Joe Biden is showing up his former boss, Barack Obama, in a key area of foreign policy. He has decided to have no public daylight between the United States and Israel, in the political interests of himself and the new Israeli government.
The strategy helps explain why Biden has had very little public criticism of Israel, while apparently jawboning the government behind the scenes to rein in its actions. And in turn why the new Naftali Bennett government in Israel has tried to defuse sources of international outrage by going slow on the continued illegal settlement of Palestinian lands. Even as the outrages quietly continue.
Lahav Harkov, diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, explained Biden’s approach in an interview with an Israel lobby group, the Israel Policy Forum. Harkov referred to a famous incident early in the Obama presidency that surely came to haunt the young president for his entire administration, when Obama reportedly said he wanted to put “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel.
In June 2009, Obama gave his big speech in Cairo and declared that the settlements must end and so must the “intolerable” “humiliations” of Palestinians. Then in July he met at the White House with concerned Jewish leaders. Here is the Washington Post‘s account, per CNN:
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Obama, “If you want Israel to take risks, then its leaders must know that the United States is right next to them.”
“Look at the past eight years,” Obama said, according to the Post. “During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.”
Obama had misread the political map. The Jewish organizations and Benjamin Netanyahu had more political sway on these issues than he did, and Netanyahu took on the new “daylight” understanding “with gusto,” as Harkov says, repeatedly embarrassing and humbling the president. Obama had to eat his words as he started up his campaign for a second term, ultimately vetoing a UN Security Council resolution condemning the settlements.
Now Biden and Bennett want to bring U.S.-Israel relations “back on track to what it was before Netanyahu and Obama were on a collision course,” Harkov says, “trying to show a very strong U.S.-Israel alliance and keeping disagreements behind closed doors when possible.”
Israel’s leaders and Biden share an interest: keeping Israel a “bipartisan” issue in the U.S., with support from both political parties. That keeps the money and diplomatic support flowing to Israel, and also shuts progressive Democrats out of policy-making so that the Democratic Party doesn’t split openly over Israel, just at the edge. “The plan is to get the relations with the majority of the Democratic Party back on track,” Harkov says.
Good luck. The progressive base demands change on Israel. And the atrocities never end. And progressive Democratic congresspeople are again speaking out against the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem.
Barack Obama was right; Israel will only change its conduct with outside pressure. It just never happens…
Israeli leaders are also hoping to keep the American Jewish community on Israel’s side as in years gone by. Both Bennett and his Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have the “idea that all Jews are brothers, we are one big family, and even when we disagree we should feel connected to one another,” Harkov says. Yes good luck on that, too; young American Jews endorse the human rights reports calling Israel an apartheid state.
I don’t think Biden’s strategy will work in the end. There is just too much evidence of Palestinian persecution in plain sight for the left not to demand official response from the U.S. government. Like Israeli soldiers shooting at a Palestinian child in occupied Hebron. Or thuggish Jewish settlers stealing Palestinians’ homes out from under them in Jerusalem.
Then there is the U.S. reestablishing a consulate general in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians, something that the Trump administration removed in a symbolic slap to the Palestinians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised in late May after meeting with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah to reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem.
Harkov says that Israel is pushing to have the consulate general as far from Jerusalem as possible–in Ramallah, or in Abu Dis, which is inside Israel’s large municipal boundary for Jerusalem but outside the separation wall. So Israel wants to strip Palestinians, who have lived on this land for centuries, and regarded Jerusalem as their spiritual center, from any real connection with the heart of the country.
“Certainly [Abu Dis] would be a better option as far as Israel is concerned dealing with sovereignty issues in Jerusalem,” says Harkov, who says that she years ago interviewed for the job of government spokesperson for Israel. As she is being interviewed by an Israel lobby group. And of course no Palestinian was on the call to say what they think of a capital for a supposed Palestinian state in the West Bank.
So the Biden administration is seeking to strengthen and protect an Israeli government that is dedicated to preserving apartheid, in order to prevent political damage inside the Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party is still closely aligned with the Israel lobby here. I can only imagine what Democratic Party policy would be like if the lobby did not have such influence inside the U.S.
Meanwhile, the Brookings Institution has posted an essay by Shibley Telhami suggested putting the max daylight between the U.S. and Israel:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/06/11/america-must-rethink-its-unique-and-contradictory-advocacy-of-israels-jewishness/
“America must rethink its unique and contradictory advocacy of Israel’s Jewishness…What is remarkable is that commentators saw the advocacy of equal rights for Palestinians as unusual — but not Washington’s unique advocacy of Israel’s Jewishness, which has become second nature. The latter went practically unnoticed, as did the inherent contradictions in advocating for democracy and equality, on the one hand, and the Jewishness of Israel, on the other — which, by definition (and law), provides lesser rights to its non-Jewish citizens.”
It was unforgivable that Biden did not speak out and condemn the excessive force Israel once again resorted to, by sending precision bombs into civilian homes that wiped out entire families, bombing of medical facilities including the only COVID testing site, and of a media building for no credible reason, but as we know it was to silence the media coverage and prevent the entire world witnessing the brutality and viciousness as it always displays when assaulting Gaza. By not uttering one word of condemnation publicly, Biden signaled to the world that he was going along with all the war crimes Israel. What is the point of “rebuking” Israel in private, when it does not help our image in the world? We are known for supporting Israel, sending it aid, the weapons it uses to slaughter civilians in the neighborhood, and protect it from international condemnation.
Biden is yet another American president, that seems to be in Israel’s control, anyway you look at it.
They control America and we know it.
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“Lapid recognized in Rome that ‘In the past few years, mistakes were made…’ “He added, ‘Israel’s bipartisan standing was hurt. We will fix those mistakes together.’
“President Joe Biden surely could not be happier to have an Israeli foreign minister pursuing colonial policies more diplomatically than the more abrasive Netanyahu and his representatives. Quiet, not justice, is what Biden is pursuing.
“The president, rightly, entered office thinking little of the prospects for peace negotiations. But he’s also unwilling to stand up to Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory and is perfectly content to run over Congress to re-arm Israel with precisely the same weaponry used in May to kill Palestinian families in their homes.
“The Biden administration is also failing to reverse course on President Donald Trump’s efforts to normalize illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“Additionally, the Biden administration has indicated it is sticking with the Trump administration’s signing off on Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.
“A previous State Department comment to The Washington Free Beacon was less clear. The new statement suggests the Biden administration has caved before the stridently anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab Free Beacon.
“In recent years, we have repeatedly seen Israeli and American leaders stress ‘economic opportunities’ over political freedom for Palestinians.
“Biden, as usual, made a nod toward the two-state solution with no specific mention of illegal settlement activity or Israel’s discriminatory policies.
“On 23 June, 73 members of Congress did write Biden urging him to change direction by withdrawing the Trump administration’s highly biased ‘peace plan’ – which even they put in quotation marks.
“They also suggested making clear that ‘the United States considers settlements to be inconsistent with international law by reissuing relevant State Department and US customs guidance to that effect.’ And they rightly urged Biden to ‘strongly oppose the forced expulsion via eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem and throughout Palestinian territory…’
I hope the issue of “daylight” – a measure of the distance between the governments of Israel and the US – will serve to forever subvert the use of the Zionist whataboutery question that goes something like this: Why do Israel’s critics always only pick on Israel to alter its policies and actions vis a vis the Palestinians when there are so many other places in the world with even worse human rights records?
The answer is that no other country in the entire arc of American history has ever been as deeply insinuated into the political culture of the US as is Israel. The answer we should supply if this obnoxious attempt to distract from Israel’s horrendous policies is ever raised again is: It is not that Israel’s regime of oppression is unique in the world: The central issue for progressive Americans is that the independence of the American political system has been compromised by Zionism’s self-serving intimacy with the US’s political culture. Moreover, the absence of daylight implicates the US morally in Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian lands and its Apartheid policies.
Consider that none of the countries that Zionists routinely mention as worse examples of human rights violations – China, North Korea, Russia, Syria, et. al., have the ability to get “82 Congressional signatures on a napkin in 24 hours”. No other country has ever had Nancy Pelosi admit publicly that within her party there exists a “Jewish cardinal” (Debbie Wasserman Schultz) who is consulted prior to any final decisions on legislation related to Israel.
The Left must continue to demand bright, abundant and permanent “daylight” in US-Israel relations. This is the only way to address the undemocratic and self-destructive effects highlighted by George Washington in his Farewell Address on this very subject: “The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
Q: Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to raise this point or to fail to raise it?
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Regrettably, so far it seems that Biden is in “Israel”s pocket:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/democrats-compound-mistakes-arming-israel
“Democrats compound ‘mistakes’ by arming Israel”
Michael F. Brown Power Suits 3 July7/21, Electronic Intifada.
EXCERPTS:
“Antony Blinken & Yair Lapid advance US 7 Israeli policy objectives in Rome as the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Jerusalem continues.” Reuters
“Israeli military violence is temporarily more out of sight – as is, for Washington, the far more concerning retaliatory Palestinian rocket fire – & so for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken the absence of Palestinian freedom is out of mind. He’s not going to stand up for Palestinian rights, nor will his boss in the White House.
“Ethnic cleansing in the Silwan area of occupied East Jerusalem isn’t going to create a stir in Washington unless it leads to disproportionate military exchanges between Israel and Gaza as was the case during May, when tensions in Sheikh Jarrah rose. Indeed, Democrats in the US Congress are scarcely paying any heed to the fate of Silwan’s Palestinian residents as day to day apartheid is simply business as usual.
“Just a few members of Congress have mentioned Silwan by name, including specific tweets from Jesús ‘Chuy’ García, André Carson, Ayanna Pressley & Mark Pocan.
“Blinken met Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, last Sunday in Rome. The secretary of state apparently made no reference to Silwan or to Palestinians’ apartheid reality, though he did cite US support for Israeli security.
“Blinken tweeted: ‘We discussed the strong partnership between Israel & the United States, our commitment to Israel’s security, & our support for regional normalization efforts.’
“Lapid, who is supposed to fix Israel’s relationship with those Democrats who disliked the insults directed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at President Barack Obama over Iran policy & mild protestations regarding Palestinian rights, again admitted to Israel’s suffering relationship with the Democratic Party.
“The deterioration, it should be noted, is largely with more recent additions to the US Congress & not with Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, & foreign policy leaders such as Bob Menendez & Gregory Meeks. (cont’d)