Fresh from meeting the president, Abe Foxman is reassured that he reached out to Jewish leaders. But he says in the Jerusalem Post that Carter erred by pushing peace in the Middle East, and so is Obama erring. I guess we can wait another 30 years of more colonization and dispossession? Even Foxman is reading the tea leaves, knows that the U.S. political class is all that Israel's got. Speak, Abe:
Still, I continue to sense that the administration is putting too
much weight on solving the conflict. We all want to see progress and I
have no problem with the administration view that the US must be much
more engaged to achieve progress. But I am concerned when expectations
rise dramatically, as when the president says that he expects the
problem to be resolved in two years.
Going
back to the Carter administration and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the idea of
a comprehensive agreement as the centerpiece of American interests in
the Middle East invariably led to undue pressure on Israel, a strain in
US-Israel relations, without real progress toward peace. This is
because the Arab world then, and now, hasn't been ready to reach an
agreement and, if there is a determination at all costs to get there,
the tendency is to blame Israel for the stalemate. Once such a process
begins, arguments about whether Israel truly serves American interests
come into play.
Finally, I worry about perceptions arising
from these assumptions. Anti-Israel forces around the world, those who
engage in boycotts, resolutions and propaganda believe they have
largely triumphed everywhere but in America. Now right or wrong,
because of the lack of clarity coming from the administration, they
sense a unique opportunity to separate America from Israel.
