Al-Sijill
2009-08-02 22:29:15A friend of mine, a retired public servant who has worked under four US presidents, told me recently he was afraid the White House was making a mistake by openly confronting Israel over the issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, particularly this early in the process.
"These guys in the White House may be too smart for their own good," he told me. "They think that just by snapping their fingers they can get [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu to stop settlement expansion. I'm afraid they're going to get rolled on this one and that will imperil the prospects for everything else they're trying to do."
Such concern reflects a healthy respect for the power of the so-called "Jewish lobby" despite suggestions it has been outmaneuvered by the supple President Barack Obama. Certainly the successful bid early this year to deny Israel critic Chas Freeman a top White House intelligence job is proof that the "lobby" is very much at the top of its game.
Hawkish supporters of Israel, of course, deny that a Jewish lobby even exists and imply those who believe otherwise are anti-Semitic. This is nonsense. In a city like Washington, where everything has some kind of political representation - there is even an "Association of Associations" on 17th Street - it would be unnatural if Israel did not have its own advocates in place. But the caricature of the Israel lobby so common among its critics - a singularly pernicious and monolithic group dedicated to the restoration of Eretz Yisrael, a "greater" Jewish state that extends from the Nile to the Euphrates - is equally inane. Like Israel itself - diverse ethnically and chaotic politically - the Jewish lobby is a conurbation of parties that, given the deep divergence of opinion about what's good for Israel, are often pitched against each other.
Not only is this cluster of competing groups not a political monolith, it is not even monolithically Jewish. The wellspring of Congressional support for Israel is fed as much by fundamentalist Christian groups like Christians United for Israel - led by the execrable Pastor John Hagee - than it is right-wing Jewish groups like the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Catalyzed by the promise of Christ's apocalyptic return to Earth after the land of Israel has been restored in its entirety to the Jewish people, groups like CUFI are a source of unyielding support for Israel's hard-liners and they form a tight alliance with the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee, the most well-known and powerful of Jewish pro-Israel groups.
AIPAC is vast - it operates with an estimated budget of some $60 million and boasts some 100,000 dues-paying members - and it is indeed pernicious. Its staff writes key provisions of legislation and it was largely responsible for the US economic and diplomatic embargo on the Palestinians Territories after Hamas' 2006 election victory. Its annual conference in Washington is a multi-day affair attended by the country's most powerful politicians and businesspeople, who emote like trained seals about the centrality of America's "special relationship" with the Jewish state. The carnival-like atmosphere brings out the worst in everyone - the Prophet Isaiah and his dark prophesies is something of an AIPAC mascot - including those not ordinarily associated with the Likud end of the political spectrum. Even Mr. Obama, in the AIPAC speech he delivered while campaigning for president last year, obscured himself with puffs of fire and brimstone.
AIPAC's dominance is not uncontested, however. There is J Street, founded last year as a moderate alternative to AIPAC militarism. Last month, the group's executive director was invited to attend a meeting of prominent Jewish leaders at the White House July 14, a measure of its growing influence in an issue arena still dominated by the hawks. (Another measure of J Street's credibility is its growing list of enemies. The right-wing magazine Commentary has called it "anti-Israel" and "contemptible.") There is also Americans for Peace Now, which has been lobbying Congress for a more measured approach towards Arab-Israeli peace for years. But like J Street, APN's passion and principles are no match for AIPAC's political muscle.
AIPAC has an Achilles heel, however, and it plays out like something out of the 1967 Khartoum conference. By aligning itself so conclusively against the only steps that might lead to a more stable Middle East - No talks with Hamas, No land for peace, No negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions - it has defined itself as an obstruction to peace that might alienate those who support Israel but who are weary of its obstinacy.
As the turbulence in Iran suggests, militancy is no longer in fashion, which plays to the famously empathetic Obama's strength. It also leads us back to my friend's observation about the White House's approach to the scandal of Jewish settlements. By forcing such a delicate issue on an Israeli leader as vulnerable as Netanyahu, Obama might be attempting to spark a political crisis in Tel Aviv from which a more reasonable successor may emerge. But as the last eight years of Bushism revealed, regime change rarely goes according to plan and often backfires. To outflank the Likudniks, Obama should seek first to deliver an Arab heavyweight to the negotiating table with an assurance of White House support for the essence of the 2002 Arab initiative. If a Bashar Al Assad were to make a public tribute to Yitzhak Rabin and his "calculated risks" for peace, it would box Netanyahu into a corner so dark that no lobby, monolithic or otherwise, could ever find him.
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