Obama versus Netanyahu
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Various commentators, including Israel’s former US ambassador Zalman Shoval, have pooh-poohed the current crisis in US-Israeli relations. Zalmon disagrees with Israeli envoy Michael Oren’s reported contention that this crisis may lead to a “reassessment” of ties between the two counties comparable to that of the Ford administration of 1975. Allow me to offer a more revealing and realistic view of the subject.
As is well known to political scientists going back to Aristotle, tyrants often distract their people from economic poverty or some other discontent by stirring up fear of war or resentment toward another country. Middle East despots use Israel as a convenient scapegoat for their domestic problems. What is not well known, however, is that such a ploy has often been used by American presidents.
Thus, if their domestic program is failing and their approval rating is falling, American presidents will seek to restore public support by some dramatic accomplishment abroad. This is especially true an election year.
For example, in June preceding the 1972 presidential election, when his domestic program was not blossoming, President Richard Nixon concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union (SALT II), even though diverse experts warned that the terms of the agreement dangerously favored the communist regime.
We can expect President Barak Obama to follow this example more readily than Nixon, and for three basic reasons.
First, the American economy has suffered a disastrous meltdown, and there is no sign that Obama or his Democratic administration will overcome this malaise—certainly not before the midterm congressional elections of November 2010.
Second, and as indicated by former UN ambassador John Bolton, Obama has been pursuing from the very outset of his regime a post-American foreign policy—some would say a pro-Islamic foreign policy. His bowing to Saudi King Abdullah, his “outreach” to Iran (though unsuccessful), and his benign attitude toward actual and attempted Muslim terrorist attacks in the United States should be viewed in this light.
Third, more than his predecessors, Obama is personally committed to the establishment of a Palestinian, i.e., Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria. Hence, and as he has already done via his Middle East envoy John Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama will not hesitate to create one crisis after another with Israel—today over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement of Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem.
That this issue seems to preoccupy Obama more than Iran’s development of nuclear weapons may be true, and, if so, it may be indicative of a befuddled president lacking any sense of strategic priorities. It would be more prudent, however, to regard Obama as an ideologue who has cast his lot with the devil.
Enter Obama’s White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and his cynical statement, “You never want a crisis to go to waste.” One does not have to be a rocket scientist to infer from this cynicism that the Obama administration will put the screws to the Netanyahu government with the intention of toppling it.
Hence, let us not be disarmed by those who pooh-pooh the current US-Israel crisis. The road ahead is going to be more than bumpy, especially if Netanyahu acts like a rabbit rather than a statesman.
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