In the wake of Sen. Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, Republicans and Democrats tilted over the meaning of every word uttered by the man whom Democrats probably will nominate for president.
But one prominent analyst thought both sides had it all wrong.
According to Nicholas D. Kristof, a New York Times op-ed columnist, the problem wasn’t whether Obama was supportive of Israel. Notwithstanding the differences he might have with Republican Sen. John McCain, Obama’s recitation of many pro-Israel clichés was, in Kristof’s view, unfortunate.
In his July 24 column “Tough Love for Israel?” — which echoed “The Two Israels,” an earlier piece published June 22 — Kristof opined that Israel needs from the U.S. the sort of intervention that friends and family of an alcoholic would employ: It must be stopped from destroying itself.
Kristof sees Israel as split between its good and bad sides. The “good” Israel has human rights groups and journalists who sympathize with the Palestinians and defend them against the nation’s security establishment in the courts and the media.
The “bad” Israel is composed of settlers who supposedly “steal land” from the Arabs, with an army and government that abuses them with checkpoints and barriers that divide their communities from those of Jews.
Kristof wants American presidential candidates to stop pandering to the “Israel lobby,” and instead “clarify that the [Israel] they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness — and peace.”
Not Israel haters
People like Kristof cannot be dismissed as Israel-haters, as some on the Zionist right might like to do. Nor can Jewish groups like the Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now and the new left-wing lobbying group J Street be labeled as closet backers of Hamas.
They support Israel’s right to exist and deserve to be taken at their word when they say they want only what’s best for the country.
But good intentions notwithstanding, this push for “tough love” supports a troubling campaign to force Israel to make more unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, no matter what the conditions on the ground would dictate as rational policy or what the people of Israel think is prudent.
The goal of Kristof and of the Jewish groups that seem to agree with him is to splinter the bipartisan coalition that has remained Israel’s ace in the hole in the United States.
They may not subscribe to every assertion in John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s controversial treatise “The Israel Lobby,” but they all share revulsion for the ability of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies to rally Congress and the majority of the American people to head off attempts to strong-arm Jerusalem.
The notion that any Americans ought to think themselves better qualified than Israel’s democratically elected government to decide matters of life and death for that nation is, at best, curious.
But what makes this latest “save Israel from itself” effort absurd is how divorced it is from facts. Israel has, after all, spent the last 15 years steadily retreating from a maximal position on territory and security issues.
The Oslo accords gave the Palestinians self-government. Oslo collapsed due to Palestinian refusal to end terrorism or accept a state alongside Israel.
Three years ago, Israel withdrew every settler and soldier from Gaza. Instead of peace, the Palestinians — under the leadership of the Hamas terrorist group — have answered with rockets, missiles and bloodshed.
The “moderate” Palestinian Authority, which Israel and the United States hope to use as a negotiating partner, is compromised by support for terror.
But even if one takes its stand on peace at face value, the P.A. is a weak, unpopular structure whose sway only extends to parts of the West Bank that remain effectively under the control of the Israel Defense Forces. It hasn’t the will or the ability to make peace.
Americans tempted to embrace the “tough love” thesis need to remember that most Israelis are already prepared to hand over most of the West Bank to a Palestinian state that will live in peace with them.
But Israelis know that under current circumstances, any land handed over will simply become yet another Hamasistan terror base.
None of that seems to matter to Kristof or the true believers in the peace process. For them, the only obstacle remains the presence of Jews in parts of the West Bank and in those areas in Jerusalem that were occupied by Jordan prior to the city’s unification in June 1967.
Indeed, Kristof used his column to chide those who rightly pointed out that in the absence of Israeli sovereignty, Jews would (as was the situation prior to June 1967) be unable to even visit holy places in Jerusalem or Hebron. For him, Jews and even Christians have no such right.
The only thing that appears to be sacred in his view is the 1949 armistice line, which the late Abba Eban dismissed as “Auschwitz” borders because they placed Arab armies and terrorists in position to destroy the state.
Kristof acknowledges Israel’s security barrier has stopped the flow of suicide bombers. But in spite of the lives it has clearly saved, he thinks it does more harm than good because it inconveniences Palestinians.
The columnist’s preferred policy would be for Israel to negotiate “more enthusiastically” with Syria (the current pace of talks to give back the Golan Heights being too slow for his taste); talk with the Saudis on the basis of their peace proposal, which is predicated on a so-called Palestinian “right of return” (which means the end of a Jewish state); expel Jews from those places that were Judenrein prior to June 1967; and halt Israel’s anti-terror security checkpoints.
And he wants an American president who will try to force Israel — for its own good — to do all that.
For the “tough love” crowd, only Israel has the ability to engender peace. Palestinian intentions, and their culture of terror and hatred for Israel and Jews, are mere details to be ignored.
It’s far from clear exactly what an Obama or McCain administration would mean for Israel. But friends of Israel should not hope for a president who thinks he understands things better than the Israelis themselves.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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