The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here

Everyone is talking and writing about comments made in this article. Essentially the US administration is pissed off that Bibi hasn’t knuckled under to their pressure nor defied the will of Israelis. For this they call him a “chickenshit”. One official said “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states.” By defying this pressure Bibi will be applauded by most Israelis. But there are stormy days ahead. The US veto can’t be counted on. The EU and the UN will persecute us and prosecute us. But we will survive and be better off for defying their pressure. Ted Belman

The Obama administration’s anger is “red-hot” over Israel’s settlement policies, and the Netanyahu government openly expresses contempt for Obama’s understanding of the Middle East. Profound changes in the relationship may be coming.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG, THE ATLANTIC

Not friends at all (Reuters )

The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it’s ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.

The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.

Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.)  But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.” I thought I appreciated the implication of this description, but it turns out I didn’t have a full understanding. From time to time, current and former administration officials have described Netanyahu as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say, a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his political constituency. (President Obama, in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage.)

“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”

I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the Israel file regularly. This official agreed that Netanyahu is a “chickenshit” on matters related to the comatose peace process, but added that he’s also a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat. The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.

Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor.

The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. You might think that this new understanding of Netanyahu as a hyper-cautious leader would make the administration somewhat grateful. Sober-minded Middle East leaders are not so easy to come by these days, after all. But on a number of other issues, Netanyahu does not seem sufficiently sober-minded.

October 29, 2014 | 22 Comments »

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  1. @ NormanF:

    “The fact Goldberg can defend a Jew-hater and someone who wishes Israel ill like Obama says a lot more about Goldberg than it does about Obama – or even the man he blames for the crisis in US-Israel relations – Netanyahu.”

    About Mr Goldberg and articles like that one:

    “…The ‘revelation’ that one unnamed US official used a rude term to describe Israel’s PM, and that another official responded by jumping up and down, pumping his fist and saying ‘yeah, yeah!’ made headline news here in Israel – mostly because that kind of undiplomatic language makes for great clickbait. (As an aside, it was quite amusing to see the Hebrew media scramble to find a translation for the word ‘chickens**t,’ before unanimously settling on the somewhat liberal translation of ‘pahdan’ – coward.)

    But before we get carried away (as Mr. Goldberg would have us do), we must first ask: what are the actual implications of this story, and what is the basis for his doomsday prediction?

    That there is palpable hostility between the Netanyahu and Obama administrations? Not really news, is it? And to be fair, it’s hard for Jerusalem to be surprised about US officials using insulting terminology when the Defense Minister (rightly or wrongly) decides to air his views on John Kerry by labeling him ‘obsessive and messianic.’ You know what they say about people who live in glass houses…

    Rather, Goldberg’s somber insistence that the dreaded ‘crisis’ in US-Israeli relations is finally upon us sounds very similar to the periodic talk of ‘an impending third intifada’ — that is, hyperbole used either by people whose analyses of the security situation are naive, knee-jerk and hysterical; or by those with an interest in ratcheting up pressure on Israel by issuing threats in the form of ‘predictions.’

    It is into this latter camp that Goldberg firmly fits. This, of course, is the man who not-so-subtly threatened that Israel would be faced with ‘delegitimization on steroids’ if the previous round of talks with the PA failed to pan out in accordance with Washington’s wishes — by ‘revealing’ that the threat was made by Kerry to Netanyahu. It is also the same man who orchestrated a transparent, calculated political attack on the Israeli PM, by publishing a scathing interview with President Obama while the former was still in the air on his way to Washington in March.

    In essence, this latest article epitomizes the art of manufacturing news in order to create pressure on Israel, very similar to the eyebrow-raising prominence granted to announcements of new apartment buildings being built in Jerusalem, or to Jews legally purchasing homes in Arab-majority neighborhoods.

    The approach of fair-minded individuals to such blatantly manufactured ‘news such as this, rather than taking the bait and reacting hysterically to it (in either direction), should be to soberly deconstruct it.

    Why does a man like Jeffrey Goldberg create such stories, and what is the subtext to it? What does it mean for there to be a ‘crisis in relations’ when military and economic cooperation is still booming, and when the majority of Americans (reflected in Congress) still firmly support Israel? More fundamentally, even if there were to be a ‘crisis’ in relations, what is Goldberg actually suggesting Israel do about it?

    Of course, as I mentioned, the motive behind such stories is to engender fear. The message here is that ‘America is losing patience’ with naughty little Israel, and that Israel must therefore learn to toe the line better and fulfill Washington’s dictates to the letter, instead of God-forbid formulating its own independent foreign policy which may sometimes conflict with that of its ally.

    It is part of a wider worldview held by a significant portion of assimilated American Jewry, that just as they are besotted with and have tied their very identity to the goldene medina to the extent that they cannot do without it, so the Jewish state must act similarly. Essentially, it is a projection of the exile-mentality onto the Jewish state…” READ MORE HERE

  2. “From time to time, current and former administration officials have described Netanyahu as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say, a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his political constituency.”

    Well, let’s see now. If BB plays to his base, that’s chickenshit.

    And when Barry plays to his own base, THAT’s. . . uh, what exactly?

  7. @ bernard ross:

    Ceasing to pump digital money into the financial system is one thing now they have to retrieve all those excesses and that can only mean increased taxes or higher interest rates or both. As soon as it begins the markets will crash maybe not immediately but at some point. The banks could tighten their already tight lending policies….

    I don’t believe the markets have really facored it in the the past year the markets took big one day hints on just a rumor the fed was about to just cut back and not end….

  12. One official said “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states.”

    I thought that was the good thing?

  13. @ rongrand:
    I am pleased to hear from you. Be well.
    And I agree. Something seems to have snapped and that is good. Netanyahu may have finally found the groove. Time will tell.

  14. @ rongrand:

    Hi buddy where you been really missed you. How are you feeling and the family?

    Israel must be doing something good for the outrage.

    Here you hit the real point. Good insight!!!

  15. Not only Americans are fed up with this administration, their arrogance and anti-Semitism is far reaching.

    Israel must be doing something good for the outrage.

    Keep building communities and pray along with us for sweeping changes in the next elections.

    You do understand American support Israel, it’s the clowns in the WH who can’t be trusted.

  16. SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:

    Relevant steps must be taken to assure appropriate responses.

    If the responses were to be appropriate then the hostile actions would prove a blessing, changing the paradigm of the GOI from obstructing Jewish settlement in Israel.

  17. The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here

    Good analysis by Bret Stephens WSJ

    Bibi and Barack on the Rocks
    The White House’s resort to petty insults risks a strategic relationship.

    By Bret Stephens

    The relationship between the Obama administration and the government of Israel is beginning to look like one of those longtime marriages you encounter all the time. Maybe you’re in one yourself. He feels, Rodney Dangerfield-like, that he gets no respect. She’d be happy to offer some—if only she could find something to respect.

    The solution is a trial separation. Give this couple time apart to figure out what, if anything, still draws them together.

    The latest eruption of pettiness—when marriages are in trouble, it’s always the petty things that tell—was the very public refusal of John Kerry and Joe Biden to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon during his visit to Washington last week. Mr. Yaalon was quoted earlier this year saying some impolitic things about the U.S. secretary of state, including that he was “obsessive and messianic” and that “the only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.”

    The comments were made privately but were leaked to the press. Mr. Yaalon apologized for them. His meeting with Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon last week was all smiles. Asked by the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth about the Kerry kerfuffle, he replied, “We overcame that.”

    Or not.

    “Despite the fact that Yaalon’s requests to meet with the senior members of the Obama administration were declined over a week ago, Washington waited until the visit ended before making the story public in order to humiliate the Israeli defense minister,” Ha’aretz reported. Mr. Yaalon is now said to be under an Obama administration “quarantine” until he performs additional penance, perhaps by recanting his hard-line views about the advisability of a nuclear deal with Iran or a peace deal with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

    The good news here is that at least there’s one kind of quarantine this administration believes in. The bad news is that it seems to give more thought to pursuing personal vendettas against allies like Israel than it does to waging effective military campaigns against enemies like ISIS.
    Read More:

  18. Two things I would do if I were Bibi:

    a) Two days before the midterms, recall Israel’s Ambassador to Washington – that would be the “November surprise”.

    b) Have a widely publicized meeting with Putin or with the nameless apparatchik who is running China these days – and for that matter, with PM Modi of India, who is also known to despise Obama. Have a warship from one or both of these nations dock in Haifa or Ashdod, with either the PM or the DM there. Perhaps signing an arms agreement would not hurt, either.

  20. @ SHmuel HaLevi 2:

    The fact Goldberg can defend a Jew-hater and someone who wishes Israel ill like Obama says a lot more about Goldberg than it does about Obama – or even the man he blames for the crisis in US-Israel relations – Netanyahu.

  21. There are people without ethics, who treat others like dirt and are annoyed they are alive.

    They are not righteous people in my book. Someone who has no fear of his fellow man has no fear of G-d.

    That describes Obama and his circle to a T.

  22. Goldberg and the Atlantic operating from the Pacific.
    At the service of the Chicago “L” community organizer.
    But lets giver Goldberg some credit. He did something good without really meaning it. His idiotic article gave for me a reason to finally get to like a bit Don Netanyahu, pending further evidence of cure of course.
    Expect the Muslim administration to waive to Iran and “recognize” the fabricated Islamics infesting Eretz Israel. Relevant steps must be taken to assure appropriate responses.