RICHARD BAEHR: ON ISRAEL THE DEMOCRATS PUSH FARTHER LEFT
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=10021
In American politics these days, if you identify yourself as a Democrat or a Republican, or a liberal or a conservative, or perhaps as someone on the Left or on the Right, a whole range of policy views are now attached to these descriptors. Along the continuum from Democrat to liberal to leftist, the support for Israel declines. Similarly, support for Israel grows as one moves from generic Republican to conservative or on the Right.
Among members of Congress, the great majority of Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House and the Senate are considered supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Typically, the definition of support has meant voting for the foreign aid bill, in which military aid to Israel is a significant though declining slice of the total bill, and signing onto various resolutions that express the sentiment of the House or Senate on some issue impacting Israel. In general, AIPAC has felt it most important to count a large number of members as supporters, and hence has expected far less from them in terms of real support if the going gets tougher. Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk and New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez tried to get senators to sign up for a resolution that would put some teeth behind the U.S. negotiating position with Iran over its nuclear program. The White House pushed back hard and Democrats who had not yet signed on signaled that their loyalty to Barack Obama was paramount. The supposedly great Democratic Party defenders of Israel in the Senate — Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, were either silent or working the halls to push the president’s message to stand down, and allow John Kerry the leeway to continue to negotiate what in the end will likely be the surrender of the West to Iran becoming a nuclear power.
AIPAC likes to say that it is committed to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship. That relationship means something far different when Barack Obama is president than when George W. Bush served in that office. It is pretty doubtful that in the midst of a war, George W. Bush would have banned U.S. flights into Israel, or cut off resupply of weapons to Israel, or allowed his State Department PR team to lash out at Israel every time a few civilians died in a U.N. facility where Hamas gunmen and their rockets should not have been. It has been leaked by administration sources that Obama is in a rage at Israel, which seems harsher than his mindset about ISIL until a few public opinion polls showed Herbert Hoover-like numbers for his management of foreign policy (the latest this week), forcing him to at least appear to pay some attention to the threat.
Are Democrats free to criticize their president for his stance on Israel? When Martin Indyk, a member of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East negotiating team, was hammering Israel at every opportunity, blaming Israel alone for the breakup of what must be round 867 of the peace process talks, (this of course being “the one,” unlike the prior 866 that offered “a real opportunity for a breakthrough and the last chance for peace”), how many members of the president’s party pushed back against his nasty spin?
Now we know that Indyk has been in the pocket of Qatar for some time as vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a recipient of near $15 million from Qatar. This lovely nation is best known these days for bribing its way to hosting a World Cup, serving as Hamas’ paymaster, giving the gift of Al Jazeera to America and the world (plus hundreds of millions to Al Gore and partners for the privilege), and working with Turkey during the recent Israel-Gaza conflict to do everything possible to gum up the effort by Egypt to obtain a real cease-fire. One might think that it would now be OK for some Democrats to speak out and take Indyk down a peg.
But this would be asking too much, since Indyk also served during the Bill Clinton administration, and in short order, another Clinton, this time Hillary, will end her fake decision-making process, and announce that she is a candidate for the White House again, probably in early 2015. This of course will enable those of us not yet full fledged members of Clinton world to first share the joy of Hillary becoming a grandmother, before she puts it aside for the all important work of restoration of a Clinton or Clintons to the White House (vote for one, get two), and to grind down all opponents who stand in her way. Indyk is a Friend of Bill. His is a prominent name in the Clinton Rolodex, and not a man to be disregarded. Democrats understand this. Team Clinton demands loyalty above all.
It also demands lashing out at those who made life difficult for Clinton as president, or who supported Barack Obama in the bitter 2008 nominating contest. Obama has been looking even more disengaged, naive and foolish recently than normal, a tough bar to cross. We now know that the president thinks “ISIL is not really Islamic,” which presumably means that the violence underway in more than a few dozen Muslim countries around the world these days must be symptomatic of something other than what Islam does to or demands of its adherents.
In any case, Hillary Clinton thought it necessary to create some space from Obama and his sinking ship in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, sounding tougher and more hawkish than Obama, and more supportive of Israel (there are a lot of wealthy pro-Israel donors out there to be stroked, at least for the next two years). But Bill Clinton is a savvy politician, and understands how the base of support on the left for Israel has been evaporating, as support for the Palestinians has become a litmus test among the committed on campus, in mainline churches, and among many of the Party activists. So the two Clintons perform a two-step — Hillary signals to the op-ed world that she will be a strong president, and Bill reassures the base that he understands Israel is badly flawed and in particular, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hopeless and blameworthy. That seemed to be the message Bill Clintondelivered when questioned by an activist at Senator Tom Harkin’s steak fry last weekend in Iowa.
”Netanyahu himself said that he does not want peace. If we don’t force him to make peace, we will not have peace,” the man told Clinton in the video.
”First of all, I agree with that.”
”But Netanyahu is not the guy,” the unnamed person told Clinton, cutting in.
”I agree with that,” Clinton responded.
So the Clinton message is identical to Indyk’s — Netanyahu is the real obstacle to peace, and America needs to force him to cross the finish line (since presumably Palestinians are so anxious to make peace). Clinton, in full legacy building mode, informs the activist that he got Ehud Barak to agree to things Yitzhak Rabin never would have swallowed, and that Palestinians now regret that they turned down the Barak/Clinton offer at Taba. Clinton maintains that Abbas now says he would take the deal, but Israel won’t offer it, due presumably to Netanyahu’s stubbornness or shortsightedness.
Clinton is probably happy to be talking about the Middle East. When the biggest news story of the week in America is a football player decking his fiancee, Bill’s past tangles with uncooperative women (Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick) might become inconvenient truths.
If Bill Clinton is out to make Netanyahu look like the bad guy, one of Hillary’s possible opponents for the nomination seems to be in full brain dead mode, telling a few anti-Israel activists at a recent event that Palestinians have the right to defend themselves, just as Israel does (“You go girl, Hamas”), and everybody should just make peace, since that is how the killing stops (who knew?). The statesmanship just shines through when Warren speaks, perhaps reflecting “her heritage” of passing around the peace pipe.
The message from Clinton’s appearance in Iowa, and Warren’s at Tufts University, is that Israel will probably always come up as a topic at Democratic Party events these days. The Left wants its politicians to move where they have to become far less supportive of Israel, and much more critical of Israel. It is inevitable that when the voters make such a shift clear to their elected leaders, the leaders will follow, even if not at once. Hillary is probably savvy enough to navigate the issue the next two years (so as to secure both money and votes from those who are pro-Israel and those who hate Israel). Barack Obama won 78 percent of Jewish votes in 2008 with his priors with Edward Said, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Ali Abunimah, and Rashid Khalidi out there for anyone interested. After his passive-aggressive behavior with Israel his first term, he only drove 9 percent away in his re-election battle, still winning about seven of every 10 Jewish voters. Hillary Clinton will find it easier to appear more sympathetic to Israel than Obama. And if she wins in 2016, then she can place her trust in Indyk to once again find that elusive key to peace in our time.
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