Once, the goal of pro-Israel politics was to make friends; today, it seems the aim is to score political points, and Israel be damned.
That reality is already stamping its imprint on the 2008 presidential races, with a slew of mostly pro-Israel candidates getting dissected and microscopically examined for the slightest deviation from the hard-line pro-Israel creed.
That may pay short-term dividends for some with a political axe to grind, but it undercuts a longtime pillar of pro-Israel activism — the effort to win friends and influence people instead of dividing the political world into all-out supporters and enemies.
Using Israel for political gain isn’t new, but the process has accelerated. Rumors circulate on the Internet with blinding speed. Lies, half-truths and exaggerations, repeated with breathless alarm, become part of the information background noise of modern politics.
That was evident recently when Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the surging Democratic presidential contender, met with a group of Iowa Democrats.
Obama, a relative newcomer to the unforgiving world of Jewish politics, mostly echoed the talking points of groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby. But he added, “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”
He went on to say that the cause of that suffering was the Palestinians’ own terror-sponsoring leaders. But the damage had been done.
Like wildfire, the news spread across the pro-Israel world, with the implicit and sometimes explicit interpretation that Obama is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian.
Cutthroat style
Political assassins had already laid the groundwork with charges that Obama is a secret Moslem extremist educated in radical Islamic schools. That charge had been debunked, but right-wing blogs continue to report it as fact and shrieking emails continue to flood the inboxes of Jewish activists.
Obama, like many others, is deemed a threat to Israel even though he has consistently supported positions of the pro-Israel groups. His only sin is to advocate other positions that may not be on the current talking points of pro-Israel groups, but which are consistent with official Israeli and U.S. policy.
The point isn’t that Obama would be a great pro-Israel president. He’s too new to the national scene to draw many conclusions.
The point is that for purely political reasons, he is being savaged even as he tries to work with pro-Israel groups.
And it’s not just a partisan thing. There are widespread reports that some of the attacks are coming from campaigns of his Democratic rivals, as well as a Republican Party that has aggressively used Israel as a wedge issue.
That reflects a cutthroat style of pro-Israel activism that has more to do with partisanship and political maneuvering than building support for Israel — and which, in fact, could produce the opposite effect.
Politicians aren’t held to a rigid standard of pro-Israel orthodoxy because they are expected to become strong supporters, but because they are expected to fail, giving their opponents ammunition for campaigns.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) learned that lesson the hard way after an anemic Jewish turnout in her 2000 Senate victory. She has been ever since a careful, down-the-line supporter of the AIPAC agenda. Yet she, too, continues to be a target of whisperers, bloggers and anonymous emailers.
If she wins the Democratic nomination, look for a smear campaign against her that ignores six years of diligent outreach to the pro-Israel community and portrays her as a secret Palestinian supporter.
Partisanship and trench-warfare politics is what this is all about, not support for Israel.
The fires of bitter division are being fanned by pro-Israel extremists who don’t demand friendship and understanding, but loyalty to a minority point of view in Israel, and by hacks that regard Israel as little more than cannon fodder in the political wars.
That style of politics may intimidate some candidates into mouthing pro-Israel slogans.
But it doesn’t create genuine friendship.
It undercuts the strong U.S.-Israel relationship by chipping away at the bipartisanship that is its political foundation. It sows resentment by holding candidates to unrealistic ideological standards.
Supporting Palestinian statehood is a priority of the current Republican administration, a policy of the Israeli government and a position of a majority of Israelis. But heaven help any presidential candidate who mouths those two explosive words.
Once, pro-Israel activists took pride in their ability to turn adversaries into friends. Many still cite the conversion of former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), a bitter foe of the pro-Israel agenda who because an outspoken pro-Israel hawk after painstaking outreach by leading pro-Israel activists.
Today, it seems, many in the pro-Israel world are too interested in the game of “Gotcha!” to worry about reaching out to potential friends and expanding, not narrowing, the pro-Israel political base.
Former Madisonian James D. Besser has been Washington correspondent for the New York Jewish Week and Baltimore Jewish Times since 1987.
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