For those waiting to see if Israel would become any sort of an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, the answer is it generally was not.
With the spotlight on Iraq, it is unlikely that either President George W. Bush or Sen. John Kerry see much point in grandstanding on the Israeli-Arab conflict. The obsessive focus on Israel seems to be fading from the foreground of American public opinion.
There is something to be said for this, in and of itself; but it might be wise for American policymakers to use this point to reassess some of our basic assumptions about the situation.
After four years of a Palestinian terror war that most experts seem to agree is petering out in failure, maybe it’s time again to ask: What exactly do the Palestinians want? And what, if anything, should Americans do about it?
For most of us looking on from afar, the tit-for-tat going on across the border between Israel and Gaza is just a messy cycle of violence in which no one party is more to blame than the other. The assumption remains that if only the Palestinians would agree to stop terror and the Israelis would give them a state of their own, the fighting would cease.
But Israel’s government has announced it will abandon those slivers of Gaza it still controls along with the settlements planted there, sometime next year. Nevertheless, the Palestinians, especially the Hamas Islamic fundamentalists, continue to shoot Kassam rockets over the border into Israel. These cause both damage and casualties and prompt counterattacks by the Israelis that hurt Hamas but are unlikely to stop the attacks.
What does any of this accomplish?
More misery for ordinary Palestinians has a certain value to the terror groups. Hamas also wants credit for the Israeli withdrawal and can reinforce that point by keeping the missiles flying until the last Israeli leaves the last settlement.
In the name of ‘equality’
But perhaps we should start considering that this is itself not an adequate explanation for Palestinian strategy. And, maybe, it should also give us some hints as to how Americans should be analyzing another potential threat to the peace in that region.
A clue to unraveling the puzzle of the Palestinians was offered in The New York Times Oct. 4 when it published an opinion article titled “Two Peoples, One State.” It was written by Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization and a one-time peace negotiator during the heyday of the Oslo accords.
Tarazi outlined his rejection of Israel’s offer of a separate Palestinian state and returned instead to the PLO’s Oslo demand: a binational secular state in which Israel’s Jews would be at the mercy of a Palestinian Arab majority. The Jewish state of Israel would be destroyed in the name of “equality” and “equal rights.”
Left unsaid is the unsavory record of the Palestinian “democrats” who would rule this state and the certain fate of the Jews who would be at their mercy once they were no longer protected by the Israeli army.
This return to the rhetoric of extinction is significant because it is very much in line with the campaign of delegitimization of Israel that has being pursued by pro-Palestinian activists on American campuses and within the councils of America’s mainline Protestant churches.
The call for divestment from Israel that has resonated in these sectors is often couched, like Tarazi’s article, in the language of human rights; but the real intention is not hard to divine: the end of Israel.
It also puts the Palestinian strategy of keeping the Israelis fighting in Gaza in a clearer focus. Since they no longer want their own state, even on the generous terms that they were offered prior to the start of the intifada, what good is an Israeli withdrawal to them?
More bloodshed, which can help manufacture more pressure on Israel, will only help deepen the conflict and make peace impossible in the short term, as they work toward the long-term goal enunciated by Tarazi.
If this is so, then it’s obvious that either a re-elected George Bush or a newly inaugurated John Kerry should forget about further efforts to entice the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. But it should also make another potential danger to world peace even scarier.
What about Iran?
By that, I mean the clear and present danger posed by the certainty that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, neither Bush nor Kerry has enunciated what might be considered a coherent policy concerning this real threat.
The current administration is divided over whether to confront Tehran or to engage in a dialogue aimed at getting its leaders to stand down from their nuclear ambitions. Despite some strong rhetoric from Washington, Iran may think it has no reason to fear resolute action.
In response, John Kerry seems to be supporting more engagement — a questionable strategy in and of itself — but he mixes in enough tough talk to make his stand just as incoherent as his opponent’s.
How do these various elements connect with the Palestinians and their reversion to an-all-or-nothing war with Israel?
Iran has never backed away from its rejectionist attitude towards Israel. It’s also a major funder of terror groups like Hezbollah and, as the Karine-A arms affair — in which Tehran sought to increase Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s arsenal — demonstrated, Iran also wants to help terror groups keep the conflict hot and bloody.
And if the Iranians do develop a nuclear option, that would put the peace of the entire region — and Israel’s existence — very much in question.
Connecting the dots between Iranian nukes and Palestinian rejectionism may not be on the radar screen of Americans who still cling to their childish hopes that forcing Israel to further appease the Palestinians will calm the Middle-East beast.
But if their assumption is false, it would appear that whoever is elected president may be faced with a far more volatile set of problems than presently imaginable. Heaven help us if the winner in November fails to understand all that’s at stake.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
Kerry has integrity and intelligence, and is a friend of Israel
By Susan Ellman
The Republicans are hoping to convince Jews in the “swing states” to abandon our historic loyalty to the Democratic Party and to help give their presidential candidate a majority of the vote this time. Their campaign offers two arguments.
One is that President George W. Bush had the position when Arab terrorists attacked the U.S. three years ago. The other is that he is not Sen. John Kerry.
Neither is a good enough reason to vote for Bush. He speaks loudly and carries a little stick. As a friend of Israel, Kerry is at least as good as Bush; and as a national leader overall, he is much, much better.
Bush is relying on our simplistic fears to drive his career forward. He is hoping that bellicose language and a war against Arabs will translate into faith on our part that he can keep the U.S. and Israel more secure than anyone else can.
What he is hoping you don’t think about is that he had nearly eight months in office to examine the national security data and prevent the attacks of Sept. 11.
He also hopes you don’t notice that his casus belli against Iraq has changed numerous times, that thousands of young Americans have been killed or wounded, that our budget deficit has mushroomed and that Iraq is less secure now than it was in 2001.
There is no end in sight to his war, world opinion against both the U.S. and Israel are at historic lows and anti-Jewish violence is at a post-World War II high.
Served with honor
Under normal circumstances, an incumbent President should be able to run on the strength of his record and ignore his challenger. Although Bush has held the office for years, he seems to have no other strategy but to defend himself with preemptive attacks on Kerry. He can point to no positive accomplishments of his own.
He has tried accusing Kerry of cowardice during the Vietnam War, inconsistency and bad judgment. But aside from a naïve failure to anticipate the dirty depths to which Bush’s campaign would stoop, what is wrong with Kerry?
I cannot remember when our nation has had the opportunity to elect a more qualified chief executive. He is a man of intelligence, honesty, courage and character; he is a well-informed, experienced public servant and a supporter of the separation of church and state. He knows, unlike anyone in the current administration, what it is to be sent off as a young person to fight in a war.
He has served with honor in the U.S. Senate, earned the confidence of his constituents and won re-election three times. He supports science, environmental protection, jobs, education, health care, fiscal responsibility and the First Amendment.
Bush’s campaign touts that Kerry made no mention of Israel in his acceptance speech at the nominating convention. Kerry knows action is more important than speech. His voting record on Israel is unimpeachable (see a table of his Israel-related votes on the Internet at Jewish Virtual Library).
Kerry has the capacity to accomplish more on behalf of Israel than Bush has done to date. He is articulate and internationally respected for his understanding of foreign affairs, and he could well manage to be a leader of international diplomatic efforts. We can trust him to engage resolutely in the complex process of negotiating a Middle East peace plan.
When Kerry was earning medals in Vietnam and prosecuting criminals in Massachusetts, Bush was cavorting in Connecticut and being arrested for drunk driving in Maine (see the article of Nov. 2, 2000, at CNN.com). I find it unconceivable that any thinking American, especially a Jewish American, could mistake him for the better qualified of the two.
Then there are his continued close ties to the Saudis, primary financiers of vicious anti-Israel propaganda and suicide bombers. Bush has favored arms sales to the Arabs, which Kerry has opposed.
Some Israelis hold him responsible for keeping Arafat in power (see Dahlia Scheindlin’s opinion article in last week’s Chronicle). My cousins in Israel are terrified of what four more years with this man would do to their country. Bush also supports a Palestinian state.
Bush claims to be a supporter of Israel because he knows Jewish voters want to hear that. But what are his motives?
He belongs to a religious movement whose ultimate objective is the conversion of all the world’s Jews to Evangelical Protestant Christianity. His religious ideology would also give the government power to decide which surgical procedures we may have and which “faith-based” agencies our taxes will support.
Bush favors amendments to the U.S. Constitution that would legislate his own Christian Right cultural values for all the American people. If we give him a second term, we can expect him to appoint more ideological extremists to our federal courts, which could have disastrous effects for generations to come.
In truth, there is not much difference between Bush’s and Kerry’s stated positions on Israel. But Kerry possesses the integrity and mental stature to manage the hard work of governing the nation and the statesmanship necessary to lead effectively and restore our respected position in the world. Bush clearly does not.
Susan Ellman is a Milwaukee educator and librarian.
Loading ...