September 7, 2012
Throughout
his presidency, Barack Obama and his supporters have been dogged by
criticism of his position on Israel. From the very outset of his tenure
in office, critics and supporters alike have not been able to shake the
sense that Obama is deeply hostile to the Jewish state.
Obama
and his supporters have responded to every criticism of his treatment
of Israel by pulling out a list. Every time his record on Israel is
criticized, Obama and his supporters pull out a list of the things he
has done for Israel. Just this week, in an op-ed in The New York Times,
Democratic donor Haim Saban pulled out the list to justify his support
for Obama.
As the list notes, Obama has given
billions of dollars in military assistance to Israel. He has gotten
stiff sanctions passed against Iran by the UN Security Council. He has
agreed to sell F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Israel. During his
presidency, they say, the US has expanded its intelligence and military
coordination with Israel. Obama has opposed some anti-Israel resolutions
at the UN.
Obama's critics respond to Obama's
list with a series of points. They note that in approving increases in
US military assistance to Israel, including for the Iron Dome rocket
defense system, Obama is simply carrying out a pledge made by his
predecessor George W. Bush. They note that the UN Security Council
sanctions have had no impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program.
So, too, Obama opposed even stronger sanctions against Iran passed with the overwhelming support of both houses of Congress.
He
had to be forced, kicking and screaming, to sign those sanctions into
law. And since he signed the sanctions law, he has used his presidential
power to water them down.
Obama's critics
mention that due to his insistence on appeasing Iran, last week Iran
enjoyed its greatest diplomatic triumph since the 1979 Iranian
revolution. More than a hundred nations sent representatives to Tehran
to participate in the 16th Non-Aligned Movement Summit. And in the
presence of UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon, those nations expressed
support for Iran's nuclear program.
And while
it is true that Obama has blocked two anti-Israel initiatives at the UN,
he has been more supportive of the inherently anti-American and
anti-Israel UN system than any of his recent predecessors.
As
for Israeli-US intelligence cooperation, under Obama for the first
time, the US has systematically leaked Israel's most closely guarded
secrets to the media.
Indeed, critics of
Obama's policy towards Israel have their own list. It includes Obama's
repeated humiliations of Israel's prime minister. It includes the
multiple clashes Obama has initiated with Israel with regards to Israeli
sovereignty over Jerusalem. It includes Obama's adoption of the
Palestinians' position on Israel's borders.
But
still, as Obama and his supporters will say, facts are facts and they
have a list. And because the list is true - as far as it goes - they can
argue that Obama is supportive of Israel.
Given
its superficially compelling argument, it is remarkable that Obama's
list has failed to end the debate about his position on Israel. Today
Americans have no interest in foreign policy.
They
don't want to hear that by leaving Iraq as he did, Obama squandered
everything that the US fought for. They don't want to hear that he
effectively handed the country over to Iran, which now has the ability
to use Iraq as its forward base for operations in Syria, Lebanon and
beyond.
They don't want to hear that Obama's
surgeand- leave strategy in Afghanistan is fomenting a US defeat in that
war and setting the conditions for the reinstitution of the Taliban
government.
They don't want to hear about how
Russia and China view the US with contempt and challenge its economic
and strategic interests every day.
They don't
want to hear how Obama played a key role in overthrowing the US's key
ally in the Arab world, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. They don't want to
consider the implications of the fact that the US is now bankrolling the
Muslim Brotherhood's transformation of Egypt into an anti- American,
radical Islamic regime.
And yet, in the face of
this absence of interest in the world outside their borders, Americans
remain interested in the question of whether or not Obama is supportive
of Israel.
There are two reasons for Americans'
enduring interest and concern about Israel. And they were both revealed
this week at the Democratic National Convention when the story broke
about how this year's Democratic platform differs from its 2008
platform. First it was reported that the platform contained no mention
of God.
Then it was reported that unlike the
2008 platform, this year's Democratic Party platform made no mention of
Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
This year's platform watered down the language on Israel in other significant ways as well.
It
did not refer to Israel as the US's "strongest ally" in the Middle
East. It did not call for the continued eschewal of the Hamas terror
group by the international community. It did not mention US opposition
to the Palestinian demand for the so-called "right of return" - through
which Israel would be destroyed by an influx of millions of foreign
Arabs in the framework of a peace treaty between Israel and the
Palestinians. But whereas these other deletions were generally ignored,
the platform's silence on Jerusalem generated a maelstrom of criticism
that exceeded even its deletion of God.
Significantly,
rather than treat the deletions of God and Jerusalem as separate
issues, the media and the Democrats themselves presented them as two
sides of the same coin. When on Wednesday the party's leadership decided
to restore the language of the 2008 platform on God and Jerusalem - but
not on Hamas, the so-called "right of return," and Israel's strategic
significance to the US - they opted to do so in the same amendment.
The
widespread perception of God and Jerusalem as related issues tells us
something important about the American character. And it tells us
something equally important about Obama and the party he leads.
Prof.
Walter Russell Mead described Israel's place in the American mindset
last year. As he put it, "Israel matters in American politics like
almost no other country on earth. Well beyond the American Jewish and
the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of
Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the
American soul. The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is
profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism. The belief that
God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors
and protects America."
Mead continued, "Being
pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind
believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and
pro-faith. Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who
don't 'get' Israel also don't 'get' America and don't 'get' God."
By
removing both God and Jerusalem from the platform, Obama and his fellow
Democrats stirred the furies of that American soul at its foundations.
They showed they don't "get" Israel or God. And by extension, they don't "get" America.
The
intellectually confusing decision to lump Jerusalem and God together in
the same amendment no doubt owed to the fact that someone in the party
recognized how disastrous the deletions were for their ability to
convince wavering voters that the Democratic Party has their back.
And
this brings us to nature of the Democratic Party today. For the
amendment to the platform to pass, it needed the support of two-thirds
of the convention's delegates. And so, on Wednesday morning, the
convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, brought the
amendment to the floor for a voice vote.
Much
to his obvious shock, the amendment did not receive the requisite
support. Calls supporting the amendment were met by at least equally
strong calls opposing it. Villaraigosa was forced to call the vote three
times before declaring - contrary to the evidence - that the amendment
had passed.
More than anything else, the floor
vote showed how out of step a large and significant constituency in the
Democratic Party is with the basic character of their country. The
spectacle should raise concerns among all supporters of Israel who
believe Obama's pro-Israel list is proof they have a safe home today in
the Democratic Party.
Jerusalem's conflation
with God in the American imagination is not the only reason so many
people attacked the platform's watered-down language on US-Israel ties.
The second reason for the uproar explains why the issue of Obama's
support for Israel is the only foreign policy question that has dogged
his administration since he took office. It explains why American
support for Israel is a more salient issue for Americans than Iraq or
Afghanistan, Britain, Turkey or Russia.
Here,
too, Israel's symbolic importance in the American imagination is central
for understanding the matter. Beyond its religious significance, there
is a widespread perception that Israel is on the front line of the war
against America. As a consequence, Israel is the only foreign policy
issue that telegraphs messages about the nature of America's foreign
policy to an otherwise disengaged and largely indifferent American
public.
For most Americans - if not for most
Democrats - support for Israel is the most important plank of US foreign
policy because it indicates the nature of that foreign policy as a
whole. A president who supports Israel is a president who has his
priorities straight. A president who is hostile to Israel is a president
who can't be trusted on Iran or Russia or China or anything else.
In
an apparent effort to end this state of affairs, Obama has adopted a
policy towards Iran - whose nuclear program represents the greatest
rising threat to US national security - that frames the issue as
Israel's problem.
In so doing, Obama seeks to
achieve two goals. First, he seeks to decouple Israel's national
security from America's national security in the popular imagination.
And second, he seeks to diminish popular support for Israel by
presenting Israel as a country that is pushing America into an
unnecessary war.
Obama's list of pro-Israel
actions is essential to his ability to achieve this specific goal, and
through its achievement to convince Americans of the overall success of
his foreign policy. The list is essential because it transforms Israel
in the public mind from a strategic ally into a strategic basket case in
need of America's constant assistance.
In line
with this, it is telling that the amendment of the Democratic platform
did not return the 2008 platform's characterization of Israel as
America's "strongest ally" in the Middle East.
But as the outcry the platform changes provoked demonstrated, Obama has failed to achieve this goal. And this is wonderful news.
On
the other had, as long as he has supporters willing to publish op-eds
and give interviews devoted to repeating the list, Obama will continue
to make the case that he can be trusted on foreign policy despite his
abandonment of God, Jerusalem and America's most vital interests.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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