FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

When I first read the following story, I thought it might be satire. But who could make this up?

The Israeli Left reacted with dismay over the weekend to the results of a Jerusalem Post-sponsored Smith Research poll published on Friday that found only 4 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that US President Barack Obama’s policies are more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian.

The survey, which was featured prominently on Fox News in the United States and picked up by media outlets around the world, reported that 51% of Jewish Israelis considered Obama’s administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, 35% called it neutral and 10% declined to express an opinion…

“It is terrific for Israel that there is an American president with vision, and it is a pity that most Israelis don’t realize that,” Meretz faction chairman MK Ilan Gilon said. “Israelis think that Christian evangelists who rubber-stamp everything Israel does are the only Americans who are pro-Israel. But what is really good for Israel is a solution to the conflict, and Obama is doing what it takes to bring it about.”

In other words, he thinks that Jewish Israelis don’t know what’s good for them — well, maybe 4% of them do — and need to be forced to accept a solution! Of course, that solution will meet the priorities of the Obama administration, not Israel.  And high on Obama’s priority list seems to be improving American relationships and image in the Muslim world.

One outspoken representative of Israel’s Left seems to agree with me, but still thinks it’s good for Israel:

Peace Now secretary-general Yariv Oppenheimer said what mattered more at this stage of the peace process was Obama’s reputation in the Arab world, and not in Israel. [my emphasis]

“Despite the results of the poll, the Israeli interest is that Obama will be popular in the Arab world, so he could bring about a peace agreement with Israel,” Oppenheimer said. “Bush was popular in Israel and hated around the world, and his policies did not help Israel end the Palestinian conflict or quell the Iranian threat. If he succeeds in his goals of advancing Middle East peace, I am sure he will become much more popular with Israelis.”

Earth to Gilon and Oppenheimer: An important goal for Arab regimes and Iran is to weaken Israel so as to hasten her demise. Really making peace would work against that, so there’s reason to be suspicious of policies that make them happy.

Regimes like those in Syria and Iran — as Barry Rubin has argued persuasively –  find the conflict with Israel very useful for their own internal goals, such as keeping a lid on reformers and justifying repression and economic exploitation of their population. They are not motivated to give it up. Remember, the interests of the people of Syria, for example, are not the same as the interests of Bashar al-Assad and his circle, but it’s the latter that makes policy.

Oppenheimer seems to be suggesting that Israel should make concessions to demands like the settlement freeze so that Arabs will like Obama, and thus be more disposed to make peace with Israel. Huh? Good for him that he never took my logic class.

The real explanation of what’s behind Obama Administration policy is not obvious to me yet. There are those who think that the Saudi tail is wagging the American dog, and others who think that the administration is simply naive. Yesterday I suggested that maybe they are getting bad advice. As I said to a commenter on the previous post: are they dumb, ill-advised, or evil?

Tune in again in a few weeks or months to find out.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Israeli Left, Arab-Israeli conflict, Obama Mideast policy

The situation regarding the Obama administration in the Middle East today is something like putting a child who is still learning the rules up against the world’s greatest poker players. For the first six months of a new president that is an understandable problem but if it continues longer the feeble condition of this administration’s foreign policy starts to seem permanent. — Barry Rubin, “Obama Administration’s Arab-Israeli Policy Adjustment: Out of the Frying Pan Into the… Saucepan“

I have a theory about this. It’s not that Obama and his immediate advisors are dumb, although Obama himself has very little experience with Mideast diplomacy (he should ask Bill Clinton, who learned the hard way). It’s that they trust ‘experts’ too much.

JFK had the same problem. He listened to experts and invaded the Bay of Pigs.

The thing about experts is that to a certain extent their reputations are made by holding novel or even extreme positions. It has little to do with being right more often than wrong. And in fact the personal consequences of being wrong in academia or the CIA (as in the Bay of Pigs case) are rarely serious.

So ‘experts’ like Scowcroft and Brzezinski can present bad ideas like the ‘linkage theory’ and be applauded in the really, really uniformed media and by those who understand that it’s nonsense but see it as a way to weaken Israel. Whereas if the President adopts this theory and then makes policy which results in a disaster, he’s blamed.

I recommend the Rubin article linked above.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Israeli-Arab conflict

Time to stop and ‘reset’, to use a concept favored by Barack Obama. The Oslo idea that peace can be made between Israelis and Palestinians by dealing with a leadership made from the PLO is clearly bankrupt. For proof, read Barry Rubin’s analysis of Fatah here.

There are two kinds of people who favor the ‘peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority/PLO/Fatah:

• Those who think that the Jewish state should not exist and that the process is an effective way to weaken it; and
• Those who don’t understand the Palestinians or their politics.

The US State Department is full of the former, while the latter are found among the media and President Obama’s advisors (not all of them — he has some from the first group too).

In 2002, President Bush said:

I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts…

Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure…

He was right about the need for change, but that election didn’t work out. The Palestinians voted for Hamas. Now the Palestinian territories are split between Hamas and a Fatah run by  70-year old hardliners dreaming of the glorious airline hijackings and terror operations of the 1970’s and 80’s while their actual influence gets smaller each day.

Reset. Back to the idea that achieving peace depends on a Palestinian leadership wanting peace. That means a readiness to compromise on their basic demand that there be no state of Israel. That is one demand that can’t be met, no matter if they put it in terms of a ‘right of return’ or the Arab peace initiative or whatever.

Oslo opened a can of worms, and many evil things crawled out of it — like the reign of Yasser Arafat, the empowerment of Hamas, the thousands of dead on both sides in the war and terrorism that followed. They can’t be put back.

Barack Obama could do both Israelis and Palestinians a favor by not opening the much larger barrel of worms that would be an imposed settlement.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, PLO, Oslo agreement, Obama, reset

Although the details are not public knowledge — or perhaps they have not been finalized — a ‘temporary’ freeze on new Jewish construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is in effect. Israeli PM Netanyahu will be meeting with US envoy George Mitchell on Aug. 26 to discuss this, among other issues.

Despite the fact that the Israeli government is presenting this as an expedient ‘to get peace talks moving’, there are several implications that cannot be ignored. Keep in mind that this comes immediately after the Fatah congress, in which the Palestinian faction with whom Israel is expected to negotiate has shown itself to be committed to hardline policies which will keep such ‘peace talks’ from getting anywhere. So what does the freeze tell us?

• It shows that Israel cannot or will not say no to the US. Netanyahu has no illusions about the possibility of fruitful talks, and he understands the domestic political difficulties of agreeing to freeze Jewish construction everywhere in the area occupied by Jordan from 1948-67, including East Jerusalem. And yet he agreed.
• It weakens Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. By agreeing to the demand, Israel compromises its position, expressed in the Basic Law–Jerusalem of 1980, that Jerusalem is an integral part of Israel.
• It sets the stage for a further collision with the US when, in 2010 or whenever, the ‘temporary’ period is up and there still has not been substantive progress in negotiations.
• It illustrates the asymmetry fundamental to the US conception of a ‘two-state solution’. Although Arab citizens of Israel increasingly consider themselves ‘Palestinians’, suggestions for a freeze on Arab construction within Israel, or — God forbid — Arabs being encouraged to move to the Palestinian state, are considered racist. But Palestinian demands that Jews evacuate the West Bank and East Jerusalem are tacitly approved by the US.
• It encourages the Palestinians and their allies to press for more concessions as preconditions for talks. Obama has already asked for a minimal gesture from the Arabs as a quid-pro-quo for the settlement freeze and so far has gotten nothing.

One wonders if there have been other concessions — for example, regarding construction of the security barrier — that have not attracted attention yet.

Update [26 Aug 0925 PDT]: See “Will Israel not build barrier for Obama?” in today’s Jerusalem Post.

Technorati Tags: Israel, settlement freeze, Obama, Palestinians

One of my favorite bloggers, Elder of Ziyon said something yesterday that comfortable liberal American Jews really should take to heart (but probably won’t):

If there are to be any lessons for Jews from the past hundred years, it is that being slightly paranoid is probably a much more accurate posture than feeling overly secure, and that it may be a fatal mistake to believe otherwise.

If you have a strong stomach, read the post that this is taken from here.

Technorati Tags: paranoia, Jews