Mystifying
It’s a matter of trust. And the Israelis don’t have it when it comes to President Obama. In the most recent Jerusalem Post poll, the number of Israelis who see Obama as pro-Israeli is just 4 percent. That’s not a typo; it was down two points since June. Fully 51 per cent say Obama is more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli. ~Richard Wolffe
I confess that I find these numbers mystifying. If Bush had an 88% “pro-Israeli” rating, and his administration was partly responsible for Hamas’ acquisition of elected power in Gaza, one could conclude that public perception of an American President’s “pro-Israel” leanings has absolutely nothing to do with the susbstance of the policies he pursues. How could it have been “pro-Israeli” to encourage Olmert to wage his failed, counterproductive war in Lebanon? Yet this is what Bush did. To be fair, Obama supported the same failed, counterproductive war, just as he supported the operation in Gaza, and despite some slightly tougher rhetoric his stance on settlements is not really any different. How can Israeli opinion change so dramatically when the two men are virtually indistinguishable in their predictable, guaranteed support for Israel and most of its current policies?
I would have thought that one would need to be under the influence of mind-altering drugs to see Obama as “pro-Palestinian.” The idea that he is “pro-Palestinian” is so painfully, absurdly wrong that I don’t know quite what to make of it. I suppose it is possible that systematic misinformation could lead to such results, but even this would require a gullibility and willful blindness on the part of the general population that it seems unlikely. Wolffe remarked at one point that “it’s hard to be a mediator when one side feels you are overwhelmingly one-sided,” which is quite amusing when you consider that Wolffe is referring to the Israeli side believing that the U.S. under Obama is “overwhelmingly one-sided” in favor of the Palestinians. This is as close to the opposite of current political reality as one can get. How can anyone contend with public opinion so completely unmoored from reality?
To partially respond to your question, I believe that the overall impression of Obama’s “pro-Palestinian” image has much to do with the general image that both Left and Right have accorded Obama. The co-opting by the activist Left of Obama’s image during the presidential campaign requires little explanation. Those of the Right, meanwhile, have gladly accepted the narrative of Obama-as-radical, partly due to the previous, partly due to the eagerness to define Obama and his allies as a wholly alien Other. As for Lebanon, I think you’re forgetting that many pro-Israel pundits interpret any sort of material encouragement (whatever the consequences) as ‘good’ for Israel.
Looks like once again a survey of Israeli Jews is being presented as a survey of “Israeli” opinion. Is there any other country for whom deliberately incomplete surveys are routinely treated as expressing national opinion?
Israel and its supporters are basically America’s spoiled brats, to whom anything that looks like criticism is responded to by whining about how Mommy and Daddy don’t love them anymore.
William Burns
“Israel and its supporters are basically America’s spoiled brats, to whom anything that looks like criticism is responded to by whining about how Mommy and Daddy don’t love them anymore.”
You forgot screaming antisemitism whenever anything critical of Israeli policy is put forward. And don’t forget -”remember the holocaust.”
Whatever you think of Bush and Obama, the former was (in substance as well as appearance) extremely pro-Israel and the latter is about as pro-Israel as Carter was. You’re largely wrong about Lebanon, but that’s a minor issue so I won’t get into it. Iraq is the more important war: a win for Israel even if America was losing.
But the only issue for Israelis is the war with the Palestinians. Like it or not, Israelis for the past nine years have basically understood the situation correctly. (The Palestinians have understood it for much longer.) Besides the obvious fact that people like those who give them what they want, Israelis liked Bush because they believed that he basically understood the overall situation between Israel and Palestine as well, despite all that democracy nonsense which Israelis would never be stupid enough to believe. I think Bush’s understanding goes all the way back to the Karine-A incident, when Arafat basically lied to his face. This is not to defend Bush’s disastrous foreign policy, of course.
The impression is that Obama does not understand the situation, which is why he was pressuring Israel – in an especially stupid way – in hopes that he’d get something in return from the Arabs. As Barry Rubin has pointed out repeatedly, what Obama got in exchange for his pressure on Israel was entirely predictable: a hardening of the Palestinian position, in direct defiance of Obama. (I recommend checking out Rubin’s blog and articles for some good analysis, even if you don’t agree with his conclusions.)
Bush and Rice also made “peace process” gestures of course, but it was clear they didn’t expect any real progress (or at least that Bush didn’t). Annapolis was just a dog-and-pony show put on for the benefit of the Europeans. Israelis basically understood that.
P.S. Charming commenters you’ve got here.
“But the only issue for Israelis is the war with the Palestinians.”
Correction: and Iran.
“How can anyone contend with public opinion so completely unmoored from reality?”
You cannot which is why my views on Israel and the Palestinians has been changing over the past few years. The “Greater Israel” ideology is, to use your word, unmoored from any external reality — its adherents see its rightness and necessity as a given, literally from God.
As you have pointed out, Israel is on a path that will lead to its destruction as either a Jewish state or a democracy and those who point that out are resented, at best, and calumnied at worst. In that case, the best response to disengage — let Israel find the $3 billion we give them elsewhere (it’s a relatively rich country).
Do the rumors about Obama being a crypto-Muslim have any purchase in Israel?
Your mystery can be cleared up by re-examining the quote as in, “It’s a matter of trust.” People don’t trust on logical grounds but on emotional perception. It’s my experience that broad public perceptions of leaders are even more emotional and irrational than person to person perceptions.
To Israeli’s, Obama’s African Muslim name and his multi-culti language and associations are more than enough to tip the balance in the trust category. Israeli’s also sense that America’s relationship with the US is not in the US’s best interest, so they yearn for American leaders who are either emotionally committed to their cause or comfortably on their payroll. They sense therefore that Obama would dump them if he could. No amount of catering to their position will mollify the Israeli suspicion that in a pinch, Obama would rather they all just go away.
There is one other aspect to this distrust. Israeli’s are far from immune from racial prejudice. They are well aware of the animosity American Blacks have toward Jews and have themselves cast their own antagonism with the Arabs in at least partially racial terms.
“P.S. Charming commenters you’ve got here.”
Thanks Aaron! No doubt you’re pretty cute yourself.
As for the idea that Obama hoped that pressure on Israel to freeze settlements would get him something in exchange from the Arabs, that would only have worked if Israel had actually froze settlements. It’s hard to see why the Arabs should have given up anything given Obama’s demonstration of impotence with the Israeli governmetn.
To be honest, this is why I think the US should set out a series of principles it would support for a final settlement of the issue (Palestine in West Bank and Gaza, no Right of Return (or compensation instead), etc), offer rewards to both participants if they choose to go that way, and step the hell back.
While the US can play a role in helping to settle a peace deal, we really ought to leave the starting process to the Israelis and Palestinians. That’s how we got the Egypt-Israel treaty; Sadat and Begin were meeting for a while before they came out in the open and the US got involved.
Re some of the comments:
I doubt that the rumors of Obama being a crypto-Muslim have any real purchase in Israel. But a lot of Israelis probably assume that he naturally sympathizes with Muslims against Israel because of his Muslim background. That’s just my guess, though; no survey data or anything to back it up.
The so-called “Greater Israel” ideology has been politically irrelevant in Israel for quite a long time. It’s still relevant mostly in the minds of non-Israeli polemicists who aren’t really interested in the reality of Israel. Only a small and – contrary to popular myth – mostly powerless minority of Israelis are motivated by that ideology. The broad near-consensus of Israelis (by which of course I mean Israeli Jews, ha ha) is both in favor of land-for-peace (UN Resolution 242), and against further territorial concessions at this time because the other side is clearly not interested in land-for-peace. Agree or disagree with them, that’s what the large majority of Israelis actually believe in the actually existing Israel, as opposed to the imaginary Israel constructed by American and European opinionizers. (There happen to be both fantasy-based and reality-based pundits writing for TAC; Mr. Larison is an exemplar of reality-based analysis.)
On the settlement freeze, according to the analysis I read at the time, it was supposed to be a win-either-way move for Obama: whether or not Israel agrees, the US wins good will among Arabs by showing it’s willing to confront Israel. Good will of course is meant to be cashed in later for political gains. The alternate interpretation, which is apparently William Burns’ (above) – that Obama thought he’d win if and only if the Israelis went along with his demand – makes Obama look like a complete moron for gambling so much on such an obvious long shot. Though after the Olympics incident I guess that reading is less implausible.
Either way, as I said before, it’s not just that Obama failed to win anything as a result of his ultimatum. He lost ground, and lost fairly big. The result was that the Palestinians reacted to Obama’s goodwill move by hardening their position, demanding a freeze as a precondition for talks, although they had already been negotiating with Israel without any settlement freeze at all for the last two decades. And here’s what falsifies William Burns’ hypothesis above: the Palestinians hardened their position before it was clear how the confrontation between Obama and Israel would play out. This result – the Palestinians’ hardening of their negotiating position as a response to goodwill gestures, in this case from the US – should not have been a surprise. The Palestinians would have hardened their position even if Israel had gone along with Obama’s demand, if past behavior is any guide. It was Obama himself who set the “peace process” back two decades, at least for the time being.
So, The Palestinians have been negotiating for two decades without a settlement freeze (or much other significant change); and, Obama set the peace process back two decades. What’s to set back?
“The idea that he is “pro-Palestinian” is so painfully, absurdly wrong that I don’t know quite what to make of it. I suppose it is possible that systematic misinformation could lead to such results, but even this would require a gullibility and willful blindness on the part of the general population that it seems unlikely. ”
From reading even the first few sentences, it’s clear that the guy is simply dihonest.
Re: “…Obama set the peace process back two decades. What’s to set back?”
I said that it was a fairly big loss for Obama, not for the Israelis or the Palestinians.
I’m not sure how the peace process goes back 20 years for the US while the Israelis and Palestinians stay in the same place, but I will agree that it was a loss for Obama.
Aaron,
While we obviously disagree on the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I still don’t understand how Israelis can view Obama as “pro-Palestinian.” The areas where Obama & Israel have converged far outnumbers the areas of dissension On issues like the siege of Gaza, the Goldstone report, Israel’s non-disclosure of its nuclear weapons, & Israel’s demand that it be recognized as a Jewish state – just to name a few – the Obama Administration has sided unambiguously with Israel. Even on settlements, it’s not as if Obama is calling for the removal of existing settlers, just for a freeze on new construction. The fact that so many Israelis took umbrage at such a modest call reveals to me the dysfunctional nature of the Israeli-American relationship: America provides massive amounts of military, economic, & diplomatic support for Israel, in return for which America is supposed to never, ever question what Israel does.
As for Mahmoud Abbas, I find it interesting that you view him as an obdurate hard-liner, while so many Palestinians & Arabs view him as an American/Israeli quisling, something which would only be further evidenced by the PLO/PA’s capitulation on the Goldstone report last week.
By the way, I recommend everybody follow your advice and check out Barry Rubin’s blog I found it to be an unintentionally hilarious look into the thinking of a neocon Likudnik. I particularly liked this nugget:
“From his political background, Obama learned three negative attitudes toward Israel. If things had gone otherwise, these might have been expressed as major policies during his presidency, the disaster that many foresaw and some still misperceive…
-Indoctrinated by the far left into the Third World, “anti-imperialist” narrative, *** Obama disliked Israel and saw it as evil ***, taught by such people as Rashid Khalidi, an Edward Said acolyte and Palestinian propagandist, and the Reverend Wright, an outright antisemite.” (emphasis added)
http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-and-israel-time-for-reassessment.html
This 2002 gem from Mr. Rubin is ever better:
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=450004&subid=900021&contentid=251047
Terms like “pro-Israeli” or “pro-Palestinian” are meaningless except in a specific political context, and even then their meaning is only relative. Obama is “pro-Palestinian” because he’s more “pro-Palestinian” than what Israelis have become accustomed to under Bush. It’s ridiculous to try to say Obama’s not “really” pro-Palestinian according to some abstract, absolute definition you have.
Barry Rubin is one of many analysts whose political views I often disagree with but whose analysis is usually insightful and enlightening (and sometimes wrong, as in the second example you cited). Another is Michael Neumann, a radical leftist who passionately hates the State of Israel and would like to see it (peacefully) destroyed. I highly recommend Neumann’s columns on the Israel-Arab war, published at Counterpunch, and (less highly) his book The Case Against Israel. Neocons and leftists are often right about a lot of things, as are paleocons as well. On Israel/Palestine you can get good analysis across the political spectrum, but most of the analysis (including among paleos) is garbage.
Although I find Rubin’s “everything is the fault of the Palestinians” analysis to be absurd, he deserves credit for treating “pro-Israel” as a term with an actual meaning and using the evidence of Obama’s actions to show that he is. I don’t have an abstract and absolute definition of “pro-Palestinian.” I do believe that a “pro-Palestinian” US president (difficult as that is to imagine) would be taking specific steps favoring the Palestinians. For example, this hypothetical president would be taking measures to lift the Gaza embargo and calling for consideration of the Goldstone report. Obama is not doing these things, and he’s not pro-Palestinian, regardless of the opinion of Israeli Jews or anyone else.