On Bended Knee to Netanyahu
Despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s in-your-face attempts to
sabotage President Obama’s foreign policy, Official Washington’s
liberal establishment is on bended knee in an obsequious show of
obeisance, apparently in line with Hillary Clinton’s political
wishes, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. PillarNovember 08, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - On the eve of a
visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, we
have gotten yet another of the statements from members of his
government that are sufficiently unrestrained or unhinged to cause a
flap both in the United States and Israel.
While Netanyahu’s own comment about the Holocaust
being a Palestinian idea is still fresh in our minds, the latest
ear-catching remarks come from Ran Baratz, an inhabitant of a West
Bank settlement whom Netanyahu has chosen to be chief of hasbara,
the selling of Israeli policies overseas. Baratz has posted a trail
of entries on Facebook
that have insulted, among others, President Rivlin of
Israel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, whom Baratz says has the
mental capacity of a 12-year-old, and President Barack Obama, whom
he accuses of being anti-Semitic.
Netanyahu has reacted to the flap by saying that
these postings do not represent the views of his government and that
he will be reviewing the appointment of Baratz. But whether Baratz
keeps or loses the job of chief propagandist doesn’t really matter.
The backtracking that customarily follows these sorts of Israeli
comments (including Netanyahu’s sort-of retraction of his assertion
about the origin of the Holocaust) are less representative of what
this Israeli government is about than were the original comments.
The government’s insulting or embarrassing of
senior U.S. officials is nothing new and has happened repeatedly in
the past, such as when it announced new construction of settlements
in East Jerusalem while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting
Israel. The playing of the anti-Semitism card as a response to
criticism of Israeli government policy is habitual, on the part of
not only the Israeli government but also some of its most loyal
supporters in the United States.
Throughout the history of Netanyahu occasionally
being pushed into saying something that could be interpreted as
support for a Palestinian state, his more genuine statements, as
indicated by their consistency with his actual policies, have come
when he has not been pushed — such as
his statement most recently that he intended to “control
all of the territory” and “live forever by the sword.”
Rather than seeking a meaningless retraction or
apology or mouthing of words we would like to hear, we should accept
the original statements for what they are and not try to pretend
that they were some sort of slip of the tongue.
Statements that denigrate others may not be a slip
at all but rather part of a pattern of shifting blame, even when a
particular accusation is patently false. There is the pattern of
placing all blame for the violence and endless continuation of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Palestinians, even when this
includes asserting that Palestinians in general have genocidal
aspirations. There is the pattern of attributing opposition to
Israeli policies to ethnic bias, even when this includes calling
Barack Obama an anti-Jewish bigot.
Statements that refer to Israel’s own intentions
should be taken as truthful and not as a slip when they reflect
Israel’s actual policies and practices on the ground. This certainly
is true of a statement by the Israeli prime minister expressing his
intention to cling forever to the occupied territories, using
military force as necessary to do so.
There will be much evaluation of Netanyahu’s
meetings in Washington in terms of whether frictions between the two
governments have been smoothed over, at least as far as the public
face that they present is concerned. There already has been much
commentary ahead of the visit that has essentially adopted that
standard for assessing the meetings. But the kumbaya scale is not
the right means for measuring success or failure of the visit. And
harmonious U.S.-Israeli relations per se do not have value; harmony
is valuable only if it advances U.S. interests.
Pretending there is more harmony of interests than
there really is only obscures and confuses the diplomatic work that
can and should be done. Such pretending also carries the additional
disadvantage for the United States of associating it all the more
closely with the actions of the other party in the relationship,
including actions that are contrary to U.S. interests and that the
rest of the world understandably condemns.
As with any bilateral relationship, being honest
about differing interests and objectives provides an accurate basis
on which to address problems that need to be addressed. It also
clarifies where there are truly convergent interests that can be the
basis of mutually beneficial cooperation.
Major, substantial differences exist between U.S.
interests and Israeli interests — at least given how the latter are
defined by the current Israeli government. The differences were in
full display with the strenuous efforts by Netanyahu’s government to
sabotage a major U.S. foreign policy priority: the multilateral
agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
The underlying difference on that issue was
between on one hand the U.S. interest in using all available
diplomatic tools to pursue nonproliferation and other goals
consistent with improving regional stability, and on the other hand
the Netanyahu government’s objective of keeping a competitor for
regional influence isolated and maintaining conflict with Iran as a
bête noire in perpetuity.
Certainly major differences of interest also
persist regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More generally,
the gulf between the United States and Israel has grown even wider
insofar as Israel (including the territory it occupies) has become
an increasingly intolerant place in which civil and political rights
are apportioned according to ethnicity and religious belief.
About the best outcome from the U.S. standpoint —
which is the standpoint that ought to matter to Americans — of
Netanyahu’s meetings that could reasonably be expected given the
circumstances would be for the two sides to issue a communiqué
saying that they had a “frank, businesslike exchange of views.”
That is the sort of language that typically
describes dialogue between governments with major differences that
nonetheless are willing to talk honestly about those differences and
to explore ways of possibly reducing them.
The public statements that actually will come out
of the meetings probably will sound much more kumbaya-like than
that. Netanyahu has a strong interest in making it appear that,
despite all the attempted sabotage of U.S. policy and the pokes in
U.S. eyes, his government is in good graces in Washington.
We all are familiar with the realities of U.S.
politics that lead players in the United States to go along with him
in maintaining such an appearance. With this month’s visit even a
paragon of the liberal establishment such as the Center for American
Progress
is welcoming Netanyahu into its spaces, despite all his
blatant interference in U.S. politics in a direction opposed to what
CAP stands for.
That decision probably has mostly to do with how
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sees its near-term
interests. But that is distinctly different from the interests of
the United States — and even, over the long term and looking beyond
the current government, the interests of Israel.
Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident Senior Fellow at
the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and
Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings
Institution. He is a contributing editor to The National
Interest, where he writes a blog.
©2015 The National Interest.