Obama’s Pax Persarum

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

IranNukeCartoonThe deadline for the Iranian nuclear negotiations is almost at hand, and the proposed deal appears to be even worse than expected. Number of centrifuges, decommissioning of Fordow, previous work on military applications — the Obama administration’s negotiators have backed down on issue after issue. The one thing that seems to be certain is that sanctions will be removed, sooner rather than later.

President Obama has said that he would rather see no deal than a bad deal, but the behavior of his negotiators is making a liar out of him. In fact, an Iranian press aide who defected to the West while covering the talks in Switzerland said that “the US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal.”

Administration policy toward Iran is hard to understand. On Obama’s watch, Iran has consolidated its control over Syria and Lebanon, and is moving toward adding Iraq to a new Persian Empire. Its Houthi proxies are close to securing control of the critical Bab el Mandeb strait, a choke point between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. But Obama and company have gone out of their way to not upset Iran’s plans, going easy on the nuclear issue, backing down after Iranian client Bashar al Assad used chemical weapons, and now even providing air support to Shiite militias in Iraq.

Obama has no problem, on the other hand, with being tough on Israel. After trying and failing to bring about regime change in the Jewish state (he didn’t try in Iran in 2009), he embarked on a contempt campaign aimed at PM Netanyahu, as well as announcing a “reassessment of relations” that may include US votes for anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council.

But there is a method in administration madness. It all goes back to the Iraq war (remember that)?

The US removed Saddam from power (and ultimately allowed the new Iraqi government to remove him from this world), but it also destroyed the conservative Sunni Baathist army and political structure. Radical Sunnis and various Shiite militias tried to fill the vacuum, fighting each other and US troops. Life in Iraq devolved into chaos with sectarian executions and mass-murder car bombings occurring daily. US troops suffered numerous casualties from IEDs, many provided by Iran via Syria. Iran supported the Shiite militias, but also aided the Sunni insurgents in their operations against US troops.

On this background, the Iraq Study Group, led by James A. (“F— the Jews”) Baker and Lee Hamilton, submitted its report to the Bush Administration in December, 2006. It made numerous recommendations, including what it called a “new diplomatic offensive” to  stabilize Iraq. The report recommended creation of a “support group” of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran and Syria — and other “important countries” (not Israel, of course) that would work together to support the integrity of Iraq, reduce the violence, improve the economy, etc. A stable, unified, sovereign Iraq is in Iran’s interest, the writers suggest, and Iran can be persuaded to help bring it about. [p. 53]

The report does mention the connection between Iran and some of the Shiite militias. But nowhere in its 142 pages does it consider the danger of a huge change in the balance of power in the region as a result of an Iranian conquest of Iraq, the traditional countervailing power against Iranian ambitions. The closest it comes is when it warns that “the regional influence of Iran could rise at a time when that country is on a path to producing nuclear weapons,” [p. 33-4] and when it notes that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel worry about “aggrandized regional influence by Iran,” and might act to prevent it. [p. 48] Indeed they might — the Arabs are doing exactly that in Yemen today.

This is the fundamental flaw in the report: it ignores the fact that since 1979 the overriding objective of Iranian policy, the driver of the regime’s nuclear program, its export of terrorism, and its subversion of its neighbors has been its desire to become the regional hegemon, to establish a Shiite caliphate that will dominate the region from Iran’s eastern border to the Mediterranean. An integral part of the plan is to control, even annex, Iraq. A bit more than “aggrandized regional influence,” I think.

Such an Iran would not be interested in stabilizing Iraq as a sovereign state. But Baker and Hamilton didn’t notice, or pretended not to.

The other thing they did — I wrote about this in my very first blog post back then — was to assert the “linkage theory” [that all the problems in the Middle East depend on the Israel-Palestinian conflict] in a big way. “The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” [p. 54] they announce, without any proof or even argument. And naturally the solution is to have Israel give Syria back the Golan Heights and withdraw from Judea and Samaria to create a Palestinian state. Baker and Hamilton believed that a grateful Syria would then stop its mischief in Iraq.

Which brings me back to the Obama Administration’s mysterious policy. Trying to get closer to Iran and Syria is the heart of the Baker-Hamilton diplomatic offensive. And this is exactly what the administration is doing. It believes that Iran and its proxies will mop up the Sunni radicals in Iraq and Syria, so that the administration’s pullout from Iraq won’t be blamed for the chaos.

But it isn’t dumb enough to think that Iran wants to help stabilize Iraq and Syria, after which it will go back to minding its own business. The administration understands that the Iranians want the whole enchilada. And they are OK with that. After all, who is to say that a Shiite caliphate is worse than the Islamic State, or the Wahhabi regime of the Saudis? All those Arabs are crap, they think, so who cares what kind of dictatorship they have. We can work with Iran, they think. One address for the whole Middle East. Pax Persarum.

Unfortunately, Israel stands in the way of the Iranian dream. And it might be small, but it’s still a nuclear power. It’s a much bigger threat to the Shiite caliphate than the Saudis or anyone else. So Israel has to go, and the best way to bring that about without a nuclear war is to weaken it, until the conventional forces of Hizballah, Hamas and the PLO combined with boycotts and isolation from the Western world can make it so unpleasant to live here that it will collapse.

For me that would be a big problem. For Obama, not so much.

Posted in Iran, US-Israel Relations | 3 Comments

Obama’s contempt offensive

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Torn flags

Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory — Bret Stephens, paraphrasing George Orwell, Wall St. Journal

Since the election victory of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama Administration has mounted an unprecedented assault on the PM and the state of Israel in the arena of American public opinion. While other presidents have taken steps to pressure Israel into acting in accordance with their wishes, never has one tried to sabotage the majority support that Israel has historically received from ordinary Americans — until Barack Obama.

The president’s approach has been direct and brutal. He has insulted and tried to diminish Netanyahu at every turn. He misrepresented what he said about a Palestinian state — the phrase ‘lied about’ wouldn’t be inappropriate — and refused to accept a clarification, making it clear that he considers the PM insincere. His surrogates and compliant media called the PM a racist, a “chickenshit” and a coward, said that he “spat in the president’s face,” and accused Israel of spying on the US (which Israeli officials deny). The president has reportedly been “enraged” and “furious” at Netanyahu, apparently the only foreign leader that has this effect.

The Jewish Left in the US is, as always, firmly behind Obama, but some of the centrists are beginning to become aware that something at the White House is not, er, kosher.  Abraham Foxman of the ADL, normally a pro-administration voice, said,

As someone who was critical of several steps by [Netanyahu] during the campaign leading up to his re-election, I am even more troubled by statements now coming out of the White House.

And Rabbi William Gerson, head of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly — which strongly criticized Netanyahu’s election eve remarks about Arab voters — noted,

The prime minister has quickly made significant steps to repair the tensions that developed in the heat of Israel’s election. The time is due, if not overdue, for the US administration to do the same.

I don’t expect that it will. This smells like much more than a fit of pique provoked by Netanyahu’s congressional appearance and his election rhetoric (speaking of rhetoric, compare Iran’s “death to America” chants). Obama has been trying to distance the US from Israel from the day that he came into office, and Netanyahu’s interference in Obama’s plan to align the US with Iran against Israel and the Sunni Arabs has only amplified his desire.

Obama seems to have made a considered decision to turn US policy on its head in the Middle East, abandoning traditional allies and making new ones. The most generous explanation is that the president thinks that an Iranian empire can be a stabilizing force, a bulwark against Islamic extremism. He seems to believe that if Iran is allowed to crush its Sunni enemies, take control of the region’s oil reserves, obtain nuclear capability (and by the way destroy Israel), then the region will be in good hands, and the US can safely withdraw to concentrate on domestic issues.

Somehow he fails to see (or pretends not to) that Iran’s jihad is no less aggressive than that of the Islamic State, only with a slightly different ideological underpinning. Once they have digested the Middle East, the mullahs have made it clear that they will turn to Europe and ultimately the US.

Regardless of Obama’s motives, there is no way that this policy can be good for Israel, and Americans understand this. Popular support for Israel in the US, always reflected in Congress, is thus a stumbling block that he wants to eliminate.

Will his party pay a political price for it? I don’t think so. He seems to have adopted a slogan similar to James Baker’s famous “F— the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway,” replacing ‘Jews’ with ‘Zionists’. Obama’s Jewish supporters in J Street and the Union for Reform Judaism will stick with him, while they claim that his actions are for Israel’s own good. Actual Zionists, of both the Jewish and Christian variety, are more likely to already be Republicans, so the electoral effect will be minimal.

The anti-Israel PR from the administration meshes well with the pervasive campus anti-Zionist movement led by Students for Justice in Palestine and similar organizations (conspiracy theorists are invited to think of the role played by Obama friend Ali Abunimah). With so much of the media in the pocket of the administration along with the institutions that educate the youth, it is hard to believe that the traditional support for Israel will continue for much longer (unless, of course, there is a major change in the American political landscape, something I don’t expect).

Anti-Israel attitudes have a way of slopping over into anti-Jewish ones. Expect the next few years to be difficult ones for American Jews.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

Obama as a 5th grade bully

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

President Obama cared a lot about the outcome of the elections in Israel, so much so that he watched them “minute by minute,” which is more than he did with PM Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

Unnecessary, really. The outcome was never uncertain. Since the Second Intifada, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 Israeli Jews and perhaps 4 times as many Arabs, Israelis have lost interest in the left wing politicians that brought them the Oslo agreements. And it didn’t help that the withdrawal from Gaza led to a rain of rockets on southern Israel and three mini-wars. The only surprise in the election was that Netanyahu managed to move some voters for right-wing and centrist parties to the Likud, giving him a solid margin of victory.

But Obama was upset because he had done his best to help Netanyahu’s opponents (while maintaining plausible deniability, of course), and the plan had backfired! Netanyahu pointed to the foreign money and influence, and voters, afraid of having their country sold out from under them, flocked to him.

So now the President was, yet again, enraged, furious. Netanyahu’s remark that foreign-funded activists were working to get out the Arab vote was called “divisive rhetoric that seeks to marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens” by spokesman Josh Earnest in a press briefing the day after the election. Unnamed ‘administration officials’ called it “racism,” ringing the bell that causes Obama partisans in race-obsessed America to salivate and jump for Netanyahu’s throat.

I want to say a word about this because it’s revealing about the differences between Israel and America, differences that American liberals and especially Jewish ones, don’t get. Arab voters vote for Arab parties or for left-wing Zionist ones. They mostly do not vote for Netanyahu. Netanyahu said that “Arab voters are coming in droves to the ballot boxes. Left-wing NGOs bring them in buses” (the V15 group denied that buses were involved, but admitted working to get out the Arab vote).

The point was that it was an attempt to swing the election by using the Arabs, whose electoral turnout has historically been lower than that of Jewish voters. Most Israelis understood it that way, but when I heard it reported on the Israeli news I immediately thought: damn, that was stupid.

Stupid because it triggers the overactive American race-consciousness, playing into the false analogy between American blacks and Palestinian Arabs — whose situations have absolutely nothing in common with one another. But Americans eat it up, just as Europeans eat up the false analogy between Zionists and 19th century Belgian colonialists.

White house operatives grabbed onto the statement like red meat and the accusation of racism splattered all over the US media, from the NY Times to Facebook. A reason for the president, a victim of racism himself, to be furious! Except there was no racism, just an opportunity to get angry.

The other thing that fed his ‘rage’ (as Bret Stephens noted recently, Obama’s ‘fury’ and ‘rage’ are never directed in other directions, like at Assad, Putin or Khameini or even at Boko Haram and Isis) was the statement by Netanyahu that there would not be a Palestinian state on his watch. Later, he explained that what he meant (which in fact was exactly what he said the first time) was that a two-state solution was impossible for practical reasons, but that he still believed in the idea as expressed in his 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University.

I don’t know if he believes in the abstract idea or not, but nothing is clearer than that today a sovereign Palestinian state in the territories is inconsistent with the peaceful existence of a Jewish one next door. I’m not going to repeat the argument which was definitively stated by Charles Krauthammer here.

But Thursday night, when Obama finally called Netanyahu to ‘congratulate’ him on his election, Israeli sources say that the call was 30 minutes of browbeating. Obama indicated that he did not believe in Netanyahu’s sincerity about the holy two-state idea, and that the US-Israel relationship would be “reevaluated.” And perhaps the US would stop using its veto to protect Israel in the UN Security Council.

Whether Netanyahu believes in his heart that “two states for two peoples” is theoretically a ‘solution’ is beside the point, because practically speaking it isn’t available. Obama says he wants it, but the realities of Palestinian politics and the chaos in the Middle East make it impossible. So either Obama’s anger is childish pique, like kicking a door because it won’t stay closed, or it really doesn’t have anything to do with the statement Netanyahu made about the peace process. Maybe Obama is using Bibi’s remark as an excuse to become “enraged.”

This takes me back to public school, the 5th grade. A boy told me that I had knocked his pencil off his desk and I should pick it up. I didn’t think I’d done that, but I picked it up. Why not be nice? Then he said that someone scribbled on his notebook and he believed it was me. I knew I hadn’t done that, and told him. Finally he said that he disliked my face. With each accusation, he seemed to get angrier. By the time he made the last remark, I understood that he wanted to be angry enough to fight.

That is what Obama is doing, and has been doing since 2009. I won’t list all of the manufactured ‘insults’ and transgressions that have caused Obama’s choler to rise, but Bibi has “picked up the pencil” more than once. Each time Obama gets angrier. Of course he is careful to let anonymous officials in the administration and the sycophantic media do his dirty work, like calling Netanyahu, a combat soldier who was wounded in battle more than once, “chickenshit” and a “coward.” Crap flows downhill, and by the time it gets to social media it’s astonishingly vicious.

This isn’t accidental, and it isn’t personal, really. It is an orchestrated campaign against the leader of the Jewish state, and if that leader were someone else, he would get the same treatment unless he were prepared to follow Obama’s instructions and lay his country on the Islamic chopping block. Like the 5th grade bully, Obama wants to generate indignation over the alleged chutzpah of Netanyahu in order to justify the steps that he would like to take — intends to take —  against Israel.

So when, for example, the US votes to condemn Israel in the Security Council, demands a cease-fire in the next war that’s partial to Hamas, refuses to resupply Israel’s forces, supports European boycotts of Israeli products, etc., the New York Times readers and NPR listeners will say, “gee, that’s harsh, but Netanyahu’s a racist who spit in the president’s face and we need to teach him a lesson.”

What does Obama really want? Why does he invent reasons to punish Israel? Why has the administration leaked information about Israeli operations to interdict shipments of weapons from Syria to Hizballah, frustrated Israeli plans to attack Iran’s nuclear program, and pushed Israel to make itself defenseless by giving up strategic territory to the unstable Palestinian Authority? Why is it helping Iran overcome international law (the NPT) to obtain nuclear weapons?

If you have an answer other than the obvious, I’d like to hear it.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

The morning after another surprise

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Calfi

March 18, 2015. This post appeared in the Elder of Ziyon blog.

It’s the Morning After in Israel, and it’s a beautiful day for several reasons.

The weather is great. And although pre-election polls showed Yitzhak (Buji) Herzog’s “Zionist Union” (Labor Party) ahead by as many as 4 seats, exit polls released at 10 PM showed a dead heat with Netanyahu’s Likud. This morning with 99% of the precincts reporting, the Likud was up 30 to 24 — and when soldiers’ votes come in over the next few days the gap is expected to widen. Although coalition negotiations are yet to come, it’s as close to certain as anything can be in politics that Netanyahu will be the one to form the next government. The polls were all very wrong.

Recently I went to an excellent talk about the coming election by Times of Israel analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. He mentioned the phenomenon of election surprises, which seem to have become a regular feature here. The Pensioner’s Party that came from nowhere to get 7 seats in the Knesset in 2006 and the unanticipated second-place showing (19 seats) of Yesh Atid in 2013 are examples. “But,” he said, “the surprises never help the right wing.” So much for that theory.

Rehovot, where I live, is a bellwether for the nation, sometimes called “Israel’s Ohio.” It’s a mixture of almost all the Israeli Jewish subcultures (few Arabs live here). Russians, Ethiopians, Yemenites, South Americans, Moroccans, English-speakers, descendents of some of the first Jewish immigrants to Israel, scientists from the Weizman Institute, Haredim, Modern Orthodox and secular people, even a thriving Masorati (conservative) congregation.

The volunteers (and paid staff) of the US-funded V15 organization that was “non-politically” working to defeat PM Netanyahu were everywhere in recent days. Their stickers were on light poles, their tables and free pizza in the little squares in my neighborhood. Drivers saw their signs at every junction. Their ‘suggested’ posts clogged my Facebook timeline, and their ads appeared before YouTube videos and anywhere banner ads could be purchased.

There was big foreign money against the PM (yes, I know about Israel Hayom, but that is just a newspaper, the only one of the three major papers that supports him, not a small army of political operatives), and US President Obama made it clear that he wanted to see regime change in Israel. The Israeli media (all the radio and TV stations lean left to a greater or lesser degree) was full of talk about how the Likud campaign was coming apart. The foreign media, too, was all about life after Bibi.

Election Day started out well. After I ran the gauntlet of anti-Bibi leafleters, an older man coming out of the polling place looked at me, smiled, raised his fist and said ‘machal!’ (the ballot symbol for the Likud). I responded in kind.

So what happened? The Zionist Union and farther left parties got more or less what the polls predicted, except that the Joint Arab List benefited from a slighter greater turnout in the Arab sector. The right-wing bloc overall has been ahead since the Second Intifada. Most Israelis simply don’t trust the Left any more. But why did so many people who were expected to vote for other right-wing parties move to the Likud?

Bibi’s last-minute strategy was to appeal to the right-wing bloc to abandon the small parties and vote for him. Many Israelis find him personally off-putting — they think he’s dictatorial, a demagogue, has expensive personal tastes, etc.  But compared to what the Left offers, it’s no contest. There will be no Palestinian state, Bibi said, while Buji promised to restart talks with the PLO. Only a small minority of Israelis think this would be productive, and understand that it would mean pressure on Israel for concessions like releasing prisoners, freezing construction in Jerusalem, etc. When faced with the alternative, these voters made the safe choice.

I think there was something additional here. Just before the election it became known that the Worldwide Threat Assessment, produced by US intelligence agencies under the guidance of Obama appointee James Clapper, dropped Iran and Hezbollah from its list of entities considered terrorism threats. This is more evidence, if any more is needed, that the Obama Administration is pursuing a policy of alignment with Iran. Whether it is primarily because Obama thinks he can pacify Iraq on the cheap, or if he has other, darker motives, isn’t clear. But the friend of our enemy can’t be our friend, and Israelis are uneasy with Obama.

At almost the same time, it was published that the US has failed to renew an agreement with Israel that guaranteed Israel’s oil supply in the event of war, an agreement that was first signed in 1975. Probably not a big deal, but just another reason for Israelis to wonder about whether they could depend on the Obama Administration if the chips were down.

As I wrote recently, Herzog and Livni made the relationship with the administration one of the main issues in the campaign, and the impression is that they would try to ‘improve’ it by doing whatever Obama wants. Buji said in regard to the P5+1 – Iran negotiations, “I trust Obama to get a good deal.” A shocking statement, really, and one that might represent the greatest policy divergence between Herzog and Netanyahu.

I think that what happened was that as the elections approached, Israelis started noticing how hard they were being pushed toward the Zionist Union, how obsequious its leaders were toward Obama, and how dangerous the policies of Obama Administration really are toward the State of Israel. I think that they were very uneasy about the clear conflict of interest shown by Herzog and Livni, whose campaign received a huge boost from groups funded by foreign money, including the US State Department and S. Daniel Abraham, an American billionaire with close connections to the Democratic party. I think they were beginning to ask themselves if someone was trying to buy a government for some pizza.

Many years ago, in the context of an American election that came out differently than expected, my father (z”l) said that it was proof that “the American people are not as dumb as they look.”

Neither are Israelis.

Posted in Israeli Politics | Comments Off on The morning after another surprise

Beinart goes Stalinist

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Peter Beinart has had it with us. Until now he’s blamed Israel’s leadership for what he sees as its stubborn refusal to “make peace,” but the victory of PM Netanyahu in this week’s election has changed his mind. Now it’s our fault, the ordinary Israelis that voted for Netanyahu:

For almost half a century, Israel has wielded brutal, undemocratic, unjust power over millions of human beings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And as this election makes clear, Israel will concede nothing on its own. This isn’t because Jewish Israelis are different than anyone else. It’s because they are the same.

“Israelis have made their choice,” he writes. “Now it’s time to make ours,” and that means coercive tactics (“nonviolent,” of course, although the Arab ‘nonviolent’ protest that he supports is anything but):

Support any pressure that is nonviolent and consistent with Israel’s right to exist. That means backing Palestinian bids at the United Nations. It means labeling and boycotting settlement goods. It means joining and amplifying nonviolent Palestinian protest in the West Bank. It means denying visas to, and freezing the assets of, Naftali Bennett and other pro-settler leaders. It means pushing the Obama administration to present out its own peace plan, and to punish — yes, punish — the Israeli government for rejecting it. It means making sure that every time Benjamin Netanyahu and the members of his cabinet walk into a Jewish event outside Israel, they see Diaspora Jews protesting outside.

Let me tell Beinart something about the election result: it should not have been a surprise. Israelis did not suddenly vote for ‘occupation’. A majority of Israelis have realized, since the Second Intifada, that they are stuck with it — the alternative is Hamas next door to Tel Aviv — and that the delusional thinking of the Left only brings war, terrorism and death.

This was confirmed when Hamas took over Gaza and began to rain rockets on southern Israel. There hasn’t been a majority for the left-wing bloc since 1999 because of this reality. All Netanyahu did with his “nakedly racist appeal” was to shift some votes to the Likud from parties to the right of it, in order to improve his position in the coalition negotiations to follow.

It is fascinating to watch Beinart, who talks so much about democracy, quickly adopt coercion when the democratic process produces a result he dislikes.  Like many of the reactions of the Left to the election results, Beinart quickly slipped into his true, Stalinist persona. You want to annex Area C, Bennett? We’ll freeze your assets! Never mind that there are no possible legal grounds to do so.

I expect that Beinart and Obama are of the same mind about this, so I won’t be surprised when the US votes against Israel at the UN, and does who knows what else to “punish” us. But keep in mind that no Israeli government — not Bibi, but not Buji/Tzipi either — could possibly make the kind of concessions needed to satisfy Obama or the Arabs. The problem isn’t Bibi, it’s reality.

I am pleased, though to take some of the responsibility from the government. As an Israeli voter (who proudly voted for Bibi), Beinart can blame me all he likes. Go ahead, make my day!

Posted in Israeli Politics | 4 Comments

Independence is the election issue

Posted on March 14, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Will Israel become a 'Banana republic'?

Will Israel become a ‘Banana republic’?

As Israel’s election draws near, there is one issue that is of overriding importance.

No, it is not the question of whether to try to restart negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. And it is not related to the price of apartments, income inequality or any other domestic issue.

It is the question of whether Israel will remain a sovereign, independent state, or whether it will become a satellite of the US, a ‘banana republic’ without an independent foreign policy.

I had a discussion this weekend over our Shabbat table with my son-in-law. “Look,” he said. “Buji and Tzipi aren’t going to make a deal with the Palestinians. Everyone knows that there’s no common ground. So what’s left are the domestic issues. And Netanyahu has failed miserably. It’s time for a change.” He speaks for many Israelis, especially young ones. But he’s missing the point.

Leave aside the question of whether PM Netanyahu has indeed failed, if indeed a different government would do a better job of making it possible for young people to afford an apartment, relieve the stress on the hospitals, improve the educational system, etc. Leave aside the question of whether a different government would have dealt with Hamas more effectively last summer.

Let’s say, בא נגיד, as Israelis like to say, that there really is no significant difference in the real-life security policies of Netanyahu’s Likud and Buji Herzog’s Zionist Union. Let’s say that Netanyahu would be more open to ceding territory to the Arabs than he says he would be, and that Herzog would be less ready to make a deal than he says.

Even if all this were true, there is still one elephant left in the room. And that is the relationship with the Obama Administration. And that elephant is not that Netanyahu has a poor one — it’s that Buji and Tzipi’s is too good.

Netanyahu went to Washington and stood up for Israel’s interests, receiving a huge amount of abuse from Obama partisans in America and the Left in Israel in return. There is no doubt that the vindictive Obama will do his best to punish him personally in any way that he can. But the PM believed that his action would possibly tip the balance against an agreement with Iran that would legitimize rather then retard its progress toward nuclear weapons, and that preventing this is of the utmost importance.

Buji, on the other hand, did not go to Washington in solidarity with the PM. In fact, he opposed the visit, saying that the Iranian program, while “a big threat,” was not “existential.” And he said “I trust Obama to get a good deal.”

For an Israeli to trust Obama after he has consistently demonstrated — both in speech and action — his lack of sympathy (even a poorly-hidden antipathy) for Israel, along with empathy for its enemies, is simply breathtaking.

But it is not surprising, considering the backing that Herzog and Livni’s Zionist Union has received from the Obama Administration. There is no doubt that large amounts of money are flowing from American and other foreign sources into groups working against Netanyahu, with administration encouragement at the very least — and direct connivance at most.

A nonpartisan Senate investigation into the possibility that taxpayer funds were used to interfere in Israel’s election is now taking place. If any smoking guns are discovered, it will be far too late to affect the election. But both PM Netanyahu and many Israelis are absolutely certain that the administration is doing its best to defeat him.

Assuming that Herzog becomes Prime Minister, how easy will it be for him to say ‘no’ to the man that helped get him elected? The administration has said it will push to restart talks with the Palestinians after the election. That means immediate pressure for concessions “to bring the Palestinians to the table,” such as freezing building in settlement blocs and eastern Jerusalem, releasing terrorists from Israeli prisons, and so forth. We’ve played this game before, and it always turns out the same way: the Palestinians pocket the concessions and continue making their maximal demands.

There is also the next war to consider. We don’t know whether it will be with Hamas or Hizballah, but we can expect that the moment it starts, so will the pressure from Washington to accept a cease-fire that will be highly disadvantageous. During the recent Gaza conflict, the administration tried to push a cease-fire agreement developed with the help of Hamas supporters Qatar and Turkey; embargoed the delivery of arms to Israel; encouraged the FAA to ground US flights to Ben-Gurion airport; and accused Israel of “disproportionate” actions. How will Herzog and Livni react to similar pressure?

And of course, the big one, Iran. But we already know what Buji will do on this issue — trust his good friend, Barack Obama.

The bad relationship between Netanyahu and Obama is not a personality clash. It is directly due to the fact that Netanyahu will not follow instructions from the White House. And that is the way it has to be, because what Barack Obama wants is not necessarily what is good for Israel.

Maybe Buji and Tzipi think they will be strong enough to resist once they are in power. But as I wrote last week, you don’t make a deal with the devil and ask for your soul back.

Posted in Israeli Politics, US-Israel Relations | 3 Comments

Should the Iranians trust Obama?

Posted on March 13, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Bibi-ObamaSome 47 Republican senators led by Tom Cotton of Arkansas have written an open letter to Iranian leaders which points out that according to the US Constitution,

…we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

Like the Iranian missile program, Democrats have gone absolutely ballistic. Fresh from groping the wife of the new Secretary of Defense on camera (see also here), dignified Joe Biden thundered that the act was “beneath the dignity” of the Senate. The New York Daily News’ headline screamed that the Republican senators were “traitors.”

But not only is the letter entirely correct from a constitutional point of view, there is a recent example of the US reneging on a similar executive agreement, in that case concerning commitments made to Israel.

In 2004, President Bush wrote a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which he made two significant statements, which Israel interpreted as commitments:

It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

And

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

But by 2008, even before Bush left office, the State Department was waffling on the latter commitment. National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley said in January 2008 that,

The president obviously still stands by that letter of April of 2004, but you need to look at it, obviously, in the context of which it was issued.

The “context,” of course, was that at the time the letter was written, the administration wanted Sharon to withdraw from Gaza and some of Samaria, and it would help support that move.

By the time Obama made his Cairo speech in June 2009, the Bush letter had been rendered completely inoperative. Obama insisted that any construction across the Green Line, even within settlements in those areas that were expected to remain in Israel’s hands, was unacceptable. “Settlements must stop,” said Obama, without qualification. Shortly thereafter, instead of “secure and recognized borders,” the concept of an agreement “based on” the 1949 armistice lines was introduced. And the refugee question was now considered a “final status issue” that would need to be negotiated.

On June 1, 2009, Deputy State Department Spokesperson Robert Wood was asked (copied here) by a reporter whether the Bush letter was binding on the Obama Administration. Wood simply would not give a straight answer, no matter how hard he was pressed.

Elliott Abrams, who was National Security Council Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs at the time (the position recently given to anti-Israel activist Robert Malley), recalled that both sides considered that binding commitments were made, and these commitments were documented in writing. But

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 [2009] that “in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility.”

Abrams, who was certainly in a “position of responsibility” and should know, disagreed. Plenty of documentation exists that there were mutual agreements, he said. But how would Israel “enforce” an agreement that the US had reneged on, he wondered? I suppose you have us there, Ms. Clinton!

So, dear Iranians, here is an example of what a commitment from the President of the United States is worth: take it to Starbucks with three bucks and buy yourselves a latte.

Posted in American politics, Iran, US-Israel Relations | Comments Off on Should the Iranians trust Obama?

Vote for the Likud

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

The “Zionist Union (ZU)” — sorry, I can’t call it that without the scare quotes — of Buji Herzog and Tzipi Livni has presented its platform (Hebrew). And it does not inspire confidence.

It focuses first on their plans to reduce economic inequality and lower prices, especially on real estate. The situation is very complicated and I am neither an economist or fortuneteller, so I don’t know how well their plans would work. They do appear to rely on price controls, something that has often been problematic in practice.

Would they do a better job for the average Israeli than the Likud? Not clear. What is clear is that they are appealing to a growing sentiment in Israel that these issues, and not security, are the number one priority. For example,

“He’s talking about something that isn’t relevant—Iran and ISIS,’’ said Avi Biton, owner of a snack bar and a Likud voter in previous elections. “Today my kids don’t have the ability to settle down and buy a house. If they can’t do that, this country has no reason to exist.”

Wow. I would say to Mr. Biton that there are far more important reasons for a Jewish state to exist than his kids’ home ownership. But this is the kind of “Zionist” that votes for the ZU. Iran and ISIS may be irrelevant to him, but his kids will only be able to buy radioactive rubble if the security issues aren’t handled properly.

So how does the ZU propose to deal with the major security challenges (Heb) Israel faces?

Unsurprisingly, it calls for a “two states for two peoples” agreement with the Palestinians, despite the facts that the Palestinians have consistently rejected the idea of “two peoples,” are not interested in a deal that preserves Israel’s security, and are incapable of guaranteeing any deal that they make. But apparently it’s necessary to give obeisance to this concept, especially if you want to stay on the right side of the Obama Administration. In introducing the platform Herzog even suggested that he has a “peace initiative” that he will try to present to the Arab League within the first 100 days.

Iranian nukes? The ZU believes the solution is a “permanent agreement between Iran and the international community that will dismantle its infrastructure, and a tough and effective regime of inspections.” Great, that might work, but it isn’t on offer. The proposed international agreement is already temporary and toothless. But don’t worry — the ZU will “strengthen strategic coordination with the US and Europe.”

I am not impressed, especially when Herzog says “I trust Obama to get a good deal.” As Bibi explained in his speech to Congress — a speech that Herzog thought should not have been given — the deal being made is a very bad one, and there are alternatives. But Herzog would prefer to leave it up to the White House.

Somehow the ZU will ‘rehabilitate’ the relationship with the US that it blames Netanyahu for damaging. Unlike Bibi, Herzog “would rather hold intimate talks and renew the trust that is necessary between the United States and Israel,” ignoring the real cause of the poor relationship, which is that the administration wants to legitimize Iranian nukes and force Israel to evacuate the territories (which would shortly become bases for terrorism).

Sorry ZU, you can’t talk your way out of fundamentally contradictory positions, no matter how intimate you get. It didn’t work with the PLO, and it will not work with Obama.

The ZU security platform is mostly platitudes. But it does point to a serious danger.

One of the main differences between the its stance and that of the Likud is that the ZU will not admit — as Bibi recently made clear — that two-state plans are dead, killed by Hamas, ISIS, Iran and the overall explosion of Islamic extremism in the Middle East.

Combined with the obsequious attitude toward our ‘friends’ in the Obama Administration, this can only result in trouble, as pressure will be put on the Prime Minister to withdraw regardless of the security consequences. Will Herzog be able to resist? He is already beginning from a position of weakness. It is a very bad idea to get on the ‘peace’ train, as Rabin found out, because it’s hard to get off when it goes past your station.

To summarize, the ZU thinks, along with the Avi Bitons of the nation, that security takes second place to consumer satisfaction. It thinks that handing over Judea and Samaria is still a legitimate option. It thinks that the Obama Administration has Israel’s interests at heart and can be trusted. And I’ll add that the Obama Administration has made its preference for the ZU very evident, and may even have supported it financially.

What I would say to the young voters who are among the main targets of the ZU campaign is something like this:

Yes, it is true that there is great economic inequality in Israel, young people can’t afford apartments, and that is tragic. But there are tragedies and there are tragedies, and you aren’t old enough to remember the days immediately before the Six Days War, or the first hours of the Yom Kippur War, when Israelis had to face the real possibility that the nation would be overrun.

Israel is much stronger today, but so are the enemies it faces. It is still small and vulnerable. As much as we would like to relax and put quality of life first, it is still not possible to do that. So while you shouldn’t take the pressure off of the government to bring about reforms that will make life better, the answer is not to elect a government that is weak and naive in the area of security, and beholden to the unfriendly regime in the White House.

Vote for the Likud.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 1 Comment