Netanyahu just humiliated Biden (again) but Biden will do nothing

Joe Biden was just humiliated by Benjamin Netanyahu yet again. Biden went out of his way last week to warn Netanyahu not to go ahead with a law to gut the power of Israeli courts. He even called Tom Friedman into the White House to get the message to American Jewish supporters of Israel — I’m telling Netanyahu not to do this.

Netanyahu went ahead and did it anyway.

And what will be the consequences? Nothing, say three leading Israel advocates. Biden won’t dare to spend any political capital to take on Netanyahu.

The neoconservative Max Boot said in a media briefing on the crisis by the Council on Foreign Relations that Biden ought to discuss reducing aid to Israel– as even centrist Zionists are now saying— but he won’t. Because he fears Republicans who have Netanyahu’s back. Boot:

While there have been calls to limit or scale back U.S. military aid to Israel including by Martin [Indyk], which I think definitely needs to be on the table, there is no indication that Biden himself is planning to go there…. This may be the right thing to do for the longterm reset of the U.S. Israel relationship, but I don’t think it’s going to achieve very much in terms of the current outcome in the Knesset…

Part of why Netanyahu is willing to be so confrontational with Biden, is he feels very secure with his backing on Republicans on the Hill, who have basically adopted an Israel right or wrong position. They are indifferent to the menace that Netanyahu poses to democracy.

Aaron David Miller writes in Foreign Policy that “although Netanyahu is annoying the hell out of him, Biden’s inclination is not to confront but to find some way to accommodate.”

Biden’s effort to sway Netanyahu last week was “unique in the annals of U.S. interventions in Israeli politics,” Miller says. But Biden won’t follow through and take the prime minister on, because he has “learned some hard lessons on the perils of taking a more confrontational approach toward Netanyahu.”

Those include President Obama quarreling with Netanyahu over the likely borders of a Palestinian state in 2011 and then backing down, after Netanyahu lectured him. And Biden as vice president arriving in Israel in 2010 just as the government announced new settlements. (Biden swallowed that one too.)

Michael Koplow has a similar analysis at Israel Policy Forum. Biden quickly turned the other cheek over the latest defiance, including signaling his willingness to meet Netanyahu:

Anyone hoping for a revolution in U.S.-Israel relations is going to be disappointed. Irrespective of Biden’s obvious frustration and his efforts to get Netanyahu to shift course, his restrained reaction to Monday’s vote was a clear signal that he has no intention of overturning the apple cart. The White House’s statement following the reasonableness law’s passage described it as “unfortunate,” and the National Security Council dubbed the debates over the law—and by definition all of the associated upheaval—as “a healthy part of a vibrant democracy.” In the course of a White House briefing on Monday recapping President Isaac Herzog’s visit to the U.S., an NSC official reconfirmed that Biden and Netanyahu will meet before the end of the year.

The Biden administration is not going to rethink its stance on security assistance to Israel because of the judicial overhaul, and it is also not going to react with punitive measures. The White House’s reaction and much of Congress’ reaction will look no different than past U.S.-Israel disputes, where there is a period of tension marked by slightly more heated rhetoric but little beyond verbal disagreements.

Boot, Miller, and Koplow all say that Netanyahu has damaged the U.S.-Israel relationship in profound ways that will have a lasting impact. The widespread belief in the U.S. that Israel is a democracy has been shattered. The next generation of Democrats has little regard for Israel. Young Jews say Israel is an apartheid state.

“If you care about the future of Israel and the future of the US-Israel alliance,
Boot says, “I think Israel is headed in a very dangerous direction by aligning so closely with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and alienating a lot of the other sectors of American public opinion. I think that’s going to be very bad for Israel going down the road.”

The awareness that Israel just took a grievous step is now staggering the Israel lobby. We have seen establishment organizations criticize the Israeli government that almost never do– the Jewish Federations, the ADL, the American Jewish Committee. And Netanyahu showed contempt for them too.

“This is a very dark day for Israel and a very momentous time in its history, unprecedented and deeply disturbing,” Martin Indyk said on that CFR briefing.

Several Israel supporters are now calling for a cutoff in aid. Max Boot is the latest to urge such a reset, in part because Netanyahu is fostering violence in the West Bank. “I argue that Netanyahu is the biggest security threat Israel faces,” Boot says.

Bret Stephens in the New York Times calls the judicial move a “self-inflicted wound,” and says that Israel is “doing so much worse to itself” than the BDS campaign. Including the BDS of major companies leaving Israel.

A group of liberal Zionist organizations, including J Street and New Israel Fund, has called on Biden to do more to protect good Israel from its own government. Though it’s not at all clear what they want Biden to do to redeem Israel:

We welcome the expressions of deep concern coming from US elected officials – in the White House, on Capitol Hill and throughout the nation – as well as similar reactions by US Jewish organizations, including ones that seldom publicly criticize the government of Israel. We urge the Biden administration, Congress, other elected officials and opinion leaders, as well as fellow US Jewish organizations, to help protect Israel from the irresponsible actions of its current government.

There are also obviously efforts afoot to get the lobby back together so that Democrats are not tempted to stray off the reservation.

Jonathan Greenblatt and Ted Deutch, the heads of the ADL and American Jewish Committee, have all-but ignored the Israeli political crisis and been tweeting about the Biden administration’s efforts to fight antisemitism.

Martin Indyk, Tom Friedman, and Aaron David Miller have all been promoting a supposed forthcoming normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, negotiated by the U.S., in which Israel promises not to annex more portions of the West Bank. “Full peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” Indyk said excitedly on that CFR briefing. (Aaron David Miller is not impressed by these claims, writing in Foreign Policy that a deal “is a long way off.”)

My biggest criticism of all these statements is that they leave out the power of the Israel lobby itself. That is surely Biden’s greatest concern, the domestic political power of donors and influencers, epitomized by Tom Friedman, Jonathan Greenblatt, and J Street too. When Obama took on Netanyahu in 2011 over the West Bank, he backed down because American Jewish organizations descended on the White House, and Obama’s top foreign policy aide says he was “given a list of leading Jewish donors to call, to reassure them of Obama’s pro-Israel bona fides.”

The organized power of the Jewish community in support of the Israeli government is the reason that Biden won’t do anything. And idealistic Jews need to take that power on explicitly, for everyone’s good.