Israel Matzav

Time to shoot the messenger: Jeffrey Goldberg's chickensh*t article

Since I started writing this blog, I have not often agreed with Jeffrey Goldberg except when he was discussing his former colleague Andrew Sullivan. But at least he generally seemed capable of independent thought. No more. Goldberg has become a tool of the lame duck Obama administration. He's become the kind of Jew we should all love to hate.

The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.

The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.

...

“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”

I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the Israel file regularly. This official agreed that Netanyahu is a “chickenshit” on matters related to the comatose peace process, but added that he’s also a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat. The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

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Israel and the U.S., like all close allies, have disagreed from time to time on important issues. But I don’t remember such a period of sustained and mutual contempt. Much of the anger felt by Obama administration officials is rooted in the Netanyahu government’s periodic explosions of anti-American condescension. The Israeli defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, in particular, has publicly castigated the Obama administration as naive, or worse, on matters related to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Last week, senior officials including Kerry (who was labeled as “obsessive” and “messianic” by Ya’alon) and Susan Rice, the national security advisor, refused to meet with Ya’alon on his trip to Washington, and it’s hard to blame them. (Kerry, the U.S. official most often targeted for criticism by right-wing Israeli politicians, is the only remaining figure of importance in the Obama administration who still believes that Netanyahu is capable of making bold compromises, which might explain why he’s been targeted.)

And then... OOPS!

One of the more notable aspects of the current tension between Israel and the U.S. is the unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior. “The Israelis do not show sufficient appreciation for America’s role in backing Israel, economically, militarily and politically,” Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, told me. (UPDATE: Foxman just e-mailed me this statement: "The quote is accurate, but the context is wrong. I was referring to what troubles this administration about Israel, not what troubles leaders in the American Jewish community.")

And then Goldberg passes along Obama's threats.

What does all this unhappiness mean for the near future? For one thing, it means that Netanyahu—who has preemptively “written off” the Obama administration—will almost certainly have a harder time than usual making his case against a potentially weak Iran nuclear deal, once he realizes that writing off the administration was an unwise thing to do.

This also means that the post-November White House will be much less interested in defending Israel from hostile resolutions at the United Nations, where Israel is regularly scapegoated. The Obama administration may be looking to make Israel pay direct costs for its settlement policies.

Next year, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will quite possibly seek full UN recognition for Palestine. I imagine that the U.S. will still try to block such a move in the Security Council, but it might do so by helping to craft a stridently anti-settlement resolution in its place. Such a resolution would isolate Israel from the international community.

It would also be unsurprising, post-November, to see the Obama administration take a step Netanyahu is loath to see it take: a public, full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu's horror, would be based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.  

Let Hussein Obama lay down his 'vision.' After 2016, Obama's vision would have about as much meaning as George W. Bush's 2004 letter had after 2008. That letter was endorsed by Congress. The odds of any 'vision' Obama lays down for the Middle East being endorsed by what is almost certainly going to be a Republican-controlled House and Senate come January is somewhere between 'slim' and none.

Joel Pollak rips Goldberg some new body parts.

Nowhere in Goldberg's article is there any acknowledgment that Gaza rockets, Hamas tunnels, and Fatah/PA incitement are what have made a Palestinian state in the West Bank unthinkable, for the moment, to the vast majority of Israelis. Nor is there any admission that Obama--and Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry--have inflamed relations by publicly berating Israel on various occasions.

Goldberg also omits Obama's Cairo speech in 2009, which cast Israel in the Arab mould, as a post-Holocaust sop; his disastrous display of contempt for Bibi at the White House in 2010; or his attempt to sandbag Bibi in 2011 with a proposal for peace on the 1967 lines (which Goldberg says today would be a new idea). Obama did some work last year to undo the damage--then re-did it by cozying up to Qatar and Turkey in the recent war.

The list goes on: Obama's repeated leaks to forestall any Israeli preemptive strike on Iran (which Goldberg omits, preferring the White House narrative that Bibi was afraid to act), Obama's decision to join the Durban II conference and the UN Human Rights Council long after both had been established to be anti-Israel farces; and on and on. There are no equivalents on the Israeli side, and few precedents in any prior U.S. administration.

It would be a refreshing change if Goldberg were to stop acting as Obama-Kerry's mouthpiece. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jeffrey Goldberg, Joel Pollak, US-Israel relationship

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:52 PM