House Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) blasted (see below) President Obama's treatment of Israel. Politico adds (Hat Tip: Memeorandum): Indeed. The Post asked former officials and policy experts whether there is a divide between the Obama administration and the Jewish state. Below are responses from Elliott Abrams, David Makovsky, Aaron David Miller, Danielle Pletka, and Hussein Agha and Robert Malley. ELLIOTT ABRAMS Senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations The current friction in U.S.-Israel relations has one source: the mishandling of those relations by the Obama administration. Poll data show that Israel is as popular as ever among Americans. Strategically we face the same enemies -- such as terrorism and the Iranian regime -- a fact that is not lost on Americans who know we have one single reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East. The two problems that bedevil relations with Israel are Iran policy and Israeli settlements. On Iran, we say nuclear weapons would be "unacceptable" but want to rely solely on sanctions to stop them -- and administration officials go out of their way to say any use of force would be catastrophic. Not surprisingly Israelis wonder if we're serious -- and if, as is likely, sanctions prove too weak to succeed, so will many Americans. On settlements, the Obama administration demanded a 100 percent construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, something never required before even by the Palestinians as a precondition for negotiations. This stance cornered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who could demand no less, and led the U.S. administration last week to "condemn" the announcement of plans for Israeli construction that is years away. The verb "condemn" is customarily reserved by U.S. officials for acts of murder and terrorism -- not acts of housing. As this example shows, the Obama administration continues to drift away from traditional U.S. support for Israel. But time and elections will correct that problem; Israel has a higher approval rating these days than does President Obama. DAVID MAKOVSKY Distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; co-author of "Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East" Widespread editorial comment in Israel has unequivocally blasted the Israeli government for embarrassing Vice President Biden during his pitch-perfect fence-mending visit, using language far sharper than U.S. condemnation. Coupled with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's apology to Biden for the moves made by lower-ranking officials, this does not suggest a nadir of ties in which the two sides are being deliberately confrontational. While unintended and too soon to know for sure, the episode may have sparked a fresh public debate in Israel about the need to develop a more calibrated approach regarding new housing in East Jerusalem. The incident may require more fence-mending of a different sort, but it does not mark a historic low in ties. Take the critical area of Iran. One needs a scorecard to tally the number of distinct visits back and forth at the top of the national security and foreign-policy apparatus of both countries -- just in the past two months. Among those going to Israel -- apart from Biden -- were national security adviser Jim Jones; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen; CIA Director Leon Panetta; and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry. Among the Israelis coming to the United States were Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and national security adviser Uzi Arad. This does not even count lower-level working visits on this issue. Historic perspective is required. In 1956-57 and in 1975, the relationship was in deep crisis. We are not there today. AARON DAVID MILLER Public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; former Arab-Israeli peace negotiator for the State Department In his trip to Israel, Vice President Biden was served up a Jim Baker special, having to deal with a new Israeli settlement after landing in the Middle East. But the Obama administration can't seem to come up with a Jim Baker response -- a mixture of toughness and reassurance with the Israelis that would drive a coherent strategy. Caught up in tactics, the Obama team can't decide whether it wants to pander to the Israelis or punish them. Israel is still a small country that feels it's living on the knife's edge. Any American who doesn't get this doesn't get very far. Yet neither do those who aren't tough when necessary. Just ask Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter or Baker, the only three Americans to ever produce anything in Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Each made clear that there was a cost to saying no to the superpower, and in the process they advanced American, Israeli and Arab interests. Last year, President Obama wasn't reassuring or tough. He called for an unrealistic comprehensive freeze on settlements, including natural growth, and then backed down when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said no, as any Israeli leader would have. Fighting with the Israelis needs to be worthwhile and part of a strategy to reach an Arab-Israeli agreement. Going after settlements piecemeal will fail. Instead, if Obama is serious, he'll focus on borders first, and if he succeeds, he'll take a crack at Jerusalem and refugees. A conflict-ending agreement probably isn't possible. But after a decade of more process than peace, it's time to find out. DANIELLE PLETKA Vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute Israel and the United States have been drifting apart for some time, though that pace has accelerated during the Obama administration. The currents that have set Washington and Jerusalem on different courses are complex and cannot be boiled down to one failed mission (that of Vice President Biden) nor an indifferent president (Barack Obama). There is a generational shift underway, driving apart post-Zionist Israel and 21st-century America. That tectonic drift is, however, exacerbated by movement on the surface -- mostly in the United States -- that is more worrisome. Certainly, Obama is not the first president to believe that the peace process is of paramount importance, a secret to the grand bargain in the Middle East that has eluded us for so long. Nor is he the first to express his pique with the Jerusalem government over settlements in stark terms. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both believed a Palestinian homeland would deliver peace in our time. It might have been hoped that after Sept. 11, 2001, and the revelation that Israel is of little interest to Islamist extremists, the U.S. foreign policy establishment would understand that the bankruptcy of leadership in the Arab world is a more pressing problem for America than the transgressions of a few million Jews, but it has always been easier to blame Israel than to sell reform to tyrants. Ultimately, the more serious problem for the United States is not a distancing between us and Israel but a failure to grasp that the shared threats to both nations -- the Islamist totalitarianism that has flourished in the oxygen-free environment of the Arab world and the rise of the Revolutionary Guard class in Iran -- will not be mitigated with the resolution of the Palestinians' fate. That President Obama misses this key point is troubling indeed. HUSSEIN AGHA AND ROBERT MALLEY Respectively, senior associate member, St. Antony's College, Oxford University; Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group The current crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations has serious implications, though, in the long term, the least serious is likely to be on the relationship itself. Washington and Jerusalem do not see eye to eye on the peace process -- how quickly it ought to move, in what direction, its connection to other Middle Eastern issues -- and the announcement of new planning for East Jerusalem construction both exposed and exacerbated the differences. For that, there will be a price to pay. But -- price paid -- the ties between the two countries have been too strong for too long for there to be lasting strategic repercussions. The episode's more meaningful consequence lies elsewhere. Unhappy timing aside, the most telling aspect of the announcement was that it represented the Israeli government's stance on East Jerusalem in all its clarity -- unvarnished and without deceit. In this, it was less act of betrayal than moment of truth, more a message to meditate than a mistake to correct. If the United States intends to bring about an agreement between the two sides, far better that it be aware of their actual positions rather than proceed on the basis of imaginary ones. It might not be pleasant. But at least it would be real. In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed "healthy relations" between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of "colonialism," and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for "a jihad" against Switzerland. When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years. But neither that nor repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement "an insult to the United States." White House political chief David Axelrod got in his licks on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, lambasting Israel for what he described as "an affront." Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it's difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally. Mr. Biden's visit was intended to reassure Israelis that the Administration remained fully committed to Israeli security and legitimacy. In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for "putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence" of similar incidents. The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel's acquiescence in the Obama Administration's increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran's nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel's restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran. As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians. Israeli anxieties about America's role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won't be assuaged by the Administration's neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and can only be described as a "settlement" in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by. That may be the preferred outcome for Israel's enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of "peace." Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question. Then again, this episode does fit Mr. Obama's foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it's Israel's turn. Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A22
Eric Cantor (R-Va.) blasts Obama's treatment of Israel
Wall Street Journal blasts Obama on Israel
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Washington Post to Obama: Stop Iran Not Israel
(IsraelNN.com) In an editorial, the Washington Post newspaper has slammed the Obama administration for pressuring Israel while ignoring Islamic extremists and Iran.
“Ultimately, the more serious problem for the United States is not a distancing between us and Israel but a failure to grasp that the shared threats to both nations -- the Islamist totalitarianism that has flourished in the oxygen-free environment of the Arab world and the rise of the Revolutionary Guard class in Iran -- will not be mitigated with the resolution of the Palestinians' fate. That President Obama misses this key point is troubling indeed.”
The paper also noted that “Israel has a higher approval rating these days than does President Obama.”
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WSJ: Why Has Obama Turned Against Israel?
(IsraelNN.com) The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on Monday which counters the attack on Israel by New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman a day earlier. Friedman wrote that following the announcement of Jewish construction in Ramat Shlomo that the Vice President should have "closed his notebook, flown home and left behind the following note: 'Friends do not let their friends drive drunk. Right now you are driving drunk ... You have lost all touch with reality, call us when you're serious."
In response to the New York Times editorial the Wall Street Journal noted that the Obama administration had promoted "healthy relations" between Iran and Syria, weakly criticized President Assad when he spoke of "American colonialism", and apologized for its attitude to Moamar Gaddafi even though he called for jihad against Switzerland. "But when it comes to Israel, the administration has no problem raising its tone," wrote the newspaper under the headline "Obama's Turn Against Israel".
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Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) in the U.S. House of Representatives blasted the Obama administration's criticism of Israel over its plans to construct 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, Jerusalem.
"In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends," Cantor said.
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia also declined to condemn Israel for announcing the construction of more settlements while Vice President Joe Biden was on a visit to the country. Many diplomacy experts saw that move as a snub to the Obama administration, hurting relations between the longtime allies.
“While it condemns Israel, the administration continues to ignore a host of Palestinian provocations that undermine prospects for peace in the region,” Cantor said in a statement. “Where is the outrage when top Fatah officials call for riots on the Temple Mount? Why does the Palestinian Authority get a pass when it holds a ceremony glorifying the woman responsible for one of the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history? Surely, the Administration’s double standard has set back the peace process.”
...
Cantor said “Israel has always been committed to the peace process."
“For this administration to treat our special relationship with Israel, one of our closest and most strategic Democratic allies, in this fashion is beyond irresponsible and jeopardizes America’s national security,” Cantor said.
In an editorial on Monday, the Wall Street Journal blasted (below) the Obama administration's behavior toward Israel over the weekend (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel's acquiescence in the Obama Administration's increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran's nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel's restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.
As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.
Israeli anxieties about America's role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won't be assuaged by the Administration's neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and can only be described as a "settlement" in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by.
That may be the preferred outcome for Israel's enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of "peace." Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question.
Ah, but that's the key: The Obama administration doesn't repeatedly aver its friendship with Israel. In fact, last summer, the President said that disagreements between the US and Israel were a good thing.
A private meeting Monday held to ease tensions between the White House and American Jewish leaders included a pointed exchange as President Obama said public disagreements between the U.S. government and Israel are useful in the pursuit of Middle East peace, several participants said.
The president's remarks, surprising to some in the room, came as he was questioned about a perceived distance between his administration and Israel -- specifically in his insistence that Israel halt all settlement construction in the West Bank.
...
Obama, according to participants, said his approach would build more credibility with Arabs, and he criticized the Bush administration policy of unwavering agreement with Israel as ineffective.
The real question isn't why the Obama administration attacked Israel. In a way, I'm relieved that they did because it seems to have shut up all the fools who said Obama was pro-Israel. He's clearly not and neither is his Secretary of State. The real question is who authorized Joe Biden to say that the fight was over on Thursday in Tel Aviv. Or was that just Biden freelancing again?
This administration is determined to ruin America's alliance with Egypt just as it is determined to ruin America's alliances with Britain, Honduras, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Colombia and several other countries. It is determined to remake America's alliances to be more appropriate to a Third World country. And it's determined to degrade America's military strength and morale by cutting its defense budget and denying American exceptionalism.
Other than that, how was your trip to the Middle East Mr. Biden?
Are America and Israel drifting apart?
Obama's Turn Against Israel
March 15, 2020
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