Divide and Conquer

As I mentioned last time, my wife Jackie is currently in Israel leading a trip for Jewish twenty-somethings as part of the Taglit Birthright Israel program. So it was with some interest that I clicked over to a piece entitled Birthright’s True Aim, and Is Its Aim True? by Marc Tracy in the online journal Tablet.

Tracy briefly reviews a 4,000-word piece by Kiera Feldman entitled The Romance of Birthright Israel in the left-wing magazine, The Nation. Tracy correctly notes that “Birthright is a central aspect of Israeli-diaspora relations,” and that it therefore deserves close examination. He praises Feldman's essay in those places in which it “earnestly relays what Birthright is about, for its organizers as well as its participants.”

But Tracy also identifies some troubling aspects of Feldman's analysis. He notes that Feldman seems to have “cherrypicked her data and interviewees,” and identifies a past Birthright participant quoted in Feldman's piece who, as it turns out, had a running dispute with the Israeli government—a fact left undisclosed by Feldman.

So kudos to Marc Tracy for uncovering some of the less-than-savory techniques used by Feldman to tarnish the Birthright program. But he misses the big picture, which is not Feldman's overt attack on Birthright's agenda, but rather her covert rhetorical campaign against Israel itself: 

Israel is an “ethnocracy” built on the “forty-four-year illegal occupation of Palestinian lands”. The Green Line is an “internationally recognized border”. Seven hundred thousand Palestinians were “expelled” in 1948. These allegations require no support because, naturally, The Nation's readership already knows them to be true.

Birthright Israel indoctrinees, er, I mean, participants

I've used this forum in the past to make the liberal case for Zionism. Others, such as Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, have also done so, far more effectively than I ever could. This case needs to be made, in part, because there are those, such as the Republican Jewish Coalition, who would claim the mantle of Zionism exclusively for the right. 

They are wrong to do so. As Harris and Hirsch so clearly explain, there is a compelling liberal interest in the Zionist cause. The right has its Zionist argument, and so does the left: all that remains are the anti-Zionists, who have sought to divide and conquer by clothing themselves in the rhetoric of the left, as Feldman has done, or in the politics of the right. This strategy has proven tragically effective: as Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the US, has stated, “Israel has become a partisan issue in the U.S., and this... is bad for us.”

If support for Israel does split along party lines in the years to come, it will not only be the fault of the Republican Jewish Coalition and its cynical campaign to make the GOP the home of pro-Israel American politics. No, it will also be the fault of writers like Ms. Feldman, whose casual and presumptive misrepresentations of history can be immediately transformed into fodder for the next RJC appeal.

Exceptionally Normal

Here in Southern California, we're fortunate enough to be able to watch Israel's IBA News on the local PBS affiliate, KCET. I've taken an even keener than usual interest in news from the region this week, as my gorgeous and very, very busy wife Jackie is in Israel leading a Taglit Birthright Israel trip.

As I was watching the other night, I was almost mechanically tweeting the various headlines.  Here are a few examples:

• “Apparently there's a cottage cheese boycott going on in Israel in response to rising food prices.”
• “...doctors are threatening a strike... That's been going on since before Pesach; things aren't improving I guess”
• “Violinist Vanessa Mae performing in Ceasaria this Shabbat”
• “Total nerdfest: mega-yoyo contest at @TechnionLive in Haifa”

Unlike American “news” programs, the IBA (Israel Broadcast Authority) news usually spends several minutes covering one or more important topics in depth with a guest. In this instance, the interview focused on the cottage cheese boycott. Around the time the anchors turned their attention to sports and weather, it dawned on me: there had not been one single terrorism-related news item, and only brief coverage of the peace process, featuring yet another prattling EU technocrat.  

Reviewing my posts, it occurred to me what normal stories these were, the type that could easily have been featured on the local news anywhere in America. Don't get me wrong: rising food prices are a serious matter. Unfortunately, the Israeli economy is still in some ways a prisoner to its socialist past, and perhaps to an overheated rush to deregulation as well. But compared to bus bombings, missile attacks, and coerced cross-border rioters, well... all in all, I found it rather refreshing.

Israel, like any country—indeed, like any human enterprise—is imperfect. The government, the society, the leaders: they err, they are tempted into corruption, they lose their way, and we do the Zionist cause no favors by pretending otherwise. So the evening news will, no doubt, continue to be filled with stories of individuals and groups failing to live up to our millennia-old, hope-sustaining vision of Israel as a beacon to the other nations of the Earth.

So I make this offer to the universe: give me news of visiting musicians and student competitions—I'll gladly embrace them, even if they are mere sidebars to headlines filled with consumer revolt and labor unrest. Take away the terror, the baseless hatred, and the nuclear saber-rattling, and I'll accept the scandals, the crime, and the poverty as unavoidable subplots to the ongoing story of a normal country struggling to become exceptional.

Untimely

These should be heady days for Israel. The world is awakening, at long last, to the true villain in the modern history of Islamic medievalism and ignorance: the corrupt Arab ruling class. The rejectionist front dictators of the Arab world are either under siege or already fallen, and the horrifying crimes they have for decades committed against their own people have been exposed. The international community, armed with this new evidence, could in theory draw the surprising conclusion that Israel may not be the root cause of all the world's conflicts after all.

Not so fast.

In an ill-timed speech earlier this week, President Obama declared his vision for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors:

The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states... The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous... non-militarized state. 

(Emphasis mine.)

The pro-Israel community has reacted strongly, but the plain fact is that the President's remarks were neither surprising nor novel. Yes, it's true: Mr. Obama did make reference to the hated, illegitimate, and (in Prime Minister Netanyahu's words) "indefensible" 1949 armistice lines (commonly—but misleadingly—referred to in diplomatic and media circles as the "1967 lines"). But pundits seem to have overlooked the fact that he qualified his statement carefully, carving a vitally important semantic safe harbor. As my son has observed, the phrase "with mutually agreed swaps" essentially leaves every option open.

(White House Photo)

And let's be honest: the armistice lines, with modifications, have formed the basis for negotiations since there has been anything to negotiate about. Israeli governments have offered the Palestinians nearly all the territory captured in 1967, with adjustments for demographic changes and large settlements (mostly, suburbs of Jerusalem) that have appeared in the decades since. Few harbor any illusion that a final deal, if one is ever reached, will differ substantially from those on the table previously. (According to reports, the President resisted calls from within his administration to outline a tougher stance, even accepting the resignation of his hand-picked envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, barely a week prior to the address.)

Although Jewish groups had mobilized against the President's invocation of the armistice lines in the days leading up to the speech, it is difficult to ask the leader of the free world to be more conservative in his dealings with the Palestinians than the Israelis themselves have been. If this President, or any other, is seen as a hostage to Israeli policy, his effectiveness—and, ultimately, his ability to wield American leverage to Israel's advantage—will only be weakened.

So what, if anything, was new in Mr. Obama's message? To my ears, the real novelty was the use of the phrase "non-militarized" in referring to the future Palestinian state. Ultimately, if one believes, as indeed most Israelis do, in a two-state solution, one can hardly expect a better outcome than "mutually agreed" borders and a "non-militarized" Palestine.

It's also useful to review what the President did not do. He did not summon the parties to negotiations. He did not issue new peremptory demands on Israel, as he disastrously attempted to do in 2009. He did not threaten that a solution would be imposed by the United States; in fact, he said quite the opposite. And, ultimately, he did no harm to Mr. Netanyahu, who is certainly going to reap political rewards at home for his direct and immediate dismissal of the President's vision.

Mr. Obama's real mistake is not in his formulation but in his focus. This should be a time of great hope. The long-suppressed bill of grievances of the Arab everyman has finally been aired, and there is nary a word about Israel. Poverty, ignorance, and oppression have been revealed as the essential casus belli of the Middle East, not the presence a few million Jews on a narrow strip of previously neglected real estate. Now is not the time to bury the lead of Arab self-liberation within the mythology of Israeli misbehavior. In trying to make history, Mr. Obama has instead misjudged it, shining a light on Israeli/Palestinian discord just as it was becoming clear how small a role that conflict actually plays in the larger tragedy of the Arab Middle East.

Does anybody remember what the President said about Iran in his address? About Syria? Egypt? Has there been any coverage at all of any topic raised by Mr. Obama in three-quarters of an hour of continuous speaking besides the Israeli/Palestinian matter? Through his insistence on dredging up that issue, Mr. Obama gave the remaining strongmen of the Arab world the one gift they most wanted: an alternative target for the world's reprobation. You're welcome, Muammar.

The drama will continue to play out this weekend at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC.  With 10,000 supporters of the American-Israel relationship in attendance, President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu will each have an opportunity further to lay out his vision for peace and security for Israel and the region. Netanyahu is guaranteed a warm and welcoming reception, but, having chosen this time to refocus on Israel, the President will have to work hard to win over an audience understandably suspicious of his priorities.