewish landscape because it trusts Palestinian intentions and capabilities – a trust that, ultimately, it cannot convincingly explain to the rest of us.

Whatever its power becomes in Washington – and I suspect it will not be very great until J-Street wisens up on the only issue that distinguishes it – it will remain irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. Lacking a healthy distrust of the intentions of the intransigent Palestinian leadership, it will lack any shred of credibility when it tries to convince Israelis to compromise once more for the sake of Palestinian freedom.

Now if only I could be as confident vis-a-vis JStreet’s stance on Iran, where its lack of support even for sanctions is just plain dangerous…

Russia is not on our side when it comes to Iran, according to chess champion and anti-Putin dissident Garry Kasparov.

Washington’s conciliatory steps have given the Kremlin’s rulers confidence they have nothing to fear from Mr. Obama on anything that matters.

And nothing matters more to Mr. Putin and his oligarchs than the price of oil. Even with oil at $70 a barrel, Russia’s economy is in bad straits. Tension in the Middle East, even an outbreak of war, would push energy prices higher. A nuclear-armed Iran would, of course, be harmful to Russian national security, but prolonging the crisis is beneficial to the interests of the ruling elite: making money and staying in power.

The Obama administration’s foreign policy has directed a great deal of optimism and good will toward friends and foes. Such a cheery outlook is commendable as long as it does not clash with reality. Unfortunately, there were several clashes in the past week.

…

Like many Russians, I was encouraged by Mr. Obama’s inspirational speech in Moscow last July, but he must know there is more to statesmanship than printing money and making speeches. Inflated rhetoric, like inflated currency, can lead to disaster. The goodwill bubble Mr. Obama is creating will burst unless there are real results soon.

It’s all been said: Barack Obama won the Nobel for…what exactly? Of course, it’s hard to blame Obama – he was as surprised as anyone. I imagine he knew he was nominated, but then again so was Silvio Berlusconi.

So, without dumping this farce on Obama’s doorstep, let me add a fact I’m not sure everyone has yet realized: the deadline for his nomination was February 1.

He didn’t win the Nobel for the past nine months in office, which might theoretically be enough to do something grand if you’re the president of the United States. For instance, giving 40 million Americans health insurance could count as a serious project for the betterment of humanity.

But no. Obama won the Nobel for what he had achieved in the first 12 days of his presidency.

Tom Friedman has a wicked and wonderful and very moral idea. He urges Obama to accept the award not in his name, but in the name of American soldiers:

“As I said on the day it was announced, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.’ Therefore, upon reflection, I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all.

“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

…

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American men and women who are still on patrol today in Iraq, helping to protect Baghdad’s fledgling government as it tries to organize the rarest of things in that country and that region — another free and fair election.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the thousands of American soldiers who today help protect a free and Democratic South Korea from an unfree and Communist North Korea.

…

“Members of the Nobel committee, I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know — and I want you to know — that there is no peace without peacekeepers.

Of course, this would be impolite. He was given the award for shying away from American power, not for defending its recent record. But it would be a smart political move for Obama, who has a credibility problem internally on his vast domestic agenda and externally on Afghanistan.

Bear with me. I’m catching up after a busy work week and holiday. Here are a few posts of interesting things you may have missed in recent days.

First, Shmuley Boteach, publicist-rabbi extraordinaire, tackles the moral conundrum that is Jimmy Carter. Boteach has a habit of saying things in a succinct and clever way, so it’s a pleasure to read how he structures the argument.

The take-away: It’s one thing to worry about Palestine, quite another to blame Israel alone for the lack of peace. It’s one thing to seek dialogue, quite another to side with a string of failed dictators over four decades. So what’s Carter’s deal, anyway?

You’ve got to hand it to Jimmy Carter. No matter how wrong he is, no matter how many times he is refuted, no matter how inane his ramblings, he just keeps on coming back. Forget that he was eviscerated in a landslide election. And forget that historians and the public rate him as the worst president of all time. Carter doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. We’re stuck with him forever.

For example, on Carter’s accusation of racism in the opposition to Obama, Boteach notes:

Obama himself disagreed. More importantly, Obama’s biggest critics like him a lot more than the ex-president, even though Jimmy is a white man.

Is Carter criminally naive?

Carter, I have argued, is not so much an anti-Semite as he is what Lenin famously called, ‘a useful idiot,’ his mistake being to always side with the weaker party, notwithstanding their immorality. Let us never forget that the Carter administration tried to view the Khmer Rouge as the rightful government of Cambodia even though they slaughtered one out of three Cambodians. For Carter, weakness is itself a sign of righteousness.

Or is he an anti-Semite?

Therefore, when Carter said in 2006 that Israel’s policies in the West Bank were actually worse than apartheid South Africa, I began to question whether my readers were right. When he added in his 2009 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that due to “powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the US, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media,” I said to myself that anyone who rolls out the old Jews-control-the-world theory probably is an anti-Semite.

But no, Boteach concludes. He’s nothing so dramatic. He’s just a man who accepted “millions of dollars”

from leading Arab sources, including Saudi King Fahd, the now-defunct BCCI bank, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and Agha Hasan Abedi, among others. These millions, some of which even went to bail out the Carter peanut business in the late 1970s, finally vindicated my earlier theory.

Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite. He is simply a man with a price.