Last week Adam picked up the Landrum Bolling interviews showing that realists are getting impatient with the piecemeal steps in the "peace process" and want a breakthrough by American leadership– talk to Hamas, now. Well this impatience is growing in other camps too. In Haaretz, Zvi Bar’el calls on Obama to come out with a big-picture solution of the conflict, rather than just a settlement freeze, because that’s going to be another dead-end, of endless confidence-building measures. And Dan Fleshler, author of a new book on the Israel lobby and a longtime consultant inside the Jewish peace camp, says leftleaning Jews should also express their impatience with the incrementalism of the Obama administration. Fleshler:
What do these arguments portend for the pro-Israel peace camp in America (J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Ameinu, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, etc)? We have focused on justifying the Obama team’s insistence on steps that, in the grand scheme of things, are actually very small. Some very wise men are telling us that we are wasting a lot of energy, much like the Obama administration. It is time to ponder carefully what they are saying, and to evaluate the wisdom of retaining a blind, hopeful faith in this administration’s Middle East policies, and of reflexively supporting whatever it wants us to support
It’s time for the Jimmy Carter/Brzezinski realists and the leftleaning Jews to get together, and make a powerful combination.
Some very wise men are telling us that we are wasting a lot of energy, much like the Obama administration.
I don’t think this view is completely accurate. I think President Obama has played a masterful role in nudging forward an already unfolding process. I hypothesize that his objective right now is to change the political environment in which this struggle takes place, preconditioning the political battlefield, and will ‘start a battle’ only when he is good and ready, on his terms when the chance of victory is high. Any premature challenge to the Lobby leading to defeat will gut his presidency, and there is far too much else at stake.
All of his actions thus far have been small enough to avoid serving as a focus point for the Lobby to make a call to ‘rally around the flag’ and credibly attack him. Events are moving more quickly than they have ever before. While impatience from advocates of a genuine peace process, heady with relative success, is understandable, the reality is that those opposed to it, the current leadership of the Lobby and the entire Israeli political establishment, are still too strong to take down head on.
Individual support for the Lobby has eroded, but it is unlikely that its financial power, the amount of money that pro-colonization extremists are willing to pony up to reward the acquiescent and punish the uncooperative in Congress, has diminished. One step remains before battle can be joined in earnest: adequate dissolution of the utility of the application of this weapon. No amount of sufficiently politically toxic money can buy influence.
I am not so sure that the traditional abstraction of Presidential political capital being highest at the beginning of a term and steadily diminishing is valid in this case. The political dynamic appears increasingly favorable. Time is not on the side of the Lobby’s current leadership. President Obama doesn’t need to feed Israeli racists, who are alienating increasing numbers of American Jews, rope with which to hang themselves. They are yanking it as hard as they can. All he needs to do is make sure there are no kinks in the spool to slow them down.
some data:
State Department official calls on Israel to sign Non-Proliferation Treaty
As far as I can recall, President Obama didn’t even have to denounce his subordinate’s announcement. Lobby extremists look pretty silly attacking a call to hold Israel to standards that are still obviously very much biased in Israel’s favor.
Netanyahu defies Obama on Israeli settlement freeze
The Lobby cannot credibly peddle the view that a mere call for a freeze in colony expansion is radical when everyone with half a brain cell knows that vastly more will be required for preservation of Israel as a Jewish state. Even Israeli ‘doves’ would look foolish making such a claim in the current political climate.
Obama and Israel’s Military: Still Arm-in-Arm
“Currently, Obama is on record supporting sending up to $30 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel over the next 10 years. Such a total would represent a 25% increase in the already large-scale arms shipments to Israeli forces under the Bush administration.” President Obama’s increase in military subsidies to Israel preempts claims that he is endangering Israeli security.
Obama is showing no signs he actually wants change in the Middle East. This can only mean he want to assure an 8 year office term. Obama is for his 0wn family first, and for all blacks second. That is the pivot of all his tactics and strategies.
While you apparently think of prioritization in terms of some racial hierarchy, I see no evidence to ascribe such bigotry to Obama. Quite the contrary, I see many indicators that Obama wants to bring change in the Middle East for the benefit of the world at large, those Colin listed being notable examples. Granted, those are small steps rather than radical changes, but one can’t rightly expect to cook frog by throwing it in boiling watter.
Your political analysis on this is amateurish to my mind.
The Fleshler article implies that Obama’s policies end at realizing a settlement freeze (a very important step), and that that isn’t far enough.
“Reflexively”. Thats a statement about the peace groups attitudes, which I don’t think represents their reality. Support is an accurate term. “Reflexively” is a misrepresentative word.
And, what alternative is proposed? Specifics.
Easy to whine.