Israel is set to become even more polarizing in American politics.
By Peter Beinart, The Atlantic, Mar 19/15
Some of Benjamin Netanyahu’s victims are obvious: Isaac Herzog, who hoped to unseat him; Barack Obama, who hoped for an Israeli leader who wouldn’t conspire against him with the GOP; anyone who still believes in the two-state solution.
Others are less obvious. Consider what Bibi has done over the past few months to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which lobbies on behalf of the U.S.-Israel alliance in Washington. To its critics, AIPAC looks like a right-wing organization. But that’s not how it looks inside. AIPAC’s staff is militantly bipartisan. After all, they must maintain their influence no matter who runs Washington. And AIPAC’s members have, historically, been mostly Democrats. Since most American Jews are Democrats, it’s hard to run a large, mainstream American Jewish group without having lots of them around.
AIPAC also officially supports the two-state solution. It does so because AIPAC bases its argument for why America should support Israel on Israeli democracy. While groups on the religious right, like Christians United for Israel, invoke biblical rationales for backing the Jewish state, AIPAC knows that religious language would alienate many Democrats, including many of AIPAC’s Democratic Jewish members. So it instead claims that “commitment to democracy, the rule of law, freedom of religion and speech and human rights are all core values shared between the United States and Israel.” That becomes less convincing if Israel permanently controls millions of West Bank Palestinians who lack citizenship, the right to vote, and free movement while living under military law. So AIPAC insists that Israeli control of the West Bank is a temporary, regrettable reality forced upon democracy-minded Israeli governments by Palestinian intransigence.
That’s why Bibi’s recent behavior has been such a disaster. After agreeing in 2009 to support some sort of Palestinian state, he declared in the final days of his reelection campaign that he did not. This puts AIPAC, which on its website declares its support for “a negotiated two-state solution—a Jewish state of Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state,” in a bind. If AIPAC abandons its support for the two-state solution to stay in line with Bibi, it risks alienating some of its secular, Democratic (and democratic) members, who might drift toward the dovish pro-Israel group, J Street. But if AIPAC allows any public distance between itself and Bibi, it risks alienating its more hawkish members, who generally oppose any American criticism of an Israeli leader, especially Netanyahu, whom they particularly admire. (Except that J Street is not “pro-Israel”)
More broadly, Netanyahu in recent months has become a deeply polarizing figure in the United States. Republicans love him not only because he’s a hawk but because he’s an Obama foe. Many Democrats loathe him for the same reason. For Jewish groups with strong partisan identities, that’s fine. Democratic-leaning J Street galvanizes its members by defending Obama against Bibi. Groups like the Zionist Organization of America and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s This World: The Values Network—which enjoy funding from right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson—galvanize supporters by defending Bibi against Obama. AIPAC, caught in between, says nothing and looks irrelevant.
AIPAC’s far from irrelevant. It remains the most powerful American Jewish group in Washington. But it is not built for this highly partisan, highly ideological age. Among ordinary voters, a chasm is opening up between the way Republicans and Democrats see Israel. Republicans see it as an outpost of Judeo-Christianity surrounded by America-hating Muslims. Democrats see it as a country led by the very “neoconservatives” they can’t stand here at home. AIPAC needs to keep that chasm from splitting Washington. It needs Democratic members of Congress to resist the instincts of their voters. And it needs Republicans to avoid pandering to their voters by exploiting Israel for partisan gain, and thus alienating Democrats even more.
Isaac Herzog would have been a good partner in that effort. His respect for President Obama would have reassured Democrats. But his status as an elected leader of the Jewish state would have won him the deference of most Republicans. Most likely, he would have supported the two-state solution without prioritizing it, thus allowing AIPAC to say what it always has: that the absence of a Palestinian state is the Palestinians’ fault. Several more years of Bibi, on the other hand, will make Israel an even more polarizing issue in the United States. Which means that, for AIPAC, Tuesday was a very bad day.
@ Ted Belman:
Israel does have Christian friends whose support is important.
@ rsklaroff:
Is this your first visit?”
Short list. I don’t have time to stay up all nite to respond to this comment.
@ yamit82:
I can see Russian Slavs and American Protestants are people you neither trust, like, want, or expect to get in any case.
So just who’s non-Jewish support would you trust, like, want, or in any case, expect to get? Are there any such people whom you would not regard with distrust and even hatred?
Israeli Jewish leftists who apparently think Zionism ought to be spelled S O C I A L I S M? Or maybe some of the wacko super-religious Jews of Israel who, I understand, don’t even recognize that Israel should exist? Or the prime minister of Israel, whom you regard as a traitor?
There are times, when reading your most bitter comments, that I get the idea that you profoundly regret ever having moved from the USA to Israel, and then devoting your life to your new country.
Would you be satisfied with any elected government of Israel? or could none of them whatsoever come up to your particular standards?
Remember, to no small degree, each of us makes or breaks his or her own destiny.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Ted Belman Said:
Then you have no problem with this> :
‘Stop the Missionary Conversion of Jews in Jerusalem’</a
Read Both and all of the illuminating comments/\.
5,000 Attend Raanana Anti-Missionary Protest
Prayer rally in Raanana against Jehovah’s Witnesses’ baptism ‘makes a statement,’ city’s chief Rabbi insists.
Councilman King calls on city council to follow Raanana’s lead and block mass missionary event at municipality owned site.
This time 5000 next time 10,000 etc. We will drive them out or worse if it continues and you support them? Well you always have. Don’t tell me you are against missionaries but for Evangelicals. Every Evangelical is a Lay missionary, that’s what and who they are. You can’t have one without the other. They may love Israel for theological and eschatological reasons but they hate Jews as Jews and are the enemies of Judaism.
Disclaimer: I am speaking here for myself and not for Belman.
I accept and appreciate the support both financial and political we get from most organized evangelicals
Yamit, assimilate the way most people appreciate fundamentalist assistance when support is otherwise obscure; remember that we would envision asking a god appearing on earth only one question: “Is this your first visit?”
If it had been up to B Ross, Yamit82 and Shmuel then it would be Michael Oren and Obama making the plays in Israel and in America.
I just keep wondering on that.
Their role in the election would have led to an entirely different scenario in the country. I can very easily visualise it. I can see many visits by all kinds of Obama folk to Israel, being met by Herzog and Oren, by statements on the pulling out of Judea and Samaria, about fast forward to setting up the Palestinian State and so on.
Netanyahu put a full stop to that on March 8 in his address to Congress.
Those are the big plays. And on those big plays our terrible trio on Israpundit were spectacularly helping Obama.
Our “terrible trio” have proved that they talk a big game, but when it comes to action on the pitch it is a completely different matter.
No Jew hater is wise.
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Can a man who invites the judgement of Hashem on his own head be called wise?
Christian fundamentalists/evangelicals make up only a faction of the republican party. So to expect that they would have complete power over the administration or the legislature is silly. Some Christians tried to warn the Bush administration that their policies would bring judgement upon his administration and the nation unfortunately Pres. Bush didn’t take Hashem’s word seriously.
Will the various political factions that supported Netanyahu have complete control over the new government’s policies? Of course not. Lastly let everyman, Jew and Gentile, carefully check his beliefs and his way of life against the Tanach.
rsklaroff Said:
With fools like you supporting us Hard to know whether to laugh or lay into you with facts you will deny or ignore…
AIPAC serves only one purpose: the Jew haters and some congressmen still believe they are representative and have power ( mostly financial of Jewish donors). What they don’t fully understand is that most Jewish mega donors are totally assimilated most either disinterested or anti Israel. So the jokes on them 😛
ArnoldHarris Said:
Do you always shoot from the hip with unsupported statements like the one above?
All through the Bush years when they had the presidency and for a few years when they had the presidency and both houses of congress what did these christians do to change the Anti-Israel and pro-Palis Bush policies??? Ans. Nada.
Shoots the shit out of your BS statements don’t it? Oh how about all those Jew hating Slavs they helped bring into Israel and then set about turning-them into good obedient christian missionaries after they took up the cross. We have some 400,000 non Jewish Slavs brought into Israel who are not Jewish have no Jewish connection and are as deeply antisemitic as they and their parents are or were in Russia and FSR. Ah yes,… they support our tourism Industries. 🙂
Voltaire a wise Jew hater once observed that “If the Jews ever regained their sovereignty they would sell it”
I don’t want them or their support. There are sincere gentile supporters of Israel but they for their own diverse reasons should not be confused with organized christian fundamentalist groups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NUylyDsE-c
I feel BB’s commitment has only been limited by bho and, further, that Jews need not fear alliance with Zionist-Christians (regardless of their views on eschatology); the degree to which AIPAC must be publicly condemned).
The truth is that the fundamentalist Protestant Christians, who mainly back the biblical-based rights of the Jewish nation to Eretz-Yisrael and solidly back Republicans, have far more influence over public affairs in this country than do the AIPAC centrist Jews, who always vote Democrat and are lukewarm at best to Israel’s need to keep solid control over all the land west of the Jordan River. Even if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency next year — a presumed inevitability which is beginning to trend toward questionable — the Republicans will keep control over the US Congress.
Yes, I know that some of those fundamentalists want to convert all of us to what they believe is their human deity. But increasingly, they have become aware that will never happen.
On the other hand, the solidity of Mr Netanyahu’s commitment to an undivided Eretz-Yisrael has become questionable at best, and unthinkable at worst.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ rsklaroff:
I think they should be put in their places if thjey don’t support us who needs em. I don’t want AIPC influencing israeli policy or avting as a clup for Obama, Congress or any other American institution.
@ NormanF:
Proves the AIPC has their own American agenda and when it differs from Israel they side with America. That makes them at best self serving. We could be better off without them.
bernard ross Said:
Beinhart is a nothing that found his way to fame and fortune by being a big moth Israel Basher. Jewish writers and Academicians have long ago learned that they can advance careers and bank accounts by being strident anti Israel and opponents of orthodox Jewry. This is one professor among thousands if not tens of thousands similar….too many to fight at the same time. Jews are too divided including Israel to be effective. Easier to go after just the Jewish traitors.
The key-question is whether exposing its hypocrisy ultimately weakens Israel.
rsklaroff Said:
Nothing new since they got their collective asses kicked by Jew hating Reagan, they have become nothing more than a fictional myth still reenforced by all Jew haters in America and abroad. The myth being that they are powerful. Controlling and influencing American foreign policy against the vital national interests. In the same way they accuse the Jews of controlling the media and the banks. All are untrue and mythical. The Jews and Israel are content to allow the AIPAC myth to continue without challenge and protest. I suppose it’s in the interest of all sides not to challenge the myth.
There is no evidence that BB asked AIPAC to violate his chief security concern.
AIPAC is supporting the toothless Corker bill and incredibly enough is opposing pro-Israel amendments to strengthen it. I guess its been instructed by Netanyahu not to make relations with Obama worse.
But its lost the opportunity to draw the line under the most reckless and dangerous deal since Munich in the 1930s. Every one knows this is Obama’s legacy, which won’t make the world – or Israel – safer.
@ bernard ross:
Nevertheless, I think Beinart has AIPAC right.
Beinart, the author, is a rabid anti israel radical
like this professor below. Beinart is spreading his usual BS trying to get the jews to court the dems.
the Uof M should be cntacted to prevent this professor from teaching the course that will obviously be biased.
AIPAC violated its core responsibility to adhere to BB’s opposition to the Iran deal.