Israel's Titanic moment: Does Obama want Bibi's head?
By Bradley Burston
JERUSALEM - Hamas has designated this day, in this place, its Day of Rage. Why, then, the smiles on the faces of Mahmoud Zahar and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Perhaps it's because after more than 22 years of costly trial and error, Hamas has finally come upon the secret of how to bring down the Jewish state:
Let the ship sink itself.
This month, down here in the engine room of the Titanic, a single coherent order continues to sound from the officers shrouded in fog on the bridge: "More power!"
To the delight of Mahmoud Zahar and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel's homemade weapons of mass destruction - pro-settlement bureaucrats with conflicts of financial and ideological interest - have done in one meeting what Israel's foes have sought for generations: driving a stake through the heart of Israel's relationship with the White House.
We should have known. But in the swamp of anomaly and impossibility that is Jerusalem, you can easily lose sight of, and belief in, the basics:
One of the curses of endless war, is the tendency to become one's own worst enemy - in every sense.
Forget, for the moment, the parallels with Iran. Forget, also, that Ahmadinejad would like nothing more in life than to focus Muslim anger and Western displeasure on Israel's policies in Jerusalem.
Consider, instead, that with Hamas literally at the gates, Israel is not only doing the Islamic Resistance Movement's bidding - Washington is beginning to relate to the Netanyahu government as if it were Hamas.
Israelis woke on Tuesday to an Army Radio report that George Mitchell had abruptly cancelled his scheduled visit to Israel, and that the U.S. Mideast envoy would not resume his discussions with Jerusalem until Israeli leaders agreed to three conditions set by Washington - an uncomfortably familiar echo of the U.S. position on contacts with Hamas.
One focus of debate in Israel was the question of how an insulted and incensed Obama administration preferred to see the imbroglio turn out. Specifically, is the president after Benjamin Netanyahu's head?
Judging from the administration's responses thus far, it appears far more likely that what the president would like to see laid low is not the Netanyahu government's head, but rather the part that often verbally functions as its butt end - specifically Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party and Interior Minister Eli Yishai's Shas.
In the current Israeli political constellation, these two men, and these two parties - a volatile alliance of ultra-secular Russian-born immigrants and ultra-Orthodox sabras with roots in the Muslim world and the Mediterranean - are the effective veto both to the peace process as a whole and to a settlement freeze of any substance.
They represent a total of 26 of the 61 Knesset seats needed for a Netanyahu majority. More crucially, they are the primary roadblock to the entry of the centrist Kadima party, which at 28 seats is larger even than Netanyahu's ruling Likud.
Obama, whose math and history skills are as good as anyone's, knows both that Israeli government concessions are a near-monopoly of the center-right Likud. It is thus reasonable to assume that the president would like to see a Netanyahu-led coalition anchored by Kadima and Labor, whose 68-seat cushion could allow for the inevitable resignations of "rebel" Likud backbenchers.
For the time being, however, Lieberman and Yishai are enjoying the kind of shadenfreude that Hamas, for its part, has been trying not to make obvious. All three are the beneficiaries of a campaign by rightist Israeli activists which has seen trouble-making become a goal in its own right.
The Holy City, meanwhile, has the held-breath wariness of a fuse whose end had been lit, but whose other end was not in sight. For some on the right, there was evident relish in the situation, and not a little pride.
In one of the more remarkable, and ill-advised, editorials in its 77-year history, the Jerusalem Post poured oil on the smolder this week, rewriting Jewish history and tradition to declare that the newly dedicated Hurva synagogue in the Old City, "symbolizes, perhaps more than any other site, the Jewish people's yearnings to return to its homeland."
The piece is an extraordinary example of internal logic, and an indirect confirmation of fundamentalist Islamic fears of hopes to encroach on the Muslim shrine of Al Aqsa for the ultimate purpose of building a third Jewish Temple. Referring to the literal meaning of the Hurva, the editorial goes on to state that "To name something that is built a 'ruin' reveals a stubborn unwillingness to accept the present reality as unassailable."
Friday, March 19, 2010
For months, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) anticipated that this year’s annual Washington, DC policy conference, slated to kick off Sunday, would focus on U.S. pressure to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But much to AIPAC’s dismay, two recent events threaten to blunt that message, alter the tone and content of the conference and, more broadly, the U.S.-Israel relationship.
One event involves the highly publicized U.S.-Israel disagreement over settlements that simmered to the surface during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel. The other—less publicized but far more consequential—centers on a top military commander’s recognition of the negative impact that Israel’s behavior is having on U.S. credibility in the region.
Each year, thousands of pro-Israel Americans travel from around the country to the Israel lobby’s biggest event of the year to meet, network, and hear speaker after speaker praise Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship. On the final “lobbying” day of the conference, attendees travel en masse to Capitol Hill to communicate their ideas and concerns to Congress.
The focus of this year’s conference was supposed to be Iran. The threat to Israel’s security posed by Iran has been a central concern of AIPAC for over a decade now, but the last year has seen an unprecedented push by the organization for tougher sanctions on the Islamic Republic. In keeping with its well-deserved reputation for effectiveness, AIPAC successfully helped advance far-reaching economic and energy sanctions bills through both the House and Senate.
In an attempt to move the sanctions bills through reconciliation and onto the president’s desk, earlier this month AIPAC sent a letter to every member of Congress demanding that the U.S. government “impose crippling new sanctions on Iran,” including “provisions barring federal contracts to companies which are investing in Iran’s energy sector.” Increased pressure on Iran was queued up to be the number one issue for the conference, with conferees traveling to the Hill with one message: Raise the pressure on Iran now.
But that message discipline was disrupted just two weeks before the conference. On March 9, shortly after Vice President Joe Biden had arrived in Israel and assured Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that there was “no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security,” Netanyahu’s government announced plans to build 1,600 new homes in a Jewish settlement in an area it claims around Jerusalem, but which the rest of the world recognizes as the occupied West Bank.
Though Netanyahu claimed to have been blindsided by the announcement, Biden condemned it. Over the course of the week, the disagreement escalated. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a 45-minute phone call to Netanyahu. Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, after being summoned to the State Department for a dressing down, reportedly called the dispute a 35-year nadir of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Subsequently, in an attempt to tamp down concerns, Oren took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to deny that he had engaged in such a characterization, and to minimize the event as a blip on the “unassailably solid” relationship between the two countries.
For such conflict to boil to the surface on the eve of the biggest event on AIPAC’s calendar was disastrous. AIPAC’s stated mission is “to help make Israel more secure by ensuring that American support remains strong.” A crisis like this cuts right to the core of AIPAC’s very purpose.
Clearly recognizing the threat both to its reputation and its goals of stepped-up Iran sanctions, on March 14 AIPAC’s director of media affairs Josh Block issued a strident press release calling on the Obama administration “to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State” (while saying nothing to indicate any displeasure with the Israeli government’s gratuitous insult of the American vice-president). Other conservative pro-Israel organizations, both Jewish and Christian, soon followed suit, ignoring (as they always have) the settlements provocation and blaming the American administration for the disagreement. The progressive pro-Israel group J Street was virtually alone in recognizing the crisis as generated by the Israeli government’s provocation with the new settlement construction.
While recent statements from both governments indicate that the crisis may be contained, another looms. On March 13, journalist Mark Perry published a story on Foreign Policy’s website detailing a briefing given by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. According to Perry, “the briefers”—who had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus—“reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, [and] that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.”
In testimony (pdf) before the Senate Armed Services committee on March 16, Gen. Petraeus reiterated these concerns. Petraeus, one of the most respected military men in the country, told the committee that the Israel-Palestinian conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” and that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR [CENTCOM’s Area Of Responsibility, the Middle East] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.”
Though these comments might strike many as stating the obvious—because indeed they are—they represent something that AIPAC and others in the hawkish pro-Israel community, including their congressional backers, greatly fear: the linkage of the U.S.-Israel relationship to the U.S.’s other security challenges in the region. Right-wing scholar-activist Martin Kramer, a favorite AIPAC conference panelist, regularly dismisses linkage is a “myth.” The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman has called it a “fantasy” that “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything.” The concern is understandable—but if the American people understood the negative impact that some Israeli behavior has had on U.S. interests in the region, they might begin to take a closer look at that relationship, or at the very least demand more cooperation in return for the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. delivers to Israel every year.
In 2006, the Iraq Study Group was excoriated by many on the pro-Israel right for making the linkage argument,stating in its final report (pdf): “The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.”
The Bush administration largely ignored the ISG’s recommendations and decided instead to undertake the Iraq “surge.” It’s hugely ironic, then, that one of the ISG’s most controversial conclusions has now been brought safely within bounds by the hero of that surge, Gen. Petraeus.
None of these developments are likely to deter AIPAC’s big Iran sanctions push, but they do indicate some real, if subtle, shifts in the U.S.-Israel relationship.These shifts have come as a result of the U.S. stationing so many thousands of troops in the region, who are confronted almost every day with the radicalizing effects of the Israeli occupation on the region’s populations, and the U.S.’s perceived support for that occupation. And the experience of those troops, and commanders like Petraeus, is something that AIPAC won’t be able to ignore or deny for much longer.
One event involves the highly publicized U.S.-Israel disagreement over settlements that simmered to the surface during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel. The other—less publicized but far more consequential—centers on a top military commander’s recognition of the negative impact that Israel’s behavior is having on U.S. credibility in the region.
Each year, thousands of pro-Israel Americans travel from around the country to the Israel lobby’s biggest event of the year to meet, network, and hear speaker after speaker praise Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship. On the final “lobbying” day of the conference, attendees travel en masse to Capitol Hill to communicate their ideas and concerns to Congress.
The focus of this year’s conference was supposed to be Iran. The threat to Israel’s security posed by Iran has been a central concern of AIPAC for over a decade now, but the last year has seen an unprecedented push by the organization for tougher sanctions on the Islamic Republic. In keeping with its well-deserved reputation for effectiveness, AIPAC successfully helped advance far-reaching economic and energy sanctions bills through both the House and Senate.
In an attempt to move the sanctions bills through reconciliation and onto the president’s desk, earlier this month AIPAC sent a letter to every member of Congress demanding that the U.S. government “impose crippling new sanctions on Iran,” including “provisions barring federal contracts to companies which are investing in Iran’s energy sector.” Increased pressure on Iran was queued up to be the number one issue for the conference, with conferees traveling to the Hill with one message: Raise the pressure on Iran now.
But that message discipline was disrupted just two weeks before the conference. On March 9, shortly after Vice President Joe Biden had arrived in Israel and assured Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that there was “no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security,” Netanyahu’s government announced plans to build 1,600 new homes in a Jewish settlement in an area it claims around Jerusalem, but which the rest of the world recognizes as the occupied West Bank.
Though Netanyahu claimed to have been blindsided by the announcement, Biden condemned it. Over the course of the week, the disagreement escalated. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a 45-minute phone call to Netanyahu. Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, after being summoned to the State Department for a dressing down, reportedly called the dispute a 35-year nadir of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Subsequently, in an attempt to tamp down concerns, Oren took to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to deny that he had engaged in such a characterization, and to minimize the event as a blip on the “unassailably solid” relationship between the two countries.
For such conflict to boil to the surface on the eve of the biggest event on AIPAC’s calendar was disastrous. AIPAC’s stated mission is “to help make Israel more secure by ensuring that American support remains strong.” A crisis like this cuts right to the core of AIPAC’s very purpose.
Clearly recognizing the threat both to its reputation and its goals of stepped-up Iran sanctions, on March 14 AIPAC’s director of media affairs Josh Block issued a strident press release calling on the Obama administration “to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State” (while saying nothing to indicate any displeasure with the Israeli government’s gratuitous insult of the American vice-president). Other conservative pro-Israel organizations, both Jewish and Christian, soon followed suit, ignoring (as they always have) the settlements provocation and blaming the American administration for the disagreement. The progressive pro-Israel group J Street was virtually alone in recognizing the crisis as generated by the Israeli government’s provocation with the new settlement construction.
While recent statements from both governments indicate that the crisis may be contained, another looms. On March 13, journalist Mark Perry published a story on Foreign Policy’s website detailing a briefing given by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen. According to Perry, “the briefers”—who had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus—“reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, [and] that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.”
In testimony (pdf) before the Senate Armed Services committee on March 16, Gen. Petraeus reiterated these concerns. Petraeus, one of the most respected military men in the country, told the committee that the Israel-Palestinian conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” and that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR [CENTCOM’s Area Of Responsibility, the Middle East] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.”
Though these comments might strike many as stating the obvious—because indeed they are—they represent something that AIPAC and others in the hawkish pro-Israel community, including their congressional backers, greatly fear: the linkage of the U.S.-Israel relationship to the U.S.’s other security challenges in the region. Right-wing scholar-activist Martin Kramer, a favorite AIPAC conference panelist, regularly dismisses linkage is a “myth.” The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman has called it a “fantasy” that “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything.” The concern is understandable—but if the American people understood the negative impact that some Israeli behavior has had on U.S. interests in the region, they might begin to take a closer look at that relationship, or at the very least demand more cooperation in return for the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. delivers to Israel every year.
In 2006, the Iraq Study Group was excoriated by many on the pro-Israel right for making the linkage argument,stating in its final report (pdf): “The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.”
The Bush administration largely ignored the ISG’s recommendations and decided instead to undertake the Iraq “surge.” It’s hugely ironic, then, that one of the ISG’s most controversial conclusions has now been brought safely within bounds by the hero of that surge, Gen. Petraeus.
None of these developments are likely to deter AIPAC’s big Iran sanctions push, but they do indicate some real, if subtle, shifts in the U.S.-Israel relationship.These shifts have come as a result of the U.S. stationing so many thousands of troops in the region, who are confronted almost every day with the radicalizing effects of the Israeli occupation on the region’s populations, and the U.S.’s perceived support for that occupation. And the experience of those troops, and commanders like Petraeus, is something that AIPAC won’t be able to ignore or deny for much longer.
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