The Jerusalem Post has an interesting piece up in which longtime Israel supporters Dennis Ross and Alan Dershowitz say that Obama is great on Israel and he would bomb Iran if necessary, and they’re both voting for Obama, and the recent tensions between Obama and Netanyahu are meaningless.
Translation: Obama is going to win; let there be no daylight between the US and Israel.
Two months ago Eli Lake reported that Dennis Ross was going to be neutral in this election. Now the Post says he’s supporting Obama. He wants to make sure the two countries are still in lockstep. JPost:
Dennis Ross and Alan Dershowitz, high-profile supporters of both Israel and US President Barack Obama, told The Jerusalem Post Thursday they were confident the president would support Israel should it attack Iran in a last-ditch effort to stop a nuclear bomb, and that Obama would attack Iran himself if necessary….
Dershowitz, who has in the pass criticized elements of Obama’s policies in the Middle East, said the public exchange of differences between the two allies that included Obama not giving Netanyahu a meeting while he is in the US next week had been “mishandled.” But he was encouraged by the hour-long conversation between Obama and Netanyahu last week to smooth over the dust-up.
Ross acknowledged that “there are some differences now” between the US and Israel, but he added that a “genuine effort is being made to manage those.” He also said that if Israel felt it faced an existential threat and had to use force to stop Iran, the US would support it doing so.
“The US as its one true ally in the world needs to be there and will be there. I have no doubt of that, regardless of who’s president,” Ross said.
I put these statements in the same category as Martin Indyk and Jeffrey Goldberg saying that Obama will bomb Iran if it comes to it. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz scolding the Republicans over politicizing the Israel issue, saying that there has never been and never will be daylight between the two countries. The great fear among Israel supporters is that because Netanyahu took Obama on, when Obama wins it will be a huge power loss for the Israel lobby. I predict that the Israelis will toss out Netanyahu for this reason. They have to end the daylight between the two countries that blundering Netanyahu has introduced. And then they will push for what Dershowitz pushes for in that JPost piece, a Palestinian state, so as to preserve Israel. That’s going to be interesting.
My own hope is that the “no daylight” meme will die. Of course there is daylight. The idea that there is no daylight is phony baloney code for “no has permission to discuss differences in public,” which is un-American, and a recipe for disaster. Netanyahu should fall, the Lobby should have its wings clipped, the press should throw off its tabus and report the news, and democracy will amble forward again. Right now, hate-mongers continue to goad both sides into a clash of civilizations. Here’s my suggestion for a sign on buses: Whenever hate-mongers promote a clash of civilizations, throw them under the bus.
Is Dennis Ross a great supporter of the president? He has been influential in administrations of all political colors.
The question you should ask yourself is rather this:
Can Dennis Ross read the polls, especially in the wake of the 47% debacle?
The entire lobby is now gearing up for an inevitable Obama victory.
Bibi knows it’s too late to re-saddle for him.
But the lobby always have had democratic hands, who used to whisper that Obama isn’t pro-Israel enough(or in Dershowitz’s case, call him Neville Chamberlain), read to pounce on the moment that an Obama victory started to seem highly likely.
And the moment has arrived.
Remember, this is the effect of their much vaunted ‘bipartisan support’.
No matter which party loses in November, the lobby always wins.
That’s how they operate.
There is no daylight. Just the darkness of military Zionism, a curse on the region.
Perhaps this thinking also explains Haim Saban’s much delayed (and much reduced) campaign contribution.
Saban gave $1 million to Unity Pac at the end of June, and he wrote a pro-Obama op-ed this month. In the 2002 election he gave $10.5 million.
the US power-players in the Lobby are circling the wagons all right … anyone else see Z-Big (I think on CNN) bring up the USS Liberty attack and say “we don’t want another incident like that” ??