Israel Matzav

The Walt-Mearsheimer view on the midterm elections

It's not written by Stephen Walt, it's not written by John Mearsheimer, but James Traub must be a disciple of their paranoia.

As a general rule, American politicians do not rally to the side of foreign leaders when those leaders directly confront the president of the United States. I don't, for example, recall liberal Democrats cheering on French President Jacques Chirac when he defied President George W. Bush on Iraq, even though they thought he was right. Siding with France would have seemed unpatriotic -- and, of course, stupid. The American people, and thus their political leaders, will instinctively line up behind the president in the face of a direct challenge from abroad. Unless the country in question is Israel.

I recall an awful lot of Americans supporting Honduran efforts to get out from under dictator Manuel Zelaya, who was supported by President Obama. And I recall an awful lot of Americans who supported George H.W. Bush when he put the screws to Israel twenty years ago. So I guess the American people don't always line up for Israel against an American president, and they sometimes line up for other countries against an American president, eh?

Witness the events of recent days: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, seems to have decided that it's open season on Barack Obama. In his speech this week in New Orleans before the general assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, Netanyahu not only repeated his longstanding view that Iran will curb its nuclear program only in the face of a credible threat of military action, but added -- gratuitously, and with questionable accuracy -- that the regime had stopped trying to build a bomb only in 2003, when it feared an attack by President-You-Know-Who.

Bibi's entitled to his opinion on this matter that directly affects Israel just like everyone else. And he wasn't the only world leader to defy Obama this week. So did Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and so did the Iraqi Kurds. Were they backed by an 'Israel lobby' too? Or perhaps, like Netanyahu, they read the tea leaves and understand that President Obama now has a limited ability to make them act against their countries' interests.

This was, of course, only a prelude to the melodrama of the week, in which Israel's Interior Ministry announced that it had approved plans to build 1,000 new homes in the Har Homa settlement of East Jerusalem -- a blatant provocation both to the Palestinians, who view the area as part of a future Palestinian state, and to Obama, who has implored the Netanyahu government to freeze settlement construction as a necessary good-faith gesture toward the Palestinians.

Har Homa is not a settlement and no American President before Obama ever called it one. The hostility that this President has displayed toward the Jewish state is not normative. Traub conveniently ignores the fact that Har Homa was built on private, Jewish-owned land. If it was owned by Jews all along (which it was) no one 'took it' from the 'Palestinians.'

When Obama gently demurred that "this kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations," Netanyahu's office shot back, "Jerusalem is not a settlement; Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel" -- an assertion almost universally disputed, since Israel seized East Jerusalem, which had not been included in its mandated territory, after the 1967 war. Netanyahu later waved off the controversy as "overblown."

Actually, Israel's 'mandated territory' included all of present-day Israel (including Judea and Samaria) as well as all of Palestine Jordan.

It is widely believed in Israel that Netanyahu's close aides have been demeaning Obama to the Israeli public through an orchestrated whispering campaign and that this accounts in part for Obama's dismal poll ratings there.

It is? I live in Israel and have never heard that before. In fact, I've been demeaning Obama since at least January 2008 (when Binyamin Netanyahu was still the opposition leader), and I will guarantee you that no member of the government of Israel ever asked me to do so.

Actually, it's extraordinary to think that any country's security can be "synonymous" with that of the United States,

Have you looked at a map? In what other stable democracy can the United States store military equipment and have it available to defend the World's oil supply? Turkey? Pakistan? Qatar? Don't make me laugh....

though of course even this assumes that Netanyahu's definition of Israel's security is right, while that of, say, former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon, or aspiring prime minister Tzipi Livni, is wrong.

Every Israeli politician you've named supported building in the predominantly Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem - like Har Homa. And as to Israel's security, more of us have learned something since Sharon abandoned Gaza.

And besides, Sharon is comatose, Olmert resigned in disgrace, and Livni was clearly refudiated (yes, that was on purpose) by the voters in the last election. So Netanyahu's view of our security requirements may not be the only view, but it is clearly the most reflective of the mainstream Israeli view out of the four named.

Or is Cantor saying that Americans should automatically accept Israel's own definition of its security?

Within reason, yes. Having lived in Israel for 19 years, I am sure that the average American knows a lot more about American security requirements than I do. But I know a hell of a lot more about Israeli security requirements than you do, and Netanyahu knows a hell of a lot more about them than Obama does. By the way, Netanyahu served in an elite unit in the IDF - where did Obama serve?

Whichever it is, the Israel-is-always-right wing of the Republican Party is in a much more powerful position today than it was two weeks ago, and Netanyahu would have every reason to believe that the GOP has his back. So much for those who say that the election had no effect on the conduct of foreign affairs.

Elections are supposed to have effects. That's why we hold them.

But that was then. Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton -- at least not in Israel. "I think the Obama folks have underestimated the problem," says Daniel Levy, a Middle East expert and a founder of the liberal Jewish organization J Street.

That's an understatement. An American President with popularity ratings in single digits in Israel is unheard of. Maybe you can get Levy to send J Street's in-house pollster over here to doctor the results of a new poll. Maybe Obama could reach 20% popularity. Maybe.

I leave it to my readers to fisk the rest as an exercise.

UPDATE 6:49 PM

More from Shmuel Rosner here.

Labels: Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel Lobby, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Jordan is Palestine

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:46 PM