Bibi – dishonestly and honestly

Scott MacLeod judges Binyamin Netanyahu based on Aaron David Miller’s memoirs. Frankly, I think his account says a lot about Miller and ex-President Clinton – and little of it good. (Nor do I think much of MacLeod who takes Miller at face value.)

As President Obama holds his first White House meeting with Netanyahu next week, I hope that by now he has read Miller’s frank, brilliant study. One of the things that Miller makes clear is that, although Netanyahu headed the government of a strong U.S. ally, Netanyahu and the Clinton administration did not see eye to eye on the peace process. So much did the Clinton team fear Netanyahu’s potentially destructive impact, Miller writes, that during the runup to the Israeli elections in 1996 “much of what we did during that period was designed to support Peres and in so doing save Arab-Israeli diplomacy.” The night Bibi was elected, Miller recalls, “all I could think about was how we were going to save the Oslo process from extinction.”

If MacLeod thinks that someone with this outlook is worth listening to, he possesses no capacity for critical thought.

First of all, consider that the Clinton administration didn’t just fear a Netanyahu government. It actively campaigned against Netanyahu. When a series of bus bombings that killed over 60 people had the collateral effect of sinking Shimon Peres’s campaign for prime minister, then-President Clinton held a “summit of the peacemakers” including Yasser Arafat whose indifference to (or complicity with) Hamas allowed the terror to escalate. It wasn’t Netanyahu who rendered Oslo extinct, it was the Clinton administration’s indulgence of Arafart’s bad faith that accomplished that.

Natanyahu, for his part, was considered extreme for demanding that Arafat abide by his signed agreements. The Clinton administration abandoned its commitments to Netanyahu when Arafat complained. Never mind that after Ehud Barak defeated Netanyahu, it took Arafat less than a year and a half to show that he wasn’t interested in peace and launched a terror war against Israel.

The mistake Clinton made was the decision to “work with” Netanyahu, in the belief that any progress would require the cooperation of Israel’s prime minister. But in fact American hopes were destined to be dashed for the simple reason that despite the close alliance between the U.S. and Israel as countries, there was a total disconnect between Clinton’s policies and Netanyahu’s: Clinton supported Oslo, and presided over the signing of the accord on the White House lawn, and Netanyahu bitterly opposed it. By “working with” Netanyahu for three years, Clinton effectively cooperated with Netanyahu’s agenda to scuttle the peace process. That indeed contributed to the eventual final collapse of Oslo in 2000, and made an embarrassing mockery of a superpower’s claim to being an “honest broker.”

This is MacLeod and it is fundamentally dishonest. After all it wasn’t Netanyahu who was Prime Minister in 2000. And Clinton didn’t support Oslo as much as he supported leaders who claimed to support Oslo. Since one of those was Arafat who had no interest in making peace, Clinton’s commitment to Oslo was unsustainable.

Jeffrey Goldberg makes a more honest attempt to understand Netanyahu in Israel’s fears, Amalek’s arsenal:

But this is to misread both the prime minister and this moment in Jewish history. It is true that Mr. Netanyahu would prefer to avoid hard decisions concerning the Palestinian issue, for reasons both political (he is not, let us say, sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian self-determination) and strategic (he believes the Palestinians, divided and dysfunctional, their extremists firmly in the Iranian camp, are unready for compromise).

Nevertheless, the prime minister’s preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear program seems sincere and deeply felt.

Goldberg, gets too psychological in explaining Netanyahu. Still it’s a reasonable exercise. And much more honest than the tripe that MacLeod is peddling.

Corssposted on Soccer Dad.