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Jeffery Goldberg has an interesting and fairly obvious thesis about what the Obama administration or President Obama himself, is "actually" trying to do by pressuring Israel. In brief, it seems that the Obama administration thinks they can move the Israeli government to the left. What they don't know is that the left long ago ceased to exist as a viable political force in Israel, and that any pressure is apt to install a really extremist government of the right, especially pressure with regard to Jerusalem.
Goldberg's message is couched in language that can with understatement and charity be labeled obnoxious, very likely echoing his sources in the U.S. administration. According to Goldberg, the goal is to "force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni's centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes."
The hand that wrote the above is the hand of Goldberg, but the voice is perhaps the voice of Axelrod or Emanuel. It looks very much as though someone thought they would "send a message." This is strong, rude language about the government of a friendly ally. Those who deplore the insults and catcalls that characterize the cutlure of Jewish political debate should take note.
I am not a fan of the current government. I am a "leftist" born and bred, a product of Hashomer Hatzair and a secular Jew. However, I was shocked by the outburst above. Contrast this treatment of the Israeli government, with the treatment afforded Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The United States government has just finished apologizing to Gaddafi for harmless remarks made by a State Deparment spokesman after Gaddafi called for a Jihad against Switzerland. Perhaps even the most ardent J Street supporter can understand why Israelis think we are getting the short end of the stick.
The thesis that generating left wing pressure is the goal of the USA administration is credible. They are evidently sufficiently uninformed and arrogant enough to believe it is possible. I would think it is more than an educated guess that that is what Obama is trying to do. Evidently, either Goldberg or Obama or both do not understand Israeli political history, Middle East politics, or the current Israeli political situation. The idea that the left or center will pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a messianic fantasy, because the Israeli left and center have long since ceased to exist as effective polical forces. They were destroyed by the "peace" process.
Every government in the Middle East is led by gangsters, medievalists and/or messianists, so why should Israel be any different? he US has no problem supporting the "moderate" gangsters of the Palestinian Authority, a corrupt regime even by the standards of Arab countries. They are happy to negotiate with the Assad regime that lives off the profits of Hashish and opium smuggling from the Beq'a valley. They were enamored of the Iranian mediavalist messianic gangster Ayatollahs and want to make a deal with them. No regime change for Iran.
The U.S. government even apologized to Muammar Gaddafi. So why should they be so concerned about Israeli gangsters and medievalists? Is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef so much worse than the Ayatollah Khameinei? Is he more medievalist, more messianic or more of a gangster? Is Interior Minister Eli Yishai more of a medievalist or more messianic than Mahmoud Ahmedinejad? Is Avigdor Lieberman more extreme or more corrupt than Muammar Gaddafi? Would any respectable journalist in the US use that invective about leaders of Muslim or Arab countries? Mind you, Jeffrey Goldberg is a friend of Israel. What the others are writing is much worse. PC opinion in the US would be horrified by the suggestion of "regime change" in Iran, but pundits and administration officials are apparently quite happy to plan regime change in Israel.
Obama is the fellow who came to office under the slogan "We are the change that we seek." Just wish for it, and it will come true! Perhaps he should be more broad-minded about messianists, who generally only look for miracles in the distant future, and about medievalists, who at least have a system about their wishful thinking. Obama believed or believes that he can have a constructive dialogue with Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a belief that arguably has less foundation in reality and is far more dangerous than the wildest and vilest superstitions of the "medievalist" rabbis.
In any case, religious and ultraorthodox parties have formed key parts of coalitions in just about every Israeli government anyone can remember, whether it is a government of the right or of the left. The ultraorthodox and orthodox political sectors are cohesive, well organized and politically effective well beyond their actual numbers in the population. Messianist or medievalist or both, they nonetheless are masters at politics. The United Torah Judaism party is particularly useful, since they refuse to take cabinet seats, as they don't recognize the Zionist government. What can be better than a coalition partner that allows you to appoint an extra minister for your party? Their coalition demands are mostly focused on religious needs and funding, and therefore they can be bought off fairly easily with an extra dose of religious coercion and some more taxpayer money. The religious parties are not going away. The gangsters need them. Obama and Jeffrey Goldberg need to understand that if Rabbi Ovadia Yosef or the Sages of the Torah make a decision, that decision will be followed. They are more or less equivalent to a force of nature.
But the real problem with Goldberg's or Obama's or Rahm Emanuel's idea is not the medievalists and the messianists and the gangsters. It's the rest of us Israelis. Whoever concocted this idea should try to understand Israeli political reality. Israel has been drifting fairly steadily rightward with every failed "peace" initiative. The drift is also fueled by demographics. The older generation of "original Israelis" and Labor Zionists is giving way to a population that is increasingly religious and right-wing oriented, and that portion of the population is also the most politically active.
The Palestinians act to validate every thesis of the Israeli right. Why waste money on political campaigns if the Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and extremist Israeli Arabs will provide all the electioneering any right wing party needs?
The so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada was a direct result of the "peace" process gone bad. It stabbed the Israeli peace movement in the back, and brought Ariel Sharon to power. The Al-Aqsa Intifada brought about all the worst nightmares prophesied by the right: Palestinian "police" shooting at Israeli soldiers, suicide bombers in our cities, and crucially, almost total abandonment of Israel by the United States and Europe. Israel took risks for peace and we were called "war criminals" for our trouble. We were not allowed to act against the violence until it was almost too late. When Israel undertook Operation Defensive Shield, the Palestinians invented the tale of the "Jenin Massacre" and the world believed it.
But the will of the Israeli people for peace was not totally vanquished. There were still a sufficient number of foolish messianists among us, including myself, who continued to hope against hope. The supposed arch-villain Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza strip. Angry settlers were removed by force, prophesying doom and gloom. Once again their prophecies were fulfilled. So who are unrealistic "messianists" and who are the realists? Just as predicted, the Palestinians established a Hamas state in Gaza and used it as a terror base. Once again, when Israel acted in self-defense, were pilloried as "war criminals." The Kadima government managed to achieve nothing in the Annapolis peace talks, because there was nothng to be achieved. The Palestinians would not accept even the most generous terms offered. That is what brought the government of Netanyahu into being. But Netanyahu may look liike Mahatma Gandhi in comparison with the leader who would be elected if this government fell, and if he was pushed out as head of the Likud party. The simple, and to me unpleasant, fact is that there is no longer a politically viable Israeli left or "center." The Israel Labor party has more or less disintegrated. Dovish Meretz may get 5 seats in the best case, and the centrist Kadima party of Tzipy Livni is increasingly in danger of dissolving into its constituent parts. Who in that party would pressure Netanyahu to make concessions, besides Livni? Ehud Olmert is embroiled in his corruption cases. We are still dealing with the last set of gangsters. Shaul Mofaz is not going to demand concessions in Jerusalem. So who would bring this pressure?
The result of the display of histrionics. and the clumsy, amateurish political maneuvering by the U.S. government will be two-fold. On the one hand, it will embolden the Palestinians to make outrageous demands and to step-up violence and incitement. Already, the "moderate" Salem Fayyad, is spreading a vicious tale that the renovated Hurva Synagogue trespasses on the grounds of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He is reaping rewards in the form of "moderate" riots. The synagogue was in the same place for almost 300 years and no Muslim complained. It was destroyed in the fighting of 1948 by SS-trained saboteur Fawzi el Kuttub and his minions, and then desecrated by a mob of looters. Such is the effrontery of the "moderate" Fayyad and his gangsters and medievalists that they protest at repair of a place of worship that was desecrated by their own people.
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton's histrionics cannot help Tzipi Livni and the left. it can only bring about the formation of a right wing extremist government in Israel.
Israelis are riled that the US government made an inordinate fuss about the announcement of new housing in Ramat Shlomo in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a consensus issue. Jeffrey Goldberg and perhaps Mr. Obama forgot, but Israelis did not forget, that Yitzhak Rabin, the symbol of the Israeli peace movement, fought for Jerusalem in 1948, commanded the army that liberated Jerusalem in 1967, and pledged again, and again, and again that Jerusalem would remain united and would remain the capital of Israel. He said it in 1967, after the liberation of Jerusalem and he repeated it several times during the negotiations with the Palestinians.
In June of 1994, Rabin stated:
I believe that there is a broad national consensus surrounding the issue of Jerusalem, united under Israeli sovereignty, and the capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
And in August 1994, Rabin stated:
Jerusalem must be united, under Israeli sovereignty and the capital of Israel. This, then, is the reality, and will remain so in the future as well.
And in November of 1995, just before he was murdered, Rabin stated:
"The top priority for all of us is a united Jerusalem, under Israel's authority,"
Emotional and idealistic attachment aside, Rabin understood what Obama and Clinton and Goldberg do not. An Israeli government can sell a peace agreement as a good deal only if it achieves the historic restoration of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people, recognized and acknowledged by the entire world. Jerusalem was Rabin's ace. Rabin also understood that there is no political or cultural reality to a peace agreement if it does not include recognition of Jewish rights in Jerusalem. Fifteen years of "peace" process violence have not put Israelis in a more compromising mood, not have they made much of a dent in the 3,000 year-old attachment of the Jewsh people to Jerusalem.
The US government could not have chosen a better issue to unite Israelis behind a right-wing government. Shas Interior Minister Eli Yishai wanted to create a political mess with his announcement of building plans in Ramat Shlomo. It was easy for hm to do it, because US set up the target for him. U.S. pressure on Netanyahu made Netanyahu vulnerable to the right, not to the left. Jerusalem unites the orthodox and the medievalists, the messianics and the skeptics and the pragmatic Zionists, because it is an issue that has something for everyone. It is a religious symbol. It is a symbol of national sovereignty. It is an issue for regular folks, for gangsters, medievalists, and messianists. It is the issue par excellence for cheap demagoguery, for righteous patriotic fervor and all the good, bad and dangerous emotions and ideologies that motivate the best and worst in politics and national life. .
Jerusalem is still a point of bitterness for those who remember or who studied the Israel War of Independence. Jerusalem is not just a place that is a synonym for "holiness" as it is used in Western culture. It is a synonym for blood and determination to the point of death. Jerusalem is and was watered by the blood of our ancestors and our own generation. By "ancestors" I don't mean people from the time of King David. I mean our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, cousins and in some cases ourselves, who fought there in two wars, who were murdered in 1921 and 1929 and 1936 and in the Second Intifada. The burnt-out shells of the armored cars that tried to break the blockade in the battle of the roads still line the road to Jerusalem.
Almost everyone knows how the old city of Jerusalem was ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1948, how the city was starved by a real blockade, not the charade that goes on in Gaza today. Everyone knows about the pogroms that took place there in 1929 and 1936. And if all that history was not enough, the Palestinians demonstrated in the second "Intifada".that nothing changed. Given the chance, they will throw rocks and shoot at Jews in Jerusalem and invent pretexts about dangers to Al-Aqsa mosque. We do not talk about these things often, but almost everyone in Israel knows them.
Even the dovish Ha'aretz, and the dovish Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, no friends of the current government, recognize that U.S. anger over East Jerusalem row is excessive. Their concern, like mine, is that Obama is acting like a child playing with a hand grenade over the Jerusalem issue, and he will empower the right. There is nothing to be gained from the current U.S. policies if their aim is to empower the Israeli left. There is no Israeli left to empower any more. It has been destroyed. Jerusalem cannot be an issue for negotiations until the Palestinians show at least the tiniest willingness to concede some Jewish rights there. It cannot be an issue for negotiations unless the United States is willing to publicly back its own Clinton Bridging Proposals of 2000, which would provide what might be a reasonable compromise.
The Palestinians are adament. "Kulu al ard Arabi" - all the land is Arab. This has been the stand of the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas since 2000, and he has reiterated it at every opportunity. There is nothing to negotiate in Jerusalem as far as he is concerned. Not even Ramat Shlomo, which is built on no-man's land bordering Shuafat. Not even Ramat Eshkol or French Hill. "Kulu al ard Arabi." The progressive, non-medievalist Palestinians even claim the Wailing Wall (Western Wall of the ancient Jewish temple site), because Muhammad tied up his flying horse there when he visited al-Aqsa. The Jewish quarter, that existed for many centuries in "Arab" East Jerusalem, is an "illegal settlement" according to the "even-handed" United States government.
What messsianists in the US government imagine that any Israeli government could give up the Wailing Wall, could evacuate Ramat Eshkol and French Hill and the Hebrew University on Mt Scopus, and could acquiesce in the perpetuation of the ethnic cleansing of 1948? In return for what? For military gadgets? For money? The Jews will do anything for money, right? For empty promises to act against Iranian nuclear armament? Obama's verbiage about Iran has thus far proven to be worthless. If we are going to be nuked, we might as well be nuked with Jerusalem as without it. Surely Obama must understand that Iran is a strategic threat to the United States, and that he can't use Iran as an issue to pressure Israel.
There is no Israeli left any more because the Israeli left gambled everything on peace with the Palestinians, and lost it all. The "peace" process blew up in everyone's faces - literally. In Israel, "left" is synonymous for most people with peace, and "peace" is now a dirty word. If the United States government wants to empower the political left in Israel, it will have to make it possible for the left to show some solid achievement, some gain from all the "peace" concessions, rather than more bodies and more Qassam rockets and more rhetoric about war criminals and medievalists.
All the well-meaning "peace" activists and advocates, as well as those who are not so well meaning, must understand: any Israeli government that acquiesces to US demands in Jerusalem will fall prey to demagogues of the right, and not without justice. The unreasonable, unseemly and unilateral pressure, the constant arrogant declarations that Israeli settlement in the eastern part of Jerusalem is "illegal," (Ramat Shlomo is actualy in the north-center of Jerusalem), the rude histrionics of Hillary Clinton, aided by the extremism and incitement of the Palestinians, the crude epithets of the American press, are empowering the worst elements of the Israeli extremist right, and giving and and comfort to every Muslim and Arab extremist in the Middle East. Obama is sowing the wind, and we shall all reap the whirlwind.
Ami Isseroff
