Clintonite turns on Netanyahu for trying to bend US ‘to his will’

A couple more signs that Israel is in hot water even inside the US Democratic establishment.

First, former ambassador Marc Ginsberg is a Clintonite who is highly supportive of Israel (back in summer, here he was, cheerleading the Gaza slaughter). Now Israel’s latest settlement plans have turned his stomach. “Netanyahu is invariably dragging Israel onto the wrong side of history,” he writes at Huffpo. And worse, Netanyahu is endangering the special relationship:

When it comes to the US, Netanyahu is playing a very dangerous game that will never serve Israel in the long run. Calculating he can bend Israel’s most essential of relationships to his will at whatever cost to the relationship, he is playing with fire.

So Ginsberg wants action. “It’s high time for the White House to stop complaining about settlements, and start doing something tangible about them.” Ginsberg’s answer is fairly timid: end the tax deductions for American donations to settlements:

Something must be done to curb this runaway train. So if the Israeli Government won’t voluntarily hear the growing crescendo of criticism, it’s high time to make it hear where it matters most — in the pocketbook.

Let’s start focusing on international and American “philanthropies’ that fund these settlements and fund the Yesher Council — the Israeli settlers lobbying group. Innocuous sounding organizations such as “Friends of Ir David Foundation” or the more well-recognized World Zionist Organization, funnel hundreds of millions of tax-deductible dollars to directly fund illegal settlements — making Americans unwitting subsidizers of those who take a tax deduction from these donations — no matter that it is in contravention to established American policy.

Ginsberg’s words echo those of the longtime Conservative British M.P. and supporter of Israel, Sir Richard Ottaway, who also lost it over the latest settlement announcement (“I have to say to the Government of Israel that if they are losing people like me, they will be losing a lot of people”). Like Ottaway, Ginsberg sees Israel’s image changing, rapidly:

If Netanyahu isn’t worried, Israelis should be. With its international standing rapidly eroding, and calls for more punishing economic boycotts against Israel’s incendiary occupation, younger Israelis — the future foundation of the state — are increasingly calling it quits. In 2013 alone, more than double the Israelis quit Israel than in 2012.

Let’s talk about the wrong side of history: the absence of liberal democracy in Israel, which is fueling the young people’s exodus.

Here’s another sign. Joshua Muravchik is a longtime Israel booster. Here he goes after John Judis for his book on Truman and asks, “Can mainstream American liberalism be turned against Israel?” Apparently the answer is Yes. Judis’s magazine, the New Republic is shifting on Israel in a scary manner, says Muravchik:

Now, it is being repositioned once again, in an era when the Left has mostly trained its guns on the smaller quarry of Israel rather than on America. Should the magazine and, much more importantly, the broader liberal world turn from the tradition of Truman to that of [Henry] Wallace—that is, should it absorb the attitudes of the radical left—Israel will surely get the short end.

Yes the left is solidifying on this issue, and Marty Peretz’s old firewall for containing the left– liberals denounce the Vietnam war, but cheerlead the Six Day war– is falling apart.

Update on my last line. Originally I wrote that Peretz’s firewall was at The New Republic. I stand corrected; Peretz affirmed that stance in Ramparts, along with Michael Walzer. (“Israel is not Vietnam.” Zionists are not colonialists because they did not exploit indigenous labor, ala the Algerians and South Africans.)