America locks its own chains

To read the British media on the Obama/Israel crisis is to enter a different moral universe and sphere of reality. In the US, as I wrote yesterday, there has been enormous upset over the fight that Obama so egregiously picked with Israel over the supreme non-event of continuing to build in an orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of east Jerusalem. Even the Washington Post questioned Obama’s

quickness to bludgeon the Israeli government.

On Politico, Ben Smith noted the cross party nature of the uproar:

Democratic critics have begun to question the White House’s public pressure on Netanyahu to reverse plans for controversial new housing and make other, unspecified concessions… Pennsylvania Rep. Christopher Carney, a Democrat, and Illinois Republican Rep. Mark Kirk are sending a letter this morning to President Obama asking the administration to climb down.

while Fox News reported:

The Obama administration is drawing fierce criticism from both sides of the aisle for appearing to take dead aim at U.S. policy toward Israel by exploiting a dispute that began as a mere bureaucratic blunder.

Since then, the Obamites have been trying to douse the flames they so crassly fanned. You would never know that, of course, from the coverage in the Guardian which, as CiFWatch well observes, has viciously ignored or up-ended the crucial context in order to fashion the crisis into another stick with which to beat Israel. And in the Times today (whatever has happened to the Times? Its intellectual grasp has simply disintegrated into a jelly) the former Tory Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind simply cannot conceive that this brouhaha can possibly be anything other than Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s fault: the only question, apparently, is whether Netanyahu is incompetent or malevolent.

It doesn’t occur to Rifkind that the unceasing incitement by the Palestinians (in recent days over the non-existent threat to the Al Aqsa mosque and the re-opening in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter of the ancient Hurva synagogue) is the real stumbling block to peace; nor the fact that only Israel has made concessions while the Palestinian aggressors have made none and are never expected to do so; nor the fact that they refuse ever to accept the very existence of a Jewish state. No, the only obstacle in Rifkind’s mind is the Israeli settlements. Never mind that the Palestinians are the aggressors in this eight-decade war; to Rifkind, they ‘deserve’ a state. Never mind that the Palestinians have repeatedly turned down the offer of such a state on the vast majority of the disputed land; Rifkind knows it’s all Israel’s fault, whatever happens. Such is the third-rate drivel that passes in Britain for analysis of the Middle East.

Elsewhere, analysis is rather more intelligent and well-informed. On Slate, Lee Smith understands that the real casualty of the Obama/Israel crisis — at the root of which is Obama’s strategy of sucking up to America’s enemies while slapping down its friends — is America’s influence in the region:

But here’s the most important thing: Even if you discount the centrality of shame and honor as operative principles in the Middle East, the Obama administration has blundered by jeopardizing not Israel’s stature but our own regional interests and the Pax Americana that has been ours over the last 35 years. Our position in the region depends on every actor there knowing that we back Israel to the hilt and that they are dependent on us. Sure, there are plenty of times we will not see eye-to-eye on things—differences that should be resolved in quiet consultations—but should any real distance open up between Washington and Jerusalem, that will send a message that the U.S.-backed order of the region is ready to be tested. And that’s exactly what the axis of resistance is seeing right now.

The recent U.S.-Israeli contretemps is not about progress on the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. It is about Iran. The Obama administration has all but announced that it has resigned itself to an Iranian nuclear program and that it is moving toward a policy of containment and deterrence. We will extend a nuclear umbrella to protect our Arab allies in the Gulf, says Secretary of State Clinton, and we will continue to give Israel security guarantees. And, anyway, says Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, the Iranians are probably years away from building a deployable nuclear weapon. In rattling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cage, the Obama administration was warning Israel not even to contemplate an attack on Iran.

Of course, really effective deterrence would require us to make sure that our Israeli allies were perceived as highly volatile and unpredictable actors who might just take matters into their own hands and bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. That scenario would have a better chance of cornering Iran and its allies, compelling them to seek relief from us, the rational senior partner. Instead, we’ve just pulled off the strategic equivalent of beating our pit bull on a street corner to show the neighborhood tough guys that we mean business.

President Obama is not intentionally trying to sacrifice our position in the energy-rich and strategically vital Middle East, but his policies may well lead to that. Strategic realignment doesn’t just mean that Washington gets to trade in one set of allies for another. It means that the American order of the region will be superseded by a new order in which we will play a secondary role at best. More likely, as Ahmadinejad and Assad say, it will mean a Middle East without American influence.

In The New Republic, meanwhile, Yossi Klein Halevi writes a typically thoughtful and incisive assessment of the catastrophic consequences of Obama’s hissy fit against Israel – catastrophic for the very ‘peace process’ which is his ostensible driving force:

Obama is directly responsible for one of the most absurd turns in the history of Middle East negotiations. Though Palestinian leaders negotiated with Israeli governments that built extensively in the West Bank, they now refused to sit down with the first Israeli government to actually agree to a suspension of building. Obama’s demand for a building freeze in Jerusalem led to a freeze in negotiations. Finally, after intensive efforts, the administration produced the pathetic achievement of ‘proximity talks’—setting Palestinian-Israeli negotiations back a generation, to the time when Palestinian leaders refused to sit at the same table with Israelis.

That Obama could be guilty of such amateurishness was perhaps forgivable because he was, after all, an amateur. But he has now taken his failed policy and intensified it. By demanding that Israel stop building in Ramat Shlomo and elsewhere in East Jerusalem—and placing that demand at the center of American-Israeli relations—he’s ensured that the Palestinians won’t show up even to proximity talks. This is no longer amateurishness; it is pique disguised as policy.

Elsewhere, speculation continues that what Obama is really trying to do is neutralise Netanyahu. Never forget, after all, that before he was elected Obama observed he would find it difficult to work with a Likud government. Now journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, thought to be close to Obama, reports that the President is trying to force Kadima leader Tzipi Livni into Netanyahu’s cabinet. If true, this would be an outrageous attempt by the US to interfere in the internal politics of a democratic sovereign state.

But given Obama’s radical background, circle and whole mindset, this surely goes far deeper than Netanyahu. It’s a mindset, moreover, that he shares with the whole western post-nation, post-objective, post-moral intelligentsia on both left and right (which is what is now coming to dominate the pages of the Times). Here’s an excellent analysis by Barry Rubin of why the Obama administration is beating up on Israel:

On whom can the Administration’s failures be blamed? Answer: Israel. Since it is a friend of the United States and to some degree dependent on it, no matter what the Obama Administration does to Israel that country has no wish or way to retaliate. It is safe to beat up on Israel. By doing so, the Administration gets Europeans to go along easily and can say to Arabs and Muslims: See we are tough on Israel so you should be nice to us… In short, the Administration is falling for the oldest trick, the most venerable con-game, in the Middle East book: Move away from Israel, pressure Israel, solve the conflict, and all the Arab governments will love America and do what it wants them to do.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that now the United States is focusing on Iran and Afghanistan, places where Israel-Palestinian issues clearly have zero effect on events. Sunni and Shia Iraqis aren’t in conflict because of Israel; Sunni insurgents aren’t attacking American troops because of Israel. Al-Qaida and the Taliban aren’t fighting to seize power in Afghanistan and Pakistan because of Israel. And al-Qaida isn’t seeking to overturn all Arab regimes, create an Islamist government, and destroy any Western role in the Middle East because of Israel.

And even if the Israel issue may be one factor affecting the attitudes of Arabs toward revolutionary Islamism it is only a single factor among many. The people prone to supporting revolutionary Islamism won’t interpret an American conflict with Israel as showing the goodness of Obama but the weakness of Obama and the coming triumph of Iran in the region.

It’s worth reading the whole of this very grounded analysis. But there’s a yet further, and chilling, sting in the tail. Rubin writes:

I have been informed that on a number of occasions that my criticisms of the Obama Administration have led to my being denied certain opportunities regarding projects and writing venues.

Ah yes. Of course. John Bull long ago turned into a lemming, but the Land of the Free is now in the process of locking its own chains.