Israel Matzav

The storyline is older than the modern state of Israel. Reporters portray American Jews as parochially fixated on Israel and ask: Will the issue help Republicans win support from the rare affluent group that votes Democratic? The answer is no. There's a round of these articles every presidential cycle, and the answer is the same every time. Obama will likely perform worse with Jews in 2012 than in 2008. But that's because he'll likely perform worse with nearly everyone.

Don't mistake the outliers for the tribe. Even a majority of religiously conservative Jews voted for Democratic House candidates in the 2010 election. Overall, in that historically awful Democratic year, two-thirds of Jews still backed Democrats in the House elections, according to polling by Jim Gerstein.

That Israel isn't at the top of the Jewish agenda doesn't mean it has no impact on the Jewish vote. This impact can be manifested in two ways: A. That the President is seen by Jews as not-supportive-enough of Israel can add to the general erosion of support that is mostly about the economy, or B. That the President is seen by Jews as not-supportive-enough of Israel prevents his campaign from using his support for Israel as counter-weight to other problem (namely, it prevents them from telling Jews: Yes, we know you're worried about the economy, but look how great he is on Israel).

Most importantly: As Kuhn rightly mentions, "we pay attention to the Jewish vote, above all, because Jews contribute an outsized share of financial support to political campaigns". However, he fails to follow through with the obvious implication of such point: the "Jewish problem" isn't really about the numbers - it is about the support of donors. If Obama is not losing at all among most Jews, but is losing the 20 most generous Jewish funders, that's important. If most Jews don't put Israel high on their agenda but many big funders do - that's important. So there's another piece of information we don't yet have - without which we can't yet jump to the conclusion that there's no "Jewish problem": We don't have a poll of Jews who give a lot of money to campaigns.

Relatedly, on the substantive side, it’s pretty clear to me that the Obama Administration wanted to topple the Likud-led government so they could get a more dovish government more to their liking in power. This led the Administration to publicly demand that Israel initiate a full settlement freeze, something the Palestinians themselves had never demanded [as a precondition to negotiations]. The strategy, as I see it, was that with a new extremely popular president Israel wouldn’t be able to say no, but Netanyahu’s coalition was too right-wing to say yes. So the government would have to fall, as Shamir’s did in the early ‘90s in part because he couldn’t get along with the Bush Administration. This proved a spectacular miscalculation. Netanyahu had a much broader coalition than Shamir’s, including the Labor Party. And Israel has become a major issue in conservative politics, which is was not twenty years ago. Pressure on Netanyahu invited pushback from the Republicans, leading Democrats to tell the president to ratchet it down. And again optics-wise, how often does the U.S. try to undermine the coalition governing one of its democratic allies?

Finally, with regard to domestic politics I pointed out repeatedly during the 2008 campaign that one of Obama’s weaknesses was that his entire adult life was spent in circles in which liberal/left views were taken for granted. In Obama’s circles, publicly pressuring Israel and using “evenhanded” language to refer to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (while favoring Israel beneath the rhetorical surface) seems perfectly reasonable, even a bit “right-wing.” The JStreet types that are Obama’s natural constituency would certainly think so. (The mistaken assumption, pushed by JStreet itself, was that the average pro-Israel American was the equivalent of a JStreeter. This isn’t true, and to the extent it applies to some Jewish voters, the JStreeter types are almost all hardcore Democrats, not the swing voters/donors Obama is having trouble with.)

When the Obama administration wanted to be certain that Congress would not block $50 million in new aid to the Palestinian Authority last month, it turned to a singularly influential lobbyist: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the request of the American Embassy and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu urged dozens of members of Congress visiting Israel last month not to object to the aid, according to Congressional and diplomatic officials. Mr. Netanyahu’s intervention with Congress underscored an extraordinary intersection of American diplomacy and domestic politics, the result of an ever-tightening relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party that now controls the House.

One rule of Middle East politics, says Kramer, is that “if people are expecting something to happen, it won’t.” Most of the major events of recent regional history came out of the blue?—?from the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006 to the Mavi Marmara incident, and from 9/11 to the Arab Spring. In fact, some are wondering if the U.N. bid may at last provoke a Palestinian version of the Arab Spring. Doubtful, says Kramer. “If there was going to be a Palestinian Arab Spring, it would’ve happened already. But the Arab Spring has shown that the other Arabs are not all free with only the Palestinians waiting to be liberated. Rather, the Palestinians are arguably better off than lots of others around the region. What irks the Palestinian leadership is that it hasn’t been in the spotlight for a while.” First there was the Arab Spring, and now, with Bibi coming to New York, it looks like the Palestinian Authority still isn’t going to have the spotlight to itself.

Now here’s an important lesson for you. When a radical group is portrayed as moderate based on some position it supposedly has taken or some statement made there has to be a catch somewhere. Here’s the tip-off in this case, a single sentence in the new charter: “This internal charter has been adopted within the framework of adherence to the provisions of the Basic Charter.” In other words, every detail of the original charter still holds; nothing is repealed, no error admitted, no explicit change of course accepted. Of course, Fatah has changed a lot from the 1960s. It is less focused on violence (though that doesn’t mean it has renounced terrorism necessarily), less explicitly militant in its demands, more willing to deal in a cooperative manner with Israel. Neither genuine moderation nor remaining intransigence should be exaggerated. On practical day-to-day matters, Israel can work with Fatah and needs to ensure that Hamas doesn't overthrow it. At present Fatah leaders understand well that a return to large-scale violence is against their interests. But make a comprehensive peace agreement? Not going to happen.

Question: Do you believe there should be a Palestinian state?

“I certainly have some concerns. The first step in any peaceful negotiation for a two-state solution for the Palestinians is to recognize the right of Israel’s existence. They have to denounce terrorism in both word and deed. And they have to sit down and negotiate with Israel directly. Anything short of that is a non-starter in my opinion.”

Perry’s statement had three parts: Palestinians must recognize Israel’s existence; they have to denounce terrorism; they have to negotiate with Israel directly. “Anything short of that is a non-starter in my opinion,” he declared. Perry is stuck in a time warp. He’s describing a situation that existed in the 1980s, not really today. (Some people might argue about some of that, but we will explain below.)

As part of the 1993 Oslo accords, in an exchange of letters between then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Palestine Liberation Organization met all of these conditions nearly 20 years ago. The letters are posted on the Web site of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. “The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security,” the letter from Arafat said. “The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations. … Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators.” In 1996, by a vote of 504 to 54, the Palestinian National Council removed the sections in the Palestinian charter that had denied Israel’s right to exist.

On December 14, 1998, the Palestinian National Council, in accordance with the Wye Memorandum, convened in Gaza in the presence of U.S. President Clinton and voted to reaffirm this decision.

Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.

The PLO has long recognized Israel’s existence — though not the militant group Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip, so maybe that’s what Perry meant. Israeli officials in recent years have also demanded Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” — which Palestinians have refused — but Perry did not make that distinction. Just to be sure, we sent Perry’s remarks to three experts on Middle East diplomacy — an Israeli, a Palestinian and an American. All three said he appeared to be remarkably uninformed.

While it has become fashionable for some to disparage the Oslo process, reality demonstrates that it has brought the Palestinians much closer to real independence and statehood than they were before the process began in 1993. Ongoing co-operation between Israel and the Palestinians in 40 spheres of daily life, including security, water and taxation matters, has led to relative calm in the West Bank and seen significant growth in the Palestinian economy, especially in the past few years. Before 1993, the Palestinians were not in control of a single square inch of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, the Palestinian Authority controls all of the major Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.

But in the present atmosphere Jews should resist the temptation for self-blame. Apology is intended to heal. Yet those demanding apologies of Israel aren’t seeking reconciliation, but the opposite—to criminalize the Jewish state and rescind its right to defend itself. If any apologies are forthcoming, they must be on the basis of facts. Erdogan began dismantling the Israeli-Turkish alliance well before the flotilla incident, which he then seized as a pretext to sever ties with Israel: his goal is not to restore Israeli-Turkish relations but to bolster his image in the Muslim world as the leader who humiliated Israel. Still, in the spirit of this season of penitence, Israel could offer Erdogan the following solution: We apologize for the loss of life, and you apologize for encouraging Turkish jihadists to violate Israel’s legal and moral siege against the terrorist regime in Gaza. So too with Egypt: Israel will apologize for the accidental killing of Egyptian soldiers—even though it’s not clear whether they were killed by Israeli fire or by a Palestinian suicide bomber—while Egypt apologizes for the atmosphere of government-instigated hatred against Israel, like the recent cover of one of Egypt’s leading magazines, October, which portrayed Netanyahu as Hitler.