In last month’s installment I mentioned that Jewish self-identification is a problem under hot debate in Israel. It goes to the fundamental issue: who and what is a Jew? This leads in turn to the question what is Herzl’s Judenstaat supposed to be? The word comes from his programmatic pamphlet which he published in 1896 and laid out the means to achieve statehood for Jews. Unfortunately Judenstaat, like so many other words, is ambiguous when an attempt is made to translate it from the original German into a different language and this has bedeviled the state of Israel since its recognition by the UN in 1947. Herzl’s vision was a secular democratic state where Jews are the majority but with a constitution which guarantees the minorities within its borders equal rights as full-fledged citizens of the state. This is one interpretation of Judenstaat. The other is a state of Jews, by Jews, for Jews and non-Jews are, in case they should decide to remain, second-class citizens with limited rights and privileges. It is the latter vision which the founders of the state subscribed to. Only the methods differed between the radical ideas of expulsion of minorities, as proclaimed by Jabotinsky (Is Zionism Moral? May 10, 2007), and the more gradual encroachment on the civil rights of native non-Jewish Palestinians, as adopted by the Labor party under Ben-Gurion and his successors. The Likud party which is currently in charge of Israel’s government is psychologically the successor of the Jabotinsky nationalistic program to which has been added biblical fervor with the emergence of religious parties which can make or break any government coalition.

            One can now raise a legitimate question: why should Americans care what type of government is in charge of the state? The dominant view in our country is: Israel is a democracy, our friend, and most trusted ally whose security is threatened by hostile neighbors and, therefore, deserves our unstinting support regardless of its internal policies. Anyone who raises a question in regard to any aspect of this statement runs the risk of being labeled an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew as the case may be. This would, of course be irrelevant if it were not the view which governs our foreign policy and has led us into unwinnable wars against the Arab and Muslim world. One may wonder whether I am exaggerating but this is why this article was written. It provides some documentation, mainly from Jewish sources, why American foreign policy cannot succeed in the Middle East at this time, regardless whether Republicans or Democrats control the White House.

            When President Obama reacted with annoyance to Israel’s defiance in regard to the settlement freeze, Republican fury descended upon him. Ex-governor Sarah Palin, who is already running for the presidency in the 2012 elections, proclaimed that Obama was “selling out our ally Israel” and was treating Prime Minister Netanyahu “shabbily.” Instead of standing up for its ally, Obama was kowtowing to Russia and China. “So while President Obama is getting pushed around by the likes of Russia and China, our allies are left to wonder about the value of an alliance with our country any more. They’re asking what is it worth.”

But Palin’s newfound love for allies was actually an echo of a more serious discussion between Roger Cohen (former foreign editor and columnist for the New York Times), Rashid Khalidi (professor of Arab studies at New York University), Stuart Eizenstat (former US ambassador to the EU and undersecretary of state) and Itamar Rabinovich (former Israeli ambassador to the US and professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University). The topic for the discussion, moderated by John Donvan of ABC News, held at New York University and reported by Newsweek in February of this year was: Should the U.S. step back from its special relationship with Israel? Roger Cohen and Rashid Khalidi argued in favor while Eizenstat and Rabinovich opposed the idea. Here are some excerpts,

“Cohen: In life, when we fail, we call it stupidity to burrow deeper into failure. Measured by that standard, American policy toward Israel has failed. We are no closer to peace. Israelis and Palestinians are farther apart than ever. What makes America’s relationship with Israel special is its uncritical nature, even when U.S. interests are being hurt, and also the incredible largesse that the United States shows toward Israel – over the past decade, almost $60. . . . ‘Two states for two peoples’ is the declared objective [but] the U.S. is bankrolling the very Israeli policies that are dashing these hopes by making two states almost unimaginable. . . .  America’s perceived complicity in Israeli violence carries a heavy price. It is a potent terrorist recruitment tool. . . . America should be ready to speak openly and critically of Israeli mistakes when needed. . . .

Eizenstat: For the United States to stand back from its special relationship would betray the very principles of morality upon which U.S. foreign policy is based. It would mean abandoning the only democratic reliable ally in the region. What message would this send to other allies? America has to stand behind its allies, or it will not have many left anywhere. . . .

Khalidi: Let me list a couple of problems that result from this special relationship. One is an almost total deafness to public opinion in Palestine and in the Arab world. Everybody knows there is a big fat U.S. thumb on the scales when the U.S. acts as mediator. . . .

Rabinovich: What does special relationship mean? It does not mean the tail is wagging the dog. . . . [Our] very close military and strategic alliance is defined, among other things, by the fact that Israel does not want American troops in Israel. Not having to station troops in that part of the Middle East because Israel is there is a huge advantage to the United States. Remember, when Al Qaeda attacked the world Trade Center, the first reason they cited for attacking the U.S. [was] that the U.S. had troops on sacred Muslim soil.

Eizenstat: . . .  Israel would be completely alone. I can tell you, it would send a chill down the spine of every ally we have in Europe and around the world if the relationship were abandoned. Because they would say, we will be next.

Cohen: Nobody is arguing that Israel should cease being an ally. We are just saying that when President Obama says he wants settlements to stop, and settlements continue, and Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu declares that some settlements are Israel’s for all eternity, there should be consequences. . . . Our policies up to now have failed. But any adjustment in U.S. policy toward Israel is extremely difficult. There is a state called Florida with a large Jewish community, a calculation not lost on America’s leadership. President Obama, I understand has been told by some Jewish congressmen, if you want your health bill, step back on Israel.

Eizenstat: American policy toward Israel is supported by a bipartisan majority because the American public recognizes that Israel and the United States share common interests and common values. And those are always counterbalanced by the oil interests, [and] major business interests.”

This document is remarkable on several counts. First of all, the fact that this discussion was not only held but reported in a mainstream weekly journal is important in itself because it is part of what I have called the “shifting ground” in last month’s installment. Even two years ago one might have found it on the Internet but not in Newsweek.

The Eizenstat-Rabinovich defense of the status quo remains official policy although its reasoning is faulty. If America were to become an impartial arbiter of the conflict our allies would not be dismayed, as we are being told, but in all likelihood they would say, “What took you so long?” The argument in regard to Israel not wanting U.S. troops on its soil is also specious. The real reason is not the desire to save us time, money and effort but having our troops in the occupied territories would reveal the ugly side of the occupation for all to see. Photos would flood to relatives at home, reporters would film the “facts on the ground” and instead of one having to rely on the Internet for the facts, reality would sweep across our TV screens into our living rooms. This is the last thing any Israeli government would want and I am reasonably sure that Ambassador Rabinovich is aware of this eventuality. It is true that bin Laden’s first goal was to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia, but the real mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, freely admitted after the first WTC bombing in 1993, that it was an act of revenge for U.S. collusion with Israel in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. They had also vowed to do a better job next time. This is not a secret but common knowledge as has again been documented in last month’s installment. It is unlikely that Ambassador Rabinovich was not aware of this information but since its acknowledgement would have strengthened Mr. Cohen’s and Professor Khalidi’s case, it must not be admitted to.

Two more aspects need to be discussed: “morality,” as well as “common interests and common values.” The human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories as well as in Israel proper and especially Jerusalem do not correspond to what the civilized world regards as moral conduct. This is recognized by the peace movement and numerous volunteer groups in Israel who protest against the arbitrary behavior of the government. These are the Jewish people who want our help and we let them down because of our electoral politics. The “common interests” fall apart when the Israeli government engages in what is regarded by the world community as unacceptable behavior and this fact cannot be simply wished away by labeling everyone who voices disagreement as anti-Semitic. Ambassador Eizenstat was correct when he said that if the U.S. withdrew its support “Israel would be completely alone.” But under those circumstances it would behoove clear thinking people to wonder why this would be the case and as mentioned above the excuse of world-wide anti-Semitism is not a convincing argument. Self-inspection, as a segment of the Israeli public is engaged in, would be called for but as yet finds no resonance here.

Before discussing “common values,” which are indeed the most pervasive propaganda tool, it needs to be mentioned that the audience was polled before as well as after the discussion in regard to their views. In the first poll 33 percent favored a pullback in American relations with Israel, 45 percent were opposed and 25 percent undecided. After the debate 49 percent favored a pullback, 47 percent were opposed, with 4 percent undecided. It is obvious that the discussion did sway some minds; a sharper polarization had taken place and the audience was essentially split in the middle. Why should this be the case? One of the most likely reasons is that the American Christian community is largely dominated by various Protestant denominations which, especially in the South, prefer the Old Testament and its vengeance exerting Yahweh over the forgiving Jesus. Although the “Evangelicals” profess Christ with their lips, their hearts are largely with Moses and the chosen people. A good example is the ex-governor of Arkansas and former as well as possible future contender for the presidency: Mike Huckabee.

In June of this year Ariel Levy published an article in The New Yorker entitled, “Prodigal Son. Is the wayward Republican Mike Huckabee now his party’s best hope?” In it Levy describes how Huckabee sees himself and the views he expressed while leading a group of one hundred and sixty evangelicals on a tour of Christian holy sites in Israel, which by the way, was his fourteenth trip. Below are some of the most relevant excerpts.

‘“I worship a Jew! I have a lot of Jewish friends, and they’re kind of like, ‘You evangelicals love Israel more than we do.’ ‘I’m like, Do you not get it? If there weren’t a Jewish faith, there wouldn’t be a Christian faith.’ . . .  In recent weeks Huckabee has defended the Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza, in which nine people were killed. He does not support a two-state solution, or at least, as he told numerous reporters in the course of the trip ‘not on the same piece of real estate’­­– which is to say he thinks that coming up with a place for Palestinians ought to be an Arab problem. In fact, Huckabee does not believe that Palestinian is a legitimate nationality. ‘I have to be careful saying this, people get really upset –  there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,’ Huckabee told a rabbi in Wellesley, Massachusetts, at a kosher breakfast on the campaign trail in 2008. ‘That’s been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.’ In a speech to the Knesset on our trip, Huckabee said, ‘I promise you, you do not have a better friend on earth than Christians around the world, who know where we have come from and know whom we must remain allies and friends with.’ The members of his tour group who were seated in the audience applauded vigorously, several rose to their feet and shouted, ‘Amen!’

Huckabee was being paid to lead the tour, and, like everything he does now, the trip provided fodder for his television show. But he was also building credibility with Zionist Christians and right-wing American Jews, which will be valuable should he decide to run for president again. ‘There’s a lot of Jewish money on the right that’s got to go some-place, especially if Obama continues to be perceived as unfriendly to Israel,’ Zev Chafets, an American journalist and Menachem Begin’s former communication’s director, told me. . . .”

The mentioned television show has a prime time slot on FOX News (Saturdays, 6 pm) and thereby reaches a wide audience, especially since the other cable networks have largely written off this precious time slot and do not present national or international news. To his credit one must admit that Huckabee is not abrasive, as is common with pundits on that network, and he presents himself instead as a guitar playing folksy man of the people; an image which is lapped up by his adoring audience. Yet, as the sentences above prove his views are malignant and misinformed. For instance, he is unaware that during the British mandate period from 1922 to 1947 the people who lived in the country were officially called Palestinians regardless of religion or ethnicity. Jews emigrated from Europe to “Palestine” and they had no problem referring to themselves as Palestinian nationals. Jews created the Palestine Post, the Palestine Brewery, the Palestine Brigades and their musicians toured the world as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. It was established in 1936 and only after Israeli statehood was it renamed to Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Is it really too much to ask of a contender for the Presidency of the U.S. to know the rudiments of the history of a country that has such a profound and unfortunately divisive influence on the rest of the world?  

The ignorance of the average American citizen (Huckabee, as well as Palin likewise fall into this group) in regard to history is appalling and since people no longer read to any appreciable extent, but prefer to get their  information from television, American public opinion can readily be molded by “special interests.” Everything is for sale including Congress and the Presidency. Under these circumstances is it any wonder that Obama converted to the Israeli point of view. Earlier last month he provided Prime Minister Netanyahu with a red carpet treatment which was distinctly different from what he received in March. “What rift?” was the headline of an article in The Salt Lake Tribune on July 7 and added “President says U.S. bond with Israel is ‘unbreakable.’” The article also stated,

“Netanyahu emerged with a pile of promises from Obama that the U.S. is both committed to Israel’s security and a believer that the prime minister wants peace with Palestinians. For his part, Netanyahu showed the urgency that Obama wants in boosting peace efforts, though he didn’t say in public just what he might have planned.

The last time Netanyahu visited in March, amid a moment of deep tension over Israeli settlements in disputed territory, reporters were not even invited to see the leaders shake hands. This time, the media got to see them talking, smiling – even Obama escorting Netanyahu off to his waiting limo.”

The accompanying picture showed them walking side by side. This was a modest improvement over a picture from the Bush years where Sharon, the “man of peace,” was walking several steps ahead of a rather crestfallen George W. What has happened in these few months? The Christian Science Monitor of June 21 provided the answer. In “Decoding Netanyahu” Ilene R. Prusher wrote,

“But the ‘tough love’ – a term many veteran Middle East policymakers in Washington have come to use as a catchphrase for taking a firmer hand toward Israeli ambivalence and foot-dragging – got perhaps too rough and backfired. Members of Congress, and pillars of the American-Jewish community such as Elie Wiesel, began to chastise the administration for taking too harsh an approach and alienating Israel. . . .

Then, in mid-May, Mr. Obama told members of Congress that he’d made some missteps entering the Middle East minefield and, he joked, might have lost a few fingers.” 

            Ambassador Rabinovich in the above mentioned discussion at New York University had denied that “the tail wags the dog,” but here is the evidence to the contrary. The tail does wag the dog and the implications for our country and the world are enormous. Obama is hamstrung. Netanyahu can continue to build settlements wherever he pleases and evict Palestinians from their ancient homes in East Jerusalem. Of course, Netanyahu wants peace with the Palestinians and is willing to talk to their leadership but on his terms as the superior, who holds all the cards, to the inferior who has to comply. The Palestinians responded, according to a small blurb in the Tribune, that there was, “No point in talks with Israel.” The fine print stated the reason, “Mahmoud Abbas sounded determined not to return to the table unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commits to an internationally mandated settlement freeze and agrees to pick up talks where they left off in December 2008.” But Abu Mazen, as he is referred to by his friends, has apparently not yet realized that Obama has capitulated and last week there was a short article in the paper headlined, “U.S. warns Abbas on talks.” The article read in toto,

“A senior U.S. envoy warned the Palestinian president that he must move quickly to direct talks with Israel if he wants President Barack Obama’s help in setting up a Palestinian state, according to an internal Palestinian document obtained by the Associated Press on Monday. The 36-page memo sent to senior Palestinian officials, advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resist growing U.S. pressure, warning that rescinding conditions for face-to-face negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be ‘political suicide.’”

            Thus we are witnessing a replay of the events that had led up to the Camp David II debacle, which has been discussed in extenso in previous installments, and is bound to lead to the same result – failure and more bloodshed. Abbas cannot enforce his views on Hamas and Netanyahu cannot condone a viable Palestinian state, even if he wanted to, because his coalition government with ultra-orthodox and settlers parties would collapse. A two-state peace agreement is at this time out of the question, regardless how much Obama would want it to justify his premature Nobel peace prize. The Knesset would never ratify it and the lost years of the Bush administration’s failure in regard to the Middle East cannot be made up any more.

            In the conclusion of the previous installment I mentioned that “The ground is beginning to shift and thoughtful members of the Jewish people are recognizing that to close ones eyes to the new realities which are emerging is no longer advisable.” In Israel the divisions between right and left have hardened. Even its democratic bulwark, the Israeli Defense Force has become politicized by an increasingly religious outlook and some units have refused to evict Jewish settlers from illegal outposts. The extent of the problem was discussed by Eyal Press in The New York Review of Books under the title, “Israel’s Holy Warriors.” The fact that an article like this and two others, which will now be mentioned, are examples of the beginning concern Jewish authors feel about the situation, although it has not yet reached the leadership in our country. Press quoted “a military Torah college head,” stating, “that in a few years, religious soldiers will make up the majority of brigade commanders in all areas.”  The significance lies in the fact that strict Torah believers regard the entire land of Palestine as their country. For them, just as for Huckabee, there are no Palestinians and to evict a Jew from any of the settlements is sacrilege. Since there are by now about 516,569 settlers in widely dispersed areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem a viable Palestinian state may well be impossible to create because the army may refuse to follow orders for removing the settlers. That is one of the “facts on the ground” which American administrations have fostered by not only allowing the settlement movement to proceed but having even provided the money to the tune of $60 billion over the past decade. Naturally this sum was officially to go for defense spending. But this is eye-wash because the money the Israelis saved themselves by these means went to build the separation wall and settlements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement provides a picture of the situation.

            Another article in the same journal entitled, “Eyeless in Gaza,” by David Shulman pointed to,

“The depth of change that Israel has undergone since the present government came to power in the spring of 2009 . . . Under conditions of escalating national hysteria, Israeli dissent is harshly dealt with. Ezra Nawi, one of the heroes of Israeli nonviolent resistance to the occupation is now in jail. . . . The villages of Bil’in and Na’alin where nonviolent protest against the route of the security fence was pioneered and has continued without interruption for over four years are now a closed military zone, off limits to Israeli peace activists. More important still is the attempt to break the back of nonviolent grassroots protest in Palestine by arresting and sometimes prosecuting, on trumped-up charges the leading activists. . . .”

            While these articles dealt with the shifts in attitudes which have occurred in Israel the one by Peter Beinart, in an article published on June 10 likewise in The New York Review of Books, highlights aspects of the domestic scene. The title is, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” and the author voices his concerns that official Jewish leadership is out of step with especially the younger generation of Jews in our country. Key aspects are,

“Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people who are devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generation, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster – indeed have actively opposed a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.

Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of  Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger orthodox-dominated Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled.”

The author’s warning was very personal because the future of his own Jewish children is at stake. These are some of the stirrings within the Jewish community in regard to the policies of the state of Israel but they have not yet reached the leading Jewish circles and thereby our mass media, especially television. But unless and until this happens no U.S. president, regardless of best efforts and political party affiliation, can harbor a realistic hope of influencing Israel’s conduct and thereby bring peace to the Middle East. Since this problem affects all of us, Gentile as well as Jew, in some form or another, the next installment will demonstrate how we have reached this impasse and what might be done about it.