Jerry Slater has a fine piece in the Buffalo News that applauds the Goldstone report, implicitly calls for sanctions, and analyzes Obama’s climbdown. There was a popular line when Walt and Mearsheimer first hit, that the Israel lobby has a stranglehold on Congress but doesn’t affect the presidency. Slater shows that this is absurd. Emphasis mine:
There are a number of signs that Obama is essentially continuing the failed policies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and other previous presidents. First, most of his appointments have gone to down-the-line supporters of Israeli policies, including Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose future political ambitions make it unlikely that she will want to take on the “pro-Israel” forces…
Obama is rapidly returning to traditional U. S. policies, which amount either to essentially unconditional U. S. support of whatever Israel does or, at most, weak hand-wringing — for example, “the settlements are an obstacle to peace” — unaccompanied by any firm measures and therefore routinely disregarded by Israel. Indeed, Obama already has made it known that U. S. diplomatic and military aid to Israel will not be used as leverage to get the Netanyahu government to agree to end the occupation and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Therefore, there is no chance that it will.
What accounts for Obama’s reversals? The most obvious explanation is that Obama is giving priority to his ambitious domestic agenda and rightly fears that real pressure on Israel would backfire in Congress, where it is likely that some key members would, in effect, hold their support for Obama’s domestic programs hostage to his Israeli policies.
… real pressure on Israel would backfire in Congress, where it is likely that some key members would, in effect, hold their support for Obama’s domestic programs hostage to his Israeli policies.
This has long been my suspicion. How can such blackmail by “key members [of Congress]” be described as anything other than treason? It is astounding that a member of the United States Congress would sabotage reforms desperately needed to prevent our nation from deteriorating into ruin, in order to maintain the flow of tribute to a tiny Middle Eastern nation in which we not only have no vital national interest, but arguably no peripheral ones either.
This is a deeper corruption. Congressmen and Senators routinely hold important legislation hostage to their own special interests. They serve the lobbies and not the people, the Israel Lobby being only a worst case in that it serves a foreign power.
It seems a bit reminiscent of the Roman Republic with its network of client states whose rulers financed Roman politicians in their election campaigns, one of them commenting that Rome had become a city for sale.
I think Slater’s analysis is correct, but opposition at this level could have and should have been anticipated. Could not Rahm Emanuel, expert vote-counter (assuming that he agreed with O’s position on settlements and two states) have foreseen this? And Obama is probably in a much worse position for having tried and failed–giving a nice speech in Cairo, appointing Mitchell–and demonstrating to the world that Bibi is his boss.
Obama by the way completely ignores the growing group in Congress which is actively committed to a two-state agenda.
Scott McConnell wrote:
“I think Slater’s analysis is correct, but opposition at this level could have and should have been anticipated.”
Perhaps, but it’s one thing to anticipate it and another to successful thwart it, and what better a way than having Rahm as your CoS?
Not that Obama drafted Rahm with Israel in mind and to thwart what Slater says is happening, but if he *can’t* thwart it *despite* having Rahm, well then….
Indeed I don’t know how you thwart this at all, at least easily: Congresspeople have *always* functioned like this, with domestic issues at least. I suppose even with some international/foreign affairs issues as well, although it may well be that now with the Israel issue it has gotten bigger and worse than before. In any event if it couldn’t be somehow thwarted before with those purely domestic issues how can you thwart it now?
I suppose the one way is for the Prez. to essentially “take on” the Congress as some have done in the past, but that’s only when Congress is held by the opposite party. Does anyone believe that Obama would take on his own party in this way? Nuts, his backbone seems to turn to pudding just thinking about Netanyahu, and he can’t even seem to discipline his own Secty’ of State to faithfully represent him.
The man is going to seem to history like a castrato if he doesn’t soon realize that to get results you sometimes have to take names and kick asses.
One of Jerry’s key points: “Contrary to repeated charges in Israel and the United States, the [Goldstone] commission in no way challenged Israel’s proclaimed cause, its right to respond to Hamas rocket or suicide attacks, but focused exclusively on its methods of ‘self-defense.’”
This fact is left out of most discussions of the Goldstone report.
And the conclusion? Israel brooks no dissent; embrace therefore your inner jihad because you will be smeared whatever the depth of your kowtows.