Obama, far-sighted peacemaker or naïve meddler?

If Obama's real diplomatic agenda is to achieve a breakthrough, a united front between Israel and the Arab states facing the Iranian threat accross the Gulf, and his adherance to the failed concept of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is diplomatic cover, then he and his administration will, in managing international affairs, be head and shoulders above any since the 1940's. If not, then Obama and his team of experts will simply add another sorry chapter to the long tradition of US bungling and misadventures in the Middle East.

***

"President Barack Obama is getting set for some military arm-twisting against Iran spearheaded by Israel." One day the US threatens Israel with sanctions for threatening to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. One week later, Hillary warns that, "it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons." And adding muscle to the threat Defense Secretary Gates arrives in Israel to discuss military options. What's real, what not in reporting regarding the US-Israel relationship? When Israel threatens to attack Iran is the threat substantive and imminent, or theatre, the Israeli bad cop playing to Obama's good cop? When Clinton demands a complete halt to settlement construction across the Green Line is that really US policy, or is it just a bone to the Arab street? And when news media warn of a crisis in Israel-US relations is the whispered information feeding those reports accurate or slanted to create an impression serving a hidden diplomatic purpose?

The Palestine Problem: The US and most of the world have long tired of the Israel-Palestine issue, are anxious for a quick fix. Accepting the Arab assertion that Palestine is the reason for all that ails the Middle East, not the corruption and police-state controls feeding unrest at home, then the simple answer for the simple problem is for powerful Israel to bend and grant the Palestinians a state. Except that, since the introduction of the Saudi Plan and for decades before, the Palestinians never fielded a leadership capable of defining and achieving that goal. And today the Palestinian leadership, such as it is, is more divided than ever, divided politically and geographically, Hamas and Fateh engaged in a cold civil war. In short, unless and until the Palestinians can achieve a level of political and social maturity and competence it makes no sense to expect an ersatz Palestine to even manage the complexity of everyday affairs of self-governance.
So why does Obama make a Palestinian state the lynchpin of his Middle East diplomacy? Is it possible that the Administration is really as committed to the primacy of Palestinian statehood as they appear in public? I, for one, prefer to believe that Obama, Mitchell and Ross are more rational and realistic than their public diplomacy describes.

The Saudi Plan: The Saudi's too set creation of a Palestinian state as precondition for Israel-Arab peace, a condition set at the time the Plan was introduced. But in the intervening years conditions on the ground have significantly changed. Not just that the Palestinians are farther from that goal but, more importantly, the rapid growth of the Iranian threat in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq. While Ahmadinejad describes Iranian ambitions as anti-Israel, and not a threat to the Arab world, Arab states from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic know that Iranian ambitions are more dangerous to themselves than to Israel. The Saudis, for example, following the Israeli example, are building a wall entirely surrounding the kingdom, coast through desert, protection against Iran. They are also reported to have "quietly" informed Israel that the IAF could use Saudi airspace should the decision to attack the Islamic Republic be finalized. Then there is the transit of an Israeli submarine and other warships through the Suez Canal, in support of an assumed future decision to attack Iran. Iranian ambitions and the nuclear threat have stripped the fig leaf from the already existing Arab-Israel military alliance.

If the Saudis feel the need for domestic consumption to demand a conciliatory gesture from Israel to allow them to come out of the closet regarding their involvement with Israel, then the precondition definitely should not depend on an improbable Palestinian renaissance involving political and social maturity.

Obama's Grand Strategy? I began this article suggesting that President Obama and his highly experienced staff of advisors and emissaries in matters Middle East might not be so naïve and unrealistic as America's public diplomatic posture suggests. Enter the US outreach to Syria. As prime minister, Ehud Barak and Hafez al-Assad were reportedly within meters of Kineret coastline of signature. That agreement, including the legendary Rabin "pocket," secret promises presumably involving the return of the Golan should Syria meet certain conditions, already exists. Unlike the highly unstable and politically immature Palestinians, for better or worse Syria is relatively stable and mature. In fact, Israeli military and intelligence experts describe Syria as assiduously adhering to all agreements between the two adversaries since the end of the 1967 war.

Obama is returning a US ambassador to Syria, and Mitchell, his emissary to Arab-Israeli peace declared, following his recent meeting with Assad, that Syria is an important player in regional stability, a moderating influence over Hamas, etc. If Israel is to expend time and effort any way, then doing so with a more responsible governing authority holds more promise of success than with an ungoverned and ungovernable social entity. In previous negotiations the Syrians proved to be shrewd and tenacious. If past experience serves, they will be no easier today. But at least Israel is dealing with an entity offering the possibility of a serious negotiation, if not necessarily assuring its success.

But whether or not Palestine is ever capable of statehood and the responsibilities of self-governance; whether or not Israel and Syria actually succeed this go-around in signing on the line, the main problem facing Israel and the Arab states is the Iranian threat, and an open and formal alliance between Israel and the Arabs is the most effective way to contain that threat.
If containing Iran is the real diplomatic agenda of the Obama Administration camouflaged behind the chimera of an Israel-Palestine "roadmap;" then this president may prove to be the most diplomatically far-sighted and effective since the 1940's. If not, if this initiative turns out to be exactly as it appears, then the "Obama Initiative" will go down as just another naïve American misadventure in the quagmire of Middle East politics. And Obama and his experts will simply add one more chapter to a very long tradition of US bungling in the Middle East.

Postscript: Following writing this article two pieces appeared in the media throwing further light on the conduct of US diplomacy, and the apparently intimate policy coordination between the Obama Administration and the Netanyahu Government.

An article appearing in the Washington Times on 29 July quotes former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, refering to recent visits to Aab capitals, "in the past, the first thing I'd get was a lecture about Israel....I no longer receive that, and when I go and travel, what I hear is, there is greater fear of Iran than there is animus toward Israel."

And a 30 July DEBKAfile article: “As recently as Sunday, July 26, a Washington sources quoted a US official as asking Israel to create "military background noise" that would harass Tehran without triggering an outright military clash, whether with Iran or its surrogates, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas.

But in the last three days, fresh reports have come out of Tehran indicating that US-Israeli coordination on the Iranian threat was lagging far behind developments. The Herzliya conference therefore switched its agenda to address urgent steps, in addition to the military pressure, for expediting Ahmadinejad's eclipse.”

I was asked by my daughter, who lives in Israel and is director of a major Jewish outreach organization, to respond to a questionnaire regarding Jewish identity from an Israel government office. The first question involved personal biography, influences on my development as Jew and Zionist. I felt my response to Question #2 covered the final questions.

***

Israeli Government Initiative on Jewish Identity and Identification with Israel Questionnaire

2. What are the two or three greatest challenges to sustainable Jewish identity in our time?

1. That our people, those of us who live in Israel and we who choose Diaspora, fail to grasp the lesson and meaning of Shoah. We are a people at constant and unalterable risk. The common danger over which we have no control is, of course, that we in Diaspora elect to continue to live in the midst of a dominant religion and social culture fundamentally and unalterably anti-Jewish and antisemitic. This animus is built into Christianity’s most basic theological documents; it permeates the very fabric which gives identity to its inheritor societies and nation-states. Our failure to grasp, understand and accept this reality; our preference to relegate even its most recent expression, Shoah, to an event “unique” or “mysterious,” an aberration attributable to a madman or his social-political party or the nation voluntarily or not which led its nearly successful effort to eliminate Jewry entirely from existence on the planet; this is the single greatest challenge to Jewry. And tragically, we are no closer to appreciating threat today than were our people in the years preceding Shoah itself. American Jewry as blithely today defends our country as “exceptional” as did German Jewry in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

2. Nor is the state of the Jews, Israel, more aware than our Diaspora of the reality of the dangers facing us from the Christian west. Do we need alliance, allies facing the current dangers, of course. But for Israel to identify culturally and socially with that culture and society is, by association, reinforcing the dangerous notion that the west is what it appears, either no longer guilty of its traditional of antisemitism, or that something, perhaps Wiesel’s “mystery” is the real cause of its most recent expression, Shoah. In any case Israel validates the Diaspora myth of present security and thereby contributes to the next, and perhaps final effort to bring Jewish existence physically to our end.

3. Israel is failing in its Zionist responsibility to the Diaspora. Do we need a cultural touchstone for identity, yes. Is this what Zionism is, was born to address, no. Israel’s primary debt to the mostly secular Diaspora that created the state is as refuge, not cultural center. And such expressions of particularistic chauvinism as the current conversion controversy; the efforts of the Knesset Constitution and Law committee to draw up a constitution in which the Grandparent Clause of the Law of Return is removed, the Law itself reduced to a shadow of its original framing; the recurrent appearance on the agenda of the Knesset to define for the state of the Jews one particular sect of Judaism as the threshold for Jewish identity and legal status, these alienate the same majority of world Jewry which this “Questionnaire” purports to bring back to Jewish identity. If Israel were serious about “saving the Jews” it must first consider its own identity. If Israel is the state of the Israelis then its agenda is to continue the present drift, providing a cultural focus to the ever-shrinking Diaspora. Feels good, achieves little to nothing. If Israel is to return to its pre-state reason for being, Zionist refuge and Light unto our Nation then the task is indeed formidable, but not impossible. The choice is as it has been since 1967, state of the Jews, or state of the Israelis. The choice of Israel is the true framework upon which this “questionnaire” will rest and have meaning.

Israel and the end of Zionism?

Appeared in Jerusalem Post, Monday Mar 09, 2009

For the second time in little more than a year an influential Israeli politician appears intent on turning Israel's Law of Return into a political football. This week Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit suggested revising or abolishing the Law. In December 2007, Knesset Constitution and Law Committee chairman Menachem Ben-Sasson decided he would rush a constitution through his committee in time for Israel's Independence Day. A key element of the new constitution was a modification of the Law of Return to conform to Halacha. As if all Jews living today, in Israel and the Diaspora, are Orthodox and share a single set of beliefs, rituals and traditions. It appears that the chairman's Independence Day "present" was for the benefit of the 20 percent of Israelis represented by haredi parties in the Knesset; swing parties in coalition formation. These same parties annually raise the "Who is a Jew" issue for debate in the Knesset with the intention of making Halacha the law of the land in matters of personal, social and religious identity. Tellingly, every time that self-serving and divisive issue is raised for debate, Diaspora Jewry, as in Israel overwhelmingly non-Orthodox, express outrage that the Knesset even allows the issue to appear. A recent example of Halacha-as-state-law will serve as example of the danger the issue holds for Jewish unity.

Some months ago an anti-Zionist trio of rabbis wrested control of the Conversion Court from its pro-Zionist director (with the passive support of the prime minister) and immediately rescinded ten years of conversions conducted under the director's supervision. According to Rabbi Sherman, the insurgent leader, the director's conversions did not conform to the trio's interpretation of Halacha. Thousands of loyal Israelis disenfranchised, they and their children stripped ofJeewish identity and Israeli citizenship!

Barely sixty-four years since our few survivors walked away from Auschwitz, sixty years since Ben-Gurion declared independence for our state, risen from the ashes of Shoah, Israel is losing its Zionist bearings, neglecting its most basic obligation: to provide a welcoming refuge for our Diaspora.

In 2007, Russian-Israeli youths describing themselves as neo-Nazis vandalized Jewish symbols in Petah Tikva. An outrage, of course, and a crime deserving of punishment. But is the Law of Return the culprit for allowing them to be brought to Israel by their parents? This, apparently, was the justification for MK Ben-Sasson suggesting the Law be modified, the Grandparent Clause eliminated. And today's hot issue, which Mr. Sheetrit advances as his reason for launching an assault on the Law, is demographic - Israel's policy of encouraging the inflow of cheap third-world labor to replace Palestinian labor. Again, rather than deal with a failure of the political culture and decision-making that created the problem, the Interior Minister would abolish the Law and Zionist identity of the state. In this instance there is not even a rational connection between the asserted "problem," immigration, and the Law.

That the Law of Return and its Grandparent Clause can so casually be targeted as expendable demonstrates the depth of non-comprehension and insensitivity within Israel’s political establishment towards Israel’s Zionist responsibility as the state of ALL Jews. Israel as Refuge is the reason world Jewry invested life and treasure to create a state for the Jews. Jewish independence is not the property of Israel's current residents but of the Jewish people entire. The law is above the state, not to be demeaned and expediently compromised in service of current and transitory domestic problems.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Jews living in the Christian Diaspora recognized that Emancipation had failed, that the secularization of the West liberated us from religious anti-Judaism and serfdom only to define us as outsiders, a "nation within a nation" and, soon after, a biologically distinct "race" polluting those among whom we reside. Rather than reduce anti-Semitism, secularism increased it, made it more lethal. Holocaust was already in the air.

The Jewish people continue to need Israel, a home for those of us seeking national identity; refuge for those of us who continue to prefer Diaspora, aware of the threat. The Law of Return was among the first laws legislated by the new State of Israel. The Grandparent Clause was Israel's direct response to the German legislation of the 1930s defining a Jew as anyone with a single Jewish grandparent. The Grandparent Clause anticipates that the 1930's legislation could be a precedent for the future. The Law and the Clause are the very reason for being of the state of the Jews.

I would like to believe that Israel and its politicians continue to recognize and appreciate the continuing danger of anti-Semitism, that the conditions which inspired a Zionist response are as real today as in the 1890s. The religious foundations for anti-Judaism remain, following Nostre Aetate, still unchanged in the unremitting assault on Judaism in four gospels and letters of Paul. The secular states of the West are inheritors of that religious tradition and of the 2000 years of persecution of the Jews that tradition inspired. We do not need yet another economic meltdown, or a Gaza war, to remind us that anti-Semitism is alive and well. The only thing that has changed is that the Jewish people, previously helpless victims, have returned to sovereignty; that Zionism identified and responded to the eternal Diaspora threat.

Israel's Law of Return and its Grandparent Clause are the guarantee and continuing commitment of the state of the Jews to our dispersed and powerless people. It is the compact between the state and the Jewish people worldwide. The Law is not the property of Israel, a plaything of her politicians. And it definitely is not available as largess for coalition favors present or future. Any question of modifying the Law or, for that matter, of considering Halacha as legal code for the secular State of Israel, impacts more than Israel's current residents. Such changes could prove catastrophic in alienating or restricting immigration for our Diaspora. For this reason any change in either must be considered only in dialogue with, and with the approval of Diaspora Jewry. The Law is the guarantee that Jewry, in our state and Diaspora, are yet one!


Comments:

1 Chris USA, Wednesday Mar 11, 2009
Your article does nothing to help Israel or jews. Todays antisemitism comes from Iran and is based on Islam - which the EU is rapidily becoming. You got the right string but the wrong yoyo. "Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone." Nostre Aetate, Vatican Archives.

2 David Turner, Wednesday Mar 11, 2009
It is clear, Chris, that you are not familiar with the history of church persecution of the Jews, a persecution turning official state policy with Constantine making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. I cited Matthew above and suggest that an excellent starting point to understand the suspension of Christian Love, at least towards the Jews, the inspiration for nearly 2000 years of persecution and murder, inspiration and justification for our recent Holocaust. Regarding Iran, definitely a threat to Jews and Israel. But the main danger- still in Diaspora.

3 Hofikoman, Wednesday Mar 11, 2009
Both Christianity and Islam are religions with a perfectionist core - Jesus or the Prophets in toto as emobdiments of the Divine Word and therefore without sin. In Torah, there can never be anyone without sin! And thus, Jewry is the bad messenger destroying the good tidings that there is a "perfection" you can rely on with the truth that you have only the quest for responsibility without idols of perfection. People hate such messengers! The one grandparent criteria is simply compassion for being victimized by deep and unrelenting hatred. Shame on Israeli politicians for ignoring our victimhood

4 Roz-USA, Wednesday Mar 11, 2009
The law of return allows the small number of reform and conservative converts to come to Israel, with full rights. Their conversions will not be accepted by Orthodox Jews, but that will not deter most of them. With the grandparent clause, any Jew from the FSU will tell you of knowing plenty of people, in the US or elsewhere, who buy fake papers claiming that one grandparent. We need a better law in place to deal with non-Jews coming from abroad, and fraudulent ones, as the economic meltdown allover will push people to try this mode of "return". We literally cannot afford them.

5 Surendra, Gurgaon, India, Thursday Mar 12, 2009
The author makes an interesting point about how "secular" Europe became even more dangerous for Jews. Secularism may be an important prelude to genuine acceptance of diversity - but it is clearly NOT sufficient. Ultra-nationalism, racism, colonialism et al - can all lead to irrational and violent hatreds. For instance, there are many Muslims who are non-religious - yet they hate Jews or Hindus with a passion that can exceed the bigotry of the religious-minded. The author's point is a very thoughtful and sobering one.

6 Chris USA, Friday Mar 13, 2009
David Turner, I am very familiar with the constant bickering between jews and catholics and how it ended - I know how close Orthodoxy came to convincing catholics that they were a cult of judaism and needed to return to mosaic law. I now how they constantly fought each other and what the results were. I'm telling you that today its different - arabs aren't antisemitic - they are trying to prune the line of abraham by removing us. The non-semities are being anti-semitic when they allow or cave in to the tide. If not for the state of Israel Sunni and Shia would be at war - its what Ishmael is.

7 David Turner, Saturday Mar 14, 2009
Your point regarding Israel distracting Muslim sects from warring each the other is right on, Chris. And Israel is far more alone, even with the myth of her *Special Relationship* with the US (See today’s article in Middle East Times, [ Link to page ] /, for example). Israel and the Jews are at risk. But Israel has a military to defend against a foe that has a real issue justifying their enmity. The Christians have an imaginary one. Easier to fight an enemy with a material grudge than a self-deluded sociopathological one.

8 Chris USA, Sunday Mar 15, 2009
We must not lose sight of the individuality of people David. Rabbi Israel Weingarten was convicted in NY of molesting his 16 yr old daughter. Does that mean Judahism is depraved? A Catholic bishop is a holocaust denier. Does that mean Catholicism is anti-Semitic? The divisions which seperate our faiths are slowly being removed. The underlying unity which must be acheived is the third oath God made to Abraham - to bless the nations thru Abraham and his seed forever. Scandals will come and go. Some people will hide behind religion to protect their evil. We must be aware and take action.

9-11 David Turner, Sunday Mar 15, 2009
I understood your point in your first comment, Chris, and agree. One person does not represent a people and should not be symbolic for the actions of the remainder. Christianity should not be judged by the words of an individual, or the error in judgment of the head of the church in reinstating that person or his sect any more than should an entire people be subjected to punishment for the purported actions of several two thousand years earlier. But that is precisely the point, that half of all Jews born since the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans have been murdered by the dominant religion among whom we have been dispersed since the church convinced Constantine to adopt Christianity as state religion in the 4th century. Half of all Jews born since the fall of Jerusalem. The most recent atrocity called Shoah, which claimed six million Jewish lives accounts for a small proportion of the total lives of Jews lost over the centuries. Christian Love, whatever meaning it may have beyond theory, certainly never applied to the Jews.

Chris, I do not write to accuse or offend Christians; I do write to warn my own people: the Holocaust was not a mystery or a unique event in history but merely the latest, and not last such event in our sojourn in dispersion in Christendom. No offense intended. But reality is reality. And history is our witness. My websites may interest you. One discusses contemporary issues at Israel, the Diaspora and Jewish Denial. My second website on the topic, Antisemitism in Art, uses period art to illustrate the evolution of anti-Judaism and antisemitism from the first century to the present.

12 Chris USA, Monday Mar 16, 2009
If you understand my point then you know that Catholicism presents itself as the fulfilment of the third oath to Abraham by God. The increase of anti-Semitism in the world is indicative of the upcoming restoration of Israel by tribe as well as the approaching reunification of Judaism and Catholicism. Catholicism has 23 rites - each representative of an order of priesthood. Israel - Judaism - is the 24th rite. What seperates them is the holiness code which conflicts with the third oath of God to Abraham and the submission of both religions to their joint teleological destiny.

13-15 David Turner, Tuesday Mar 17, 2009
Chris, we could debate this endlessly. The point of my article is Christianity’s Jewish Problem as defined by and embodied in the gospels, Paul, the church fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther; the list is endless. The material and historical impact of this pathology has been the death by individual murder through pogrom, or organized murder by Crusade, Inquisition and, most recently, Holocaust of half of all Jews born since we lost independence in the first century. The Vidal Center estimates that, had Jews not been subject to Christian persecution our present population would today be roughly equal to that of the entire British Isles. However church theology sees the ultimate solution to its Jewish Problem, Judaism is not Christian and will never voluntarily merge with the church, convert to Catholicism or any other Christian sect. And this is precisely what is meant by Christianity’s Jewish Problem. Jesus, if he ever took human form, did not convince as messiah during the war with Rome, does not convince 2,000 years later. And the frustration experienced by Christendom over the centuries is expressed clearly in history up to Shoah, and beyond.

Unless and until Christianity purges itself of anti-Judaism, unlikely to happen because that would mean purging the gospels which, as Catholic theologian Reuther already understood in her book, Faith and Fratricide, would result in the destruction of Christianity so unlikely ever to be undertaken, Jews choosing to live in Christendom are, and will remain subject to assault, to Holocaust. Victimhood is the fate of Israel in Diaspora.

16 Chris USA, Tuesday Mar 17, 2009
Regarding the Diaspora - Judaism has been dispersed since 70 AD. The submission of Rome to Catholicism in 400 AD was in fulfillment of Daniel - who prophesied that the Messianic Kingdom would convert Rome - IAW traditional Catholic interpretation. You are of course free to disagree. I offer you this insight by the late Rabbi Noah Weinburg of blessed memory (founder of Aish.com) - we know there is a problem. The question is what are you doing about it?

17-19 David Turner, Wednesday Mar 18, 2009
Chris, you would convince me through reason based on faith. I appreciate your interest in doing so. And while I appreciate the opportunity to develop my understanding of how your faith motivates you, my writings are not directed at Christians, Christianity or Christendom, but at my people who, through denial of history, choose not to see the danger which the Holocaust represents for ourselves and our children. Holocaust is indeed the final solution to Christendom*s Jewish Problem, a solution only partially achieved in the 1940*s. For ourselves, the Jews, the Jewish Problem is our voluntary and continuing participation in our own persecution by trusting, no by needing to believe that lethal antisemitism was an aberration, a unique event in history, a mystery. Denial means to intentionally disregard the long historical precedent, the Christian theological source, for Shoah. But the Jewish Problem is not only suffered by the Jews. By allowing this cancer at the heart of Christian dogma untreated, by tolerating its theology of hate, Christianity fails in its self-proclaimed identity and mission as religion of love, tolerance and forgiveness.

By our non-acceptance of the validity of Christianity*s Jewish messiah Judaism poses significant questions for his authenticity for Christianity. This results in doubt, not itself conscious, which in turn leads to hatred for those who inspire that unconscious doubt. Antisemitism is pathological, and pathology is by definition sick and self-justifying. Unless and until Christianity heals itself of its delusions it will ever fail in its mission and ideal.

Bush and Mumbai, a fitting exit for a failed presidency

Months before the attack on the World Trade Center it is now revealed that Bush had months of intelligence warnings that an attack by air on an unspecified US target was being planned, and failed to prepare or respond until thousands were dead, and the buildings were a smoldering heap. Seven years later, and three months before the act, Bush was informed by US intelligence of an intercepted satellite call indicating that a sea-borne attack against Mumbai was being planned. To his credit the informed the Indian Government was informed but apparently filed the warning, and months of follow-up warnings, away and never passed it along to their own security services, who were totally unprepared when the attack occurred. For three months the Bush Administration followed the intercepts, for three months they were aware of the danger but never thought to issue a warning to citizens traveling to, or living in Mumbai. When the threat turned fact the administration denied prior knowledge. Callousness, or sheer ineptitude?

The Illusion of Jewish Security

One hundred years ago German Jewry, more assimilated, secure and intermarried than American Jewry today, described their fatherland also as “exceptional.”

Introduction

The election of Barak Obama brought to surface doubt among some Israelis regarding American Jewry’s identification with, and commitment to the state of the Jews. Within Israel Bush is seen as friend and benefactor. How, the thinking goes, could the US community vote so overwhelmingly against Israel’s perceived interests? But what if it is Israel, rather than American Jewry, that was wrong about Bush? And what does this election result suggest about how our two communities see the world and the security of the Jewish people as we enter our third millennium of Diaspora? Israel is preoccupied with her “special relationship” with the US; worried too regarding its appeal to, and continuing support by the Diaspora. Where Israel appears increasingly uncomfortable, American Jewry appears confident and comfortable. Is Diaspora identity and support really the source of Israeli unease, or is the source closer to home? And is American Jewry justified in its security and confidence?

Antisemitism through the ages

For 1,900 years, since the end of the final war with Rome, the Jewish people have lived dispersed until Israeli independence in 1948. For the first millennium Jews were somewhat tolerated by the church, inheritor from Rome of the renamed Holy Roman Empire. But the First Crusade of 1096 marked a significant worsening of conditions for Jews. En route to wrest the Holy Land from the Moslems, the crusaders prepared for war by slaughtering what they called the enemy in their midst. Whole communities of Jews fell to crusader sword, were burned alive in synagogue and home, were thrown into rivers and drowned, a “baptism” according to their murderers.

The Dark Ages represents a significant step forward in demonizing the Jews. We were accused of poisoning Christian wells to spread the Black Plague; accused of kidnapping and crucifying Christian boys before Passover to provide “innocent blood” believed important in baking matzoth. Leading rabbis, it was believed, held a conclave once-yearly to choose the Jewish community to be honored with the crucifixion, an early version of the 19th century fabrication, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. A third myth held that Jews steal the “host,” ceremonial bread representing the body of Christ, in order to murder the Christian messiah again. Paintings of the time represent Jews stabbing the bleeding host.

The inquisition, created to uncover and eliminate heresy within the church, functioned from the late 14th to the early 20th century. With the expulsion of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula Spain turned its attention to cleansing the land of the Jews, who were given the choice of conversion or expulsion. Jews who elected conversion were labeled Marranos, or pigs, and were suspected of being insincere in their conversion. Accused of remaining Jewish at home, while appearing Christian in public, thousands were tortured until, confessing their heresy, they were burned at the stake. In dealing with its “Marranos heresy” the Spanish Inquisition also introduced the concept of “limpieza de sangre,” or purity of blood. Applicants for the clergy were required to prove they were free of Jewish blood. With slight change of emphasis 450 years later Germany would adapt purity of blood as its criterion for murder.

Life for Jews remained precarious following the Protestant Reformation. In his last work on the subject, The Jews and their Lies, 1543, Martin Luther described Jews as "poisonous envenomed worms" and recommended that their “synagogues and schools be set on fire,” their prayer books be destroyed, their homes burned. At their trials at Nuremberg, Nazi leaders referred to Luther as their guide, their justification for antisemitism and genocide. Five centuries before the event Luther set the agenda for Holocaust.

With the Age of Reason, beginning in the 17th century, Europe grew increasingly secular. Jews, freed from centuries of religious persecution, from ownership as serfs were, in the emergent nation-states, to be subjected to something far worse. With religion less important than nationality, Jews were now considered an alien nationality, a people apart, Other. Conversion, the religious ticket for social inclusion ceased to be an escape from identity, a path to assimilation. And for those who still sought conversion as path to acceptance and advancement, with the election of Adolph Hitler as chancellor of Germany Jews were defined neither by religion nor allegiance to state, but by limpieza de sangre, purity of blood. And the blood of a single Jewish grandparent was a sentence to death.

The kidnapping and forced conversion of the Jewish child Edgardo Mortara by the Church in Rome and the trumped up conviction of Dreyfus in France; the lynching of Leo Frank by an American mob made up of lawyers, judges, politicians and other professional elites; the bloody pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe; all these reinforced awareness amongst Jews that the secularization of society not only failed to end discrimination, but continued to subject them to physical danger from neighbor and country. For an assimilated journalist from Vienna observing mobs racing through the streets of Paris in antisemitic rage over the Dreyfus Affair, it was clear that Jews would never be safe in Diaspora. The answer, according to Herzl, was nothing short of a revolution in Jewish awareness, of self-emancipation, of Jewish national liberation: Political Zionism.

America the Exception?

We in the United States carry ourselves with confidence, comfortable in our “goldene medina.” But what in our history justifies our confidence? Antisemitism is as old in the New World as our first immigrants seeking sanctuary in colonial New Amsterdam. Greeted at the dock by Peter Stuyvesant, they were unceremoniously told that the colony is Christian and Jews are not welcome. Following the Civil War General and later president Ulysses Grant issued his infamous order informing Jews that, regarding entry into the newly defeated states of the Confederacy, they are again, not welcome. And, around the time Leo Frank was lynched by that genteel Georgia mob, Congress was busily drafting legislation aimed at limiting entry to immigrants of “Nordic” stock, that again, Jews are not welcome. And twenty years later these restrictive laws would provide legal cover and future deniability for the United States closing heart and border to Jews fleeing the Holocaust, for condemning, with full knowledge, Europe’s Jews to the ovens of Auschwitz. Even at the cost of life, Jews were not welcome.

Antisemitism was as widespread in the US before and during Shoah as it was in Europe. Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg, antisemites and isolationists, well represented this national mood. Both considered running for president, were the hoped-for choice of the Republican Party for president. Had either decided to run and, as was very possible, won, then it is very possible that such a government would either have remained true to its isolationist program, neutral in the war almost assuring a German victory. Or, also very possible, that government might have actively joined Hitler’s crusade against atheistic Communism, another popular notion of the time. In either case it is unlikely that local antisemitism, inspired by Nazi Europe, would have been long restrained in expanding the limits of American eugenics to Europe’s lethal conclusion. And taking into consideration that, like Germany, the US had concentration camps, if limited to Japanese-American, this precedent too provides a chilling warning for what nearly was, what is historically available as precedent for the future.

In 1976 General George Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided that Israel was a burden to the United States, informed the press that the only reason he could see for US support was pressure by those who “controlled the press, banking and the government,” a not subtle reference to Jews.

In November, 1986 the Reagan Administration, embarrassed by public disclosure of its illegal money-laundering and gun-running operations known as Irangate, attempted to shift blame for the affair to Israel and her “supporters” for getting the US into the project. In fact Reagan had asked Israel and the Arab oil producers (who were not accused alongside Israel) for assistance in order to insulate the administration. Fast-forward to the present Iraq war; at a time when the war seemed spiraling out of control Bush spokesmen, following the lead of their Reagan predecessors, blamed Israel for having “encouraged” the Bush decision to invade. In fact administration insiders, including then CIA chief George Tennant, insist that Bush had already decided to invade Iraq even before entering the White House in 2001 (see, for example, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, below). It was also reported that Israeli leaders and intelligence services, along with their Saudi counterparts and the CIA, had advised Bush not to invade, that Iran and not Iraq was the main threat; and that an attack on either country would destabilize the region.

American Eugenics and European Genocide

For decades before Hitler much of America’s elite, from politicians to academics to Supreme Court justices believed in, popularized and legalized the “science” of race improvement known as Eugenics. Long before Germany voted Nazi, American eugenics had already defined the ideal racial stock for America as “Nordic.” American eugenics was the inspiration and legal precedent for German laws aimed at improving their racial stock by eliminating the “unfit.” American eugenics was the foundation for German genocide. Until the United States entered the war against Germany American eugenicists continued to collaborate closely with their German counterparts, helping put into practice that which, in the US, was but a shadow of eugenics’ full potential in race purification.

In the aftermath of war, genocide and Holocaust American eugenicists intervened to rehabilitate the reputations of their former Nazi colleagues. As a result many were returned to their former positions of professional and political standing in the “new” Germany. And the influence of eugenics in America also continued after the war, promoting forced sterilization to limit birth of the “unfit,” promoting state laws to prosecute persons engaged in “miscegenation,” marriage or sexual relations between whites and other “racial” stock.


Israeli Angst

Following Shoah and motivated by guilt, the United States reluctantly voted for partition, then stood by again in passive complicity as the apparently endangered Jews appeared to face yet another holocaust. England openly supported and armed Israel’s Arab enemies, Egypt and Jordan. Only with the withdrawal of England from the Middle East, the United States now protector of Arab oil, did Israel enter the strategic calculation. Israel, American policy-makers recognized, would be useful as balance to Soviet supported radical Arab regimes threatening the oil-rich conservative Arab regimes. Israel’s “special relationship” with the United States is, at least for her senior partner, a convenience, important only so long as oil is at risk. Such sympathies as “shared values” may exist in popular lore, provide a sense of security for those seeking such, but in the end pragmatic national interest is what motivates decision-making. If Israel feels dependent, is insecure about the future of her “special relationship,” she has reason.

Bush as “friend” of Israel

According to then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, at the first meeting of the National Security Council just ten days after the 2001 inauguration, Bush tasked those present to come up with a plausible reason to invade Iraq. Remember, this was more than two years before 9/11. From his 2003 decision to invade until his infamous 2008 secret letter to Bashar Assad the Bush Administration pursued what observers generously describe as a confused and contradictory Middle East policy. At times Israeli interests converged with those of Bush, as with their shared “war on terror,” and this may partly explain Israel’s positive regard for the man. But from a wider perspective, did the eight years of this administration help or harm the state of the Jews?

Until his final year in office Bush almost entirely ignored Arab-Israeli peace-making. On the rare occasions he did show interest, as with the Palestinian election of 2006, his intervention proved not only misguided but a regional disaster. Prior to the election Abbas and Israeli leaders, anticipating the Hamas victory, were unable to convince Bush. The president insisted the elections proceed on schedule with the result that, not only did Hamas win the election, but won also new respect and credibility among Palestinians. Within days Bush had second thoughts about his support of Palestinian democracy and concluded that Hamas had to go. With US funding, training and planning Fateh attempted a coup in Gaza. And again, not only did Hamas route Bush’s insurgents, but Hamas prestige among Palestinians soared, this time as a military force.

Barely two years later, with Israel one year into negotiations with Assad over peace and the future of the Golan (in face of Bush criticism for talking to that Axis of Evil country), in October, 2008 Bush sent PA president Abbas to Damascus to hand-deliver a personal and secret letter, president-to-president, Bush-to-Assad. Its contents, leaked to Arab media, assured Syria that in exchange for breaking relations with Iran, Israel would withdraw from the Golan before the end of the Bush presidency. Of course none of this had been even discussed with Israel. So whatever his personal ambitions or motives, Israeli security was not among his concerns. Should these examples raise questions regarding Bush as “friend” and “benefactor”? Is another example needed? Then consider his use of the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), his transfer of responsibility for dealing with Iran from the US to Israel.

Bush and the “Iranian Bomb”

A fair and not raised question regarding an Iranian bomb is against whom might such a weapon pose the greatest threat? Israel, now apparently abandoned to her own resources by Bush and Europe, is convinced that she is the primary target. While this may or not be true in the future it is not likely today. The ability to build a small nuclear device is not the same as possessing the technology and human resources to create a warhead, to produce a missile capable of accurate warhead delivery. So the immediate threat of a Nuclear Iran is not a high-tech weapon for nation-to-nation combat, but a small “dirty bomb” of the suitcase variety, a weapon more suited to hand-delivery by a terrorist. And since Israel likely has the best anti-terror defenses in the world, a softer target, such as Madrid or Chicago, would offer the better chance for success. Yet Israeli policy makers appear convinced that Israel is the primary target that, abandoned by the US and Europe; that, as a matter of self-defense, it is up to Israel to eliminate the threat, unilaterally if necessary. Certainly Ahmadinejad’s bluster contributes to raise the temperature, to feed the perception. But Israel is by decades of same accustomed to enemy bluster.

I suggest that, while naïve and not gifted in diplomacy, when it comes to public relations, to political manipulation, Bush is a master. Bush perceived Israeli sensitivity and exploited it. He sold Israel a bill of goods, and Israelis swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker!

Conclusion

By the facts it should be clear that Israel’s trust in her “special relationship” is the result of justifiable insecurity, and that American Jewry’s opposite response shares the same source. But for Israel angst expresses a subconscious awareness of a danger which, for a people armed and independent, defense is a realistic possibility. But American Jewry and our entire Diaspora are no more capable of self-defense today than during Shoah, Inquisition or Crusade, so rather than serve as warning, we shroud ourselves in false security, deny the reality of the danger. For the Diaspora, our collective “confidence,” “ease” and “comfort” are a willful act of Denial.

One hundred years ago German Jewry, more assimilated and intermarried than are we today in the United States, described their fatherland as “exceptional.” American Jewry today apply the same description. The difference is that today we have the benefit of historical experience. Limpieza de sangre is, as were concentration camps in the US during WWII, a historical fact, a legal precedent.

History may not repeat itself, but it does serve as precedent. It is our responsibility to accept the facts of history, to recognize our Denial and accept the lessons of history. The lives of our children depend on it.

Israel’s “special relationship,” Reality or Myth?

“If Israel is insecure about the future of her “special relationship” (with the US) she has reason to be.”

The election of Barak Obama brought to surface doubt among some Israelis regarding American Jewry’s identification with, and commitment to the state of the Jews. Within Israel Bush is seen as friend and benefactor. How, the thinking goes, could the US community vote so overwhelmingly against Israel’s perceived interests? But what if the vote did consider Israel’s interests, what if it is Israel, rather than American Jewry, that was wrong about Bush? And what does this election result suggest about how our two communities see the world and the security of the Jewish people as we enter our third millennium of Diaspora? Israel is preoccupied with its “special relationship” with the US, worried about its appeal to, and continuing support by the Diaspora, while American Jewry appears confident and comfortable, secure in its chosen homeland. But is the US Diaspora really the source of Israeli unease, or is the source closer to home? And is American Jewry justified in its self-confidence and ease?

The history of Jewry in the Diaspora is of a nearly continuous disaster, from discrimination to persecution, from mass expulsion to mass murder. Beginning in the 5th century, when the church became de facto government of the Roman Empire, and continuing until the gradual secularization of Europe in the 18th century Jews were serfs, property of local rulers. With Enlightenment’s promise of “emancipation” came expectation of the end to discrimination and prejudice. But emancipation in practice meant assimilation, and even conversion did not end prejudice. The Dreyfus Affair put doubt of the promise to rest and Herzl, the assimilated journalist from Vienna, launched what became the revolution in Jewish identity, the movement of Jewish national liberation, Political Zionism.

The kidnapping and forced conversion of Edgardo Mortara by the Church in Rome and the trumped up conviction of Dreyfus in France; the lynching of Leo Frank by a mob made up of lawyers, judges and other professional elites in the United States; the bloody pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe all these reinforced awareness amongst Jews that the secularization of society not only failed to end discrimination, but continued to subject them to physical danger from their neighbors. And when Germany opted for a Nazi government the pace accelerated towards a final solution to Christendom’s 2000 year long Jewish Problem. How did this continuing and traumatic history of irrational abuse and aggression affect our individual and collective identity in Diaspora; what impact does it continue to impact the psyche and character of the state of the Jews?

Jewish Denial

We in the United States carry ourselves with confidence, comfortable in our “goldene medina.” But what in our experience justifies our confidence? Antisemitism is as old in the New World as our first immigrants seeking sanctuary in colonial New Amsterdam. Met at the dock by Peter Stuyvesant, the legendary governor, they were informed that the colony is Christian and Jews are not welcome. Following the Civil War General and later president Ulysses Grant issued his infamous order barring Jews from entering newly defeated states of the Confederacy. And, around the time Leo Frank was lynched by that genteel Georgia mob, Congress was busily drafting legislation aimed at halting the immigration of “inferior racial stock.” Twenty years later these restrictive laws would provide legal cover and future deniability for the United States closing heart and border to Jews fleeing the Holocaust; for condemning, with full knowledge, Europe’s Jews to the ovens of Auschwitz.

Is our confidence justified by our security as Americans in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and so on? It is a fact that antisemitism was as widespread in the US before and during Shoah as it was in Europe. Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg, antisemites and isolationists, represented this national mood, and both considered running, were the choice of the Republican Party for president. Had either decided to run for the office and, as was very possible, won, then it is very possible that such a government would either have remained neutral in the war, assuring a likely German victory; or the US might have actively joined Hitler’s crusade against atheistic Communism. In either case it is unlikely that local antisemitism, inspired by a Nazi Europe, would have been long restrained in expanding the reach of American eugenics to Hitler’s lethal conclusion. And taking into consideration that the US, like Germany, also had concentration camps, these for its Japanese-American citizens, the precedent provides a chilling warning for what nearly was, and is available as precedent for the future.

Israeli Angst

Following Shoah and motivated by guilt, anticipating that the survivors would be facing yet a second holocaust, the United States reluctantly voted for partition, then stood by in passive complicity. England openly supported and armed Israel’s Arab enemies, Egypt and Jordan. American interest in Israel only awakened when it served US interests, not the Jews. With the withdrawal of England from the Middle East it fell on the US to protect western oil interests. Israel’s “special relationship” arrived with the Soviet-radical Arab threat to the conservative monarchies producing oil. Israel’s “special relationship” with the United States is, for her senior partner, a convenience, important only so long as oil is at risk. Sympathies such as “shared values” may exist in the popular imagination but national interest, not “sympathies,” are what motivate countries to act, the glue that binds. If Israel is insecure about the future of her “special relationship” she has reason to be.

Bush as “friend” of Israel

According to then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, at the first meeting of the National Security Council just ten days after the 2001 inauguration Bush tasked those present to come up with a plausible reason to invade Iraq. Remember, this was more than two years before 9/11. From his 2003 decision to invade until his infamous 2008 secret letter to Bashar Assad his administration pursued what observers describe, most generously, as a confused and contradictory Middle East policy. At times Israeli interests converged with those of Bush, as with his “war on terror,” and this partly explains Israel’s positive regard for the man. But from a wider and objective perspective, did the eight years of this administration help or harm the state of the Jews?

Until his final year in office Bush almost entirely ignored Arab-Israeli peace. On the rare occasion when he did show interest, as with the Palestinian election of 2006, his intervention proved not only ineffective, but a disaster. Prior to the vote Abbas and Israel anticipated the Hamas victory but were unable to convince Bush, who insisted the elections proceed. Not only did Hamas win Bush’s election but won also new respect and credibility among Palestinians. Within days Bush had second thoughts about his adventure in Palestinian democracy and decided that Hamas had to go. With US funding, training and planning Fateh attempted a coup in Gaza. And again, not only did Hamas route the insurgents, but Hamas prestige among Palestinians soared, this time as a military force. Barely two years later, with Israel one year into negotiations with Assad over peace and the future of the Golan in face of Bush criticism for even talking to that Axis of Evil country, in October, 2008 Bush sent PA president Abbas to Damascus to hand-deliver a personal and secret letter to Assad. Its contents leaked to Arab media, the letter assured Syria that Israel would withdraw from the Golan in exchange for Syria breaking her alliance with Iran. Of course none of this had been discussed with Israel. So whatever his motives, Israeli security was not among his priorities. Should these examples raise questions regarding Bush as “friend” and “benefactor”? Is another example needed? Then consider his use of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to transfer responsibility for dealing with Iran from the US to Israel.

Bush and the “Iranian Bomb”

A fair and not raised question regarding an Iranian bomb is, against which country(ies) might such a weapon pose the greatest threat? Israel, apparently abandoned to her own resources by Bush and Europe, is convinced that she is the primary target. While this may or not be true in a decade, it is not likely today. The ability to build a small nuclear device is not the same as having the technology and resources to create a warhead, to produce a missile capable of accurate warhead delivery. So the immediate threat of a Nuclear Iran is not to produce a high-tech weapon useful in nation-to-nation combat, but a small “dirty bomb” of the suitcase variety, a weapon more suited to hand-delivery by a terrorist. And since Israel likely is most experienced in counter-terror, has the best anti-terror defenses in the world, a softer target, such as Madrid or Chicago would offer the best chance for success. Yet Israeli policy makers appear convinced that the state of the Jews is the primary target, that it is Israel’s responsibility to eliminate the threat, unilaterally if necessary. Certainly Ahmadinejad’s bluster contributes to this perception. But Israel is accustomed to enemy bluster. I suggest that, while naïve and not gifted in diplomacy, when it comes to public relations, to political manipulation, Bush is a master. And Israel was sold hook, line and sinker.

By the facts it should be clear that Israel’s trust in her “special relationship” is a need driven by emotion. It should also be clear that American Jewry’s opposite response, our comfort and trust in our Diaspora home shares the same emotional source. But there identity ends. Because if Israeli angst expresses a subconscious awareness of a danger which an armed and independent state has the ability to confront and defend against when illusion turns real, American Jewry and our entire Diaspora are no more capable of self-defense today than during Shoah, Inquisition or Crusade. Aware as we are at some level of the danger, by ignoring the long-standing and well-documented threat, we in Diaspora are risking the lives of our children in service of our need for the illusion of security in what, for us, are familiar surroundings. Our “confidence,” “ease” and “comfort” are a willful act of Denial. One hundred years ago German Jewry, more assimilated and intermarried than are we today in the United States, described their fatherland as “exceptional,” as do we today.

History may not repeat itself, but it does serve as precedent. It is our responsibility to accept the facts, to recognize our own Denial: to accept the lessons of history. Our children’s lives depend on it.

Bush offers Golan to Assad?

Monday Nov 03, 2008

From the moment he succeeded Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority it was clear that Mahmoud Abbas, one of the Palestinian architects of the Oslo Accords, lacked both the political power and charisma necessary to unite his own Fatah party. His efforts at avoiding civil war by integrating Hamas into the political system proved too successful, casting doubt also on his political judgment. Today, with the Palestinians in a state of political anarchy just short of open civil war, with two Palestinian enclaves, it is clear to even the most optimistic among us that unless and until the Palestinians mature to the point of peace among themselves, expecting them to come to peace with Israel is unrealistic.

It appears that this judgment was also reached by the experts advising both contenders for the US presidency, now recommending to their candidates that Palestine, roadmap or no, should be shelved indefinitely in favor of the Syrian track. And now, according to reports appearing in Israeli media, even President Bush, for whom Syria is a member of his Axis of Evil, understands this and sent President Abbas to Damascus to deliver a personal and secret letter directly to Bashar al-Assad.

The existence and contents of that letter, kept secret not only from Israel but from his ambassador to Syria, reportedly contains nothing less than a pledge to the Syrian president to pressure Israel off the Golan during the few remaining months of his presidency. In return Bush would have Assad break ties with Iran. Israeli leaders expressed concern, and several reasons for that concern will be mentioned below. But dangerous as the impact on Israel's relations with Syria and much of the Arab world are, the letter's implications for the state of the Jews and its "special relationship" with the United States may be even graver.

By its very existence the Bush letter portrays Israel as an expendable ally. In the eyes of Syria and the rest of the Middle East, a forced Israeli withdrawal from the Golan would cast it as puppet of an unreliable protector. Nor is this the first situation in which the present US administration has placed Israel in harm's way according to US interests. Bush encouraged Israel in the run up to the Lebanon war and, when victory was too slow in coming, had Rice order Israel not to cross the Litani River. The effect was to assure that Israel could not defeat Hizbullah, whose leadership and arsenal were well north of the river. A military setback for Israel, to the Arab street not only the first ever victory, but achieved by a mere militia! For Bush the Lebanon loss was a minor failure in the president's cold war with Iran. But Israel is not a safe seven thousand miles distant, and in the Middle East an Israel even appearing to be in decline is an invitation to challenge, and war.

Negotiations between countries represent a period of testing of motives and policy baselines. It provides a period of gradual narrowing of distance between opposing positions, an opportunity to gradually build understanding and trust. An imposed "agreement" such as the one Bush is proposing would be nothing less than another Czechoslovakia, another Munich sellout.

This letter, this Bush initiative, clearly demonstrates the limits of US commitment and reliability to Israel, a red flag to Israel to revisit its emotional and cultural dependence, its so-called "special relationship" with the United States.

Israel today enjoys significant respect and admiration by a majority of Americans and their politicians. But support and commitment are always conditional on present needs and interests, and commitment is never forever. The Bush letter casts a long shadow, a clear warning that Israel must appreciate and respond to.

Should US interests in the Middle East change, which they eventually will, resulting in lessening support for Israel, then the political culture of support will keep pace. At that time popular sympathy and support among the general public for the state of the Jews will also fade.

The Bush letter is a clear warning and harbinger of things to come. Afterword
What I wrote above may be mistaken as a warning of an imminent threat. I do believe the threat real, but not imminent. The Bush presidency is deviant in many ways, the Bush Letter merely the most obvious and recent evidence of how, not when, US interest will move that country to take actions contrary to Israel's interests. Under Bush this has already occurred several times; the invasion of Iraq removed the only significant enemy of Iran, Sadam Hussein, and propelled the Islamic Republic along the path of its hegemonic ambitions; the Palestinian elections, forced by Bush over the advice of Israel and Abbas, propelled Hamas to political and military prominence; Bush encouraged the invasion of Lebanon then ordered Israel to halt when it failed to win decisively within some imaginary Bush time frame.

While the Bush presidency certainly followed its own erratic course, relying on the president's much vaunted intuition and "guidance from above," most American presidents are more open to advice of specialists, more logical and sophisticated in exercising home governance and world affairs, to choose diplomacy over military action.

Bush will soon be replaced by, most likely, a more typical and logical president, so his danger to the "special relationship" will likely recede. And Israel will return to the quiet comfort of its mostly one sided "special relationship." And this is precisely the problem. Israel depends on its relationship with the United States; its partner needs Israel far less. And in time, when the oil runs dry or cheap alternative energy comes of age, its American patron may well need Israel not at all. It is towards that day for which Israel must prepare.


Responses:

1 Scott USA, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
As indicated in the Bible, During the time of Jacob's Trouble, Israel will be betrayed and it will be the USA that betrays Israel because we are Israel's only current supporter. If Obama is elected, he is Pro-Arab. Israel must look out for their own interests - no one else will.
2 CiFMmsrm, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008

Perhaps an Obama victory will have a silver lining: Israel will stop being afraid of the US president and start ignoring his orders.

3 Michael Groves Texas United States, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
There are some of us that support Israel period. Oil in the ground or not some of us believe that Israel right to exsist is worth dieing or killing for. The "letter" sent to Assad sounds more like political propaganda. Not all Americans are oil starved cowboys.

4 Ron - Oshawa - Ontario - Canada, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
Christians in US & Canada have always supported and prayed for Israel. What I don't understand is why the majority of Jewish voters in US voted for Obama and generally vote Democrat. Don't they understand that Chrsitians are conservatives and not liberal or Democrat ? Don't they understand that Consevatives/Christians believe in biblical prohecy ? Don't they realize the future role of Israel and Jerusalem is to be the capital of the world ? The word will go forth from Jerusalem and he shall rule with a rod of iron. WHY THE DISCONNECT ???? PLEASE EXPLAIN !!!!

5 David Turner, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
With understanding and appreciation that many Christians living in the US today are supporters of a Jewish state, to appreciate why Jews tend to vote the way we do it is necessary to take a longer view of Christian-Jewish relations. For nearly two thousand years Jews living in Diaspora have been subjected to discrimination, persecution and mass murder by our neighbors in the west. Antisemitism was rife throughout the west, not just Germany, etc, but also the US. In the years of the Holocaust Jews fleeing death were turned away by our country also.

Our history has helped shape us culturally and politically. Perhaps we are, as a result of long experience, more sensitive than others to unjust suffering of individuals and minorities. It is not that we vote as a bloc; rather we tend towards empathy, and vote conscience. This also goes a way in explaining why Jews are over-represented in the so-called “helping professions,” such as medicine, psychotherapy and social work.