Cohen: the President doesn’t “get” Israel

Richard Cohen thinks that the pro-Israel crowd is being paranoid.

As for myself, I receive e-mails saying that Obama, that klutz, asked Binyamin Netanyahu whether Jews could alter the age-old prayer about returning to Jerusalem and substitute the word Israel. And I am told — and told and told — that Obama snubbed Netanyahu by interrupting a meeting so he could have dinner with his family. It would have been nice, not to mention diplomatic, to ask the leader of Israel to join him at the table. Netanyahu cooled his heels.

Never mind that none of this happened. There was no snub, say the most informed of informed sources, and the business about the prayer and Jerusalem is a sheer fabrication. (If I am wrong, may my right hand lose its cunning.) As for U.S.-Israel policy, it has not significantly changed. In fact, Israelis and others say that when it comes to military aid and intelligence operations, the two countries have never been closer. As an example, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz tell us that three American-made Hercules transport aircraft are in the pipeline to Israel.

Of course anyone with a modicum of common sense realized that the “Next Year in Jerusalem” story was a joke not a vicious rumor. Like most jokes it was based on a perception. In this case it is that a President who makes a big deal out of bureaucratic snafu, really does object to the Israeli presence in Jerusalem.

But if, according to Cohen, there’s no problem, what gives?

So why all this angst? One explanation is that Obama has found Netanyahu as slippery and untrustworthy as Bill Clinton once did — and Clinton’s affection for Israel was manifest. It’s not for nothing that Middle East observers are once again drawing attention to a cover story on Netanyahu that ran in the Economist back in 1997: “Israel’s Serial Bungler,” it proclaimed. Except for the date, no one in Washington would change a thing.

But it takes two to tango, and in this case, Obama does not dance like a star. He gives every appearance of not “getting” Israel; not appreciating its fears or its history. Israel is not half of the equation, as if both sides are right. It is a democracy with American values that has tried, over and over again, to make peace with a recalcitrant and unforgiving enemy. It is this, the music and not the words, that explains Koch and Wiesel and Lauder, not to mention the e-mailers, anonymous and otherwise, who seem to believe anything bad about Obama. It is downright disturbing that in a recent poll published in Haaretz, about 27 percent of Israelis said they think Obama is an anti-Semite.

There is something incredibly patronizing about this. For one thing, Koch (not to mention Alan Dershowitz, who lately has been criticizing President Obama’s Middle East policy) very publicly supported candidate Obama and his friendship to Israel. Given Obama’s record (friendship with Rashid Khalidi, membership in Rev. Wright’s church), Koch’s support seemed to be counterintuitive.

Still it’s not that President Obama doesn’t “get” Israel. He is not sympathetic to it in the least.

Like those legions who are willing to believe anything bad about Netanyahu, Cohen instinctively blames the Israeli leader. But as Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg recalls:

What he said was said in February of 2008 in a meeting with a hundred Cleveland Jewish leaders. Here are his words: “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says: unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, that you are anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress … because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation.”

Let’s see, candidate Obama claims that he opposes the policies of the Likud and when he becomes President he enters into a contentious relationship with the leader of Israel, who is from Likud. Is that a surprise?

I think that Rabbi Wolhberg was too generous in his subsequent assessment of Obama. Claiming that one is not anti-Israel but anti-Likud is a regularly claimed excuse by people who are, in fact, anti-Israel. But even the Likud that they supposedly oppose has long since ceased to exist, largely due to Binyamin Netanyahu in his first term. Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1998:

LAST week at the National Press Club, Albright gave a hastily arranged speech to explain her position. Its essential, tendentious theme was that all of the problems in the peace process are traceable to Netanyahu. Everything has gone to pieces, she averred, “in just two years.” You don’t need to be a CIA codebreaker to understand what that means: Netanyahu was elected prime minister two years ago this month.

The historic Hebron withdrawal, in which Netanyahu single-handedly brought Likud and the Israeli Right into the land-for-peace Oslo process, received nary a word. That’s because the only praise offered in her speech was reserved for Arafat.

Albright credits him for making “substantial changes in {his} negotiating position.” He had wanted a 30 percent Israeli withdrawal but was willing to accept 13.1.

How generous.

(emphasis mine)

A large part of blaming Netanyahu for the failure of the peace process in the late 90’s necessarily meant whitewashing Arafat’s serial perfidies.

So what does Cohen recommend? The same silliness that Brzezinski and Solarz did earlier this month.

Obama has the right policy — the only policy that makes sense — and Netanyahu is a weak prime minister who heads a shaky coalition. What’s missing on Obama’s part is not necessarily good intentions but the perception of them. He ought to do what Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did in 1977 to assure Israelis of his sincerity. Go to Jerusalem.

Never mind that President Obama does not have the right policy or that Netanyahu’s coalition isn’t as shaky as Cohen wishfully thinks, why in the world would Obama going to Jerusalem convince Israel of his sincerity or, somehow, demonstrate his goodwill towards Israel? It looks increasingly clear that President Obama doesn’t see threats from extreme Islam.

Besides Israel shouldn’t have to make peace with President Obama or the United States. And given his record, it’s hard to see how a symbolic visit will show that the President “gets” Israel.

In any case that’s not the issue. The issue is how the Arab world will make peace with Israel. Currently, there is no Arab leader willing to follow in Sadat’s footsteps. You could have a dovish Israeli Prime Minister (and since Oslo, a few have filled the bill) and you still wouldn’t have peace. Note that in 2000 and 2008, the two Ehud’s offered first Arafat and then Abbas close to what everyone knows is necessary for peace. Neither even got a counter offer. So even as Cohen tries to blame the distance (which he says doesn’t exist) between Washington and Israel on PM Netanyahu, recent history says otherwise.

What Israel needs is the equivalent of Sadat visiting Jerusalem, an unequivocal action by one or more of its enemies that the vicious hatred is a thing of the past. No matter how hard Obama pushes Israel that’s not happening any time soon. In fact, the more the President presses Israel, the further back he pushes any hope of peace.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.