This article by US transplant Herb Keinon says it all. Israel is a domestic issue. Of course we never see a story that connects the dots so explicitly in the American press, for anyone to read: that Obama’s arduous "charm offensive" on Israel (do you really want to have lunch with Elie Wiesel?) is all about domestic considerations, including Jewish money.
The tone of these meetings and speeches was markedly different than the tenor of the US-Israeli relationship over the previous few months, with Emanuel telling the rabbis that the US had “screwed up” the messaging about its support for Israel over the last 14 months.
So what happened? Why the sudden change of heart and tone?
Which brings us back to Kissinger’s observation about domestic policies being the engine behind Israeli foreign policy. What’s true in Israel is also true in the US.
As one source that was on the receiving end of the Obama administration’s outreach put it, the administration has changed its tone because it is “worried about losing the Jews.”
Recent polls show why. Despite J Street surveys which, if the Obama administration relied exclusively on them, would conclude that the majority of US Jews were just fine with Obama’s polices on Israel, two polls released a few days after each other last month demonstrated the opposite.
A national Quinnipiac University survey released on April 22 found that 67 percent of American Jews (and 44% of the general public) disapprove of Obama’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, with only 28% approving (35% of the general public).
And a McLaughlin & Associates poll from April 14 found that only 42% of Jewish voters said they would re-elect Obama, while 46% said they would consider voting for someone else. This is significant considering that, according to exit polls from the November 2008 election, 78% of Jewish voters voted for Obama.
But beyond voting, Jews are also huge contributors to the Democratic Party. The Hill, a Washington-based newspaper that covers Congress and political campaigns, quotes sources as saying that Jews make up 25%-50 percent of those who give $25,000 or more to the party each election cycle. While obviously Israel is not the prime issue for all or even most of these heavy contributors, if it is a determining factor for even five or 10 percent, that is a significant amount of money.
…beyond the “message problem” there are indeed fundamental conceptual differences between how the Israel and the US view regional reality.
While the Americans genuinely seem to believe that if you solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, you will take a club out of the Iranians’ hand which they use to instigate the Arab world; Israel feels that you cannot solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue without first neutralizing Iran.
The domestic aspect of our foreign policy has been true since Harry Truman invited Clark Clifford into a meeting with Secretary of State George C Marshall to discuss recognizing Israel as a state, which enraged Marshall since Clifford had nothing to do with foreign policy. Marshall, of course, opposed recognition and told Truman he would vote against him in the next election if he went ahead and did, since Marshall was concerned about the Arab backlash. As payment for that, the Zionists have done what they could to erase Marshall’s name from history and it is hard to find any reference to him outside of the Marshall Plan in today’s high school textbooks. That he was Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff in WW 2 is now but a footnote in history.
