Obama, Jews, Israel

A few weeks ago Daled Amos observed that Israel could well be an issue in the upcoming midterm elections. Citing a Politico article he wrote:

Support for Israel, and its implications for US foreign policy, is already emerging as an issue in the upcoming Congressional races shaping up this year. Republicans have an easier time backing Israel as part of their criticism of Obama’s foreign policy in general and towards Iran in particular. Not so Democrats, who while they like to claim to be solid friends of Israel, must also deal with the increasingly vocal group among them that say pressure on Israel is the way towards peace.

Daled Amos sees a split in the bipartisan concensus of American support for Israel as bad for Israel.

In a more recent article, David Paul Kuhn notes that the administration’s hostility towards Israel, or at least towards the current Israeli government may finally be taking its toll American Jewish support for the President.

This tension, inevitably, raises the question of whether Obama’s Jewish support is vulnerable. Jews are an influential pillar of the Democratic base and a key fundraising constituency Republicans have long courted, though to little avail.

Jews approval of Obama, 62 percent in the recent Gerstein-Agne poll, is at least a dozen points above the president’s overall approval rating. Obama has fallen 11 points with Jews since March 2009. But the Jewish decline is only a few points above his decline with Hispanics and still roughly half Obama’s decline with the general public.

The Gerstein-Agne poll tellingly reveals that only 44 percent of US Jews have a favorable opinion of Netanyahu, whose conservative views are to the right of most American Jews. And when Jews were asked whether they approved of the strong US criticism following the Biden-settlement incident, 55 percent said “yes.”

Nevertheless, there are signs of strain between Jews and Obama. Consider the 45 percent who disapproved of the US criticism. Last year, the same poll found that American Jews oppose Israeli settlement expansion by a 60 to 40 percent margin. This means at least a fifth of Jews who voted for Obama maintain policy differences with him on Israel.

(Kuhn’s article is flawed in that he misrepresented Gen. Petraeus’s testimony last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee.)

But given that as Walter Russell Mead observes being pro-Israel is being pro-American:

Next, it’s not just that being pro-Israel is seen as being pro-American. It’s also that being anti-Israel looks anti-American to much of this country. It’s not just that Israel is ‘good’ — democratic, pro-American, etc. Its enemies (Iran, Hamas, Hezbolleh and so on) are ‘bad’. They are anti-American and anti-democratic. They practice terrorism. A number of Arab leaders sided with Hitler in World War Two. They sided with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And there are the terrorists of today. Even when they aren’t openly joining our enemies, they are overcharging us for oil.

Obviously the reality is much more complicated than this caricature. But something like this picture is what many ordinary Americans see when they look at the Middle East.

Non-Jewish Americans may sometimes think that AIPAC and its allies go ‘too far’. They may think that Israel sometimes overreacts or reacts in counterproductive ways. That can be exasperating, but it is understandable. And that Jewish Americans have a soft spot for Israel makes sense to a lot of Americans. It’s no more un-American for Jews to back Israel a little too hard than it is un-American for Greek and Armenian Americans to get too emotional about Turkey.
The basic point here for the kind of non-expert Americans–who in other times and other circumstances might be vulnerable to anti-Semitic concepts–is that Israel is on our side, its enemies are not, and the fact that Jews get emotional about this only means that they are a little too pro-American and, like the rest of us, sometimes need to take a deep breath and count to ten before acting on impulse. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” Barry Goldwater once said — quoting Thomas Jefferson. Extremism in the defense of Israel, even if it is wrong, is endearingly wrong to many Americans. AIPAC’s militancy on the subject of Israel merely testifies to the depth and strength of the bonds that tie America and Israel together; it may sometimes go too far, but it goes too far in the right direction.

(If I understand Professor Mead correctly he sees support for Israel as an antidote for antisemitism. He’s the anti-Walt and Mearsheimer.)

It’s also good to read that there’s bipartisan support for this view. In Context writes:

Spearheaded by Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the original letter bears their signatures along with two other Democrat and two other Republican members of the House and has so far attracted a total of 333 signatures in that body. 163 of them are Democrats, so this is about as close to bi-partisan as it gets. Sadly, my Representative is not among them (good luck with that Senate campaign, Joe).

But that’s not all. A second letter to Clinton is now circulating through the Senate. It contains similar language. Leading the charge on this one are Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). As of yesterday, 58 Senators had signed it, including 25 Democrats (among them, both of my Senators, so thank you for this one, Bob Casey and Arlen Specter!). I expect there will be more.

It’s good to know that even as some in the administration are actively portraying Israel as a “burden” (to use Kuhn’s word), that those who are closer to the American people know otherwise.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.