No One Is Throwing Israel Under or Over or Otherwise in the Direction of the Bus

As anyone who saw the third and final presidential debate this past Monday knows, expressing fanatical support for Israel is very important to both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney--almost as important as insisting that the other doesn’t really have Israel’s interests at heart.  In pursuit of establishing the latter claim, Mitt Romney has been making ample use of the long-running GOP talking point that Obama has “thrown…Israel under the bus,” a claim which appears more credible if you, like many Romney supporters, happen to believe the president is a secret Arab Muslim radical whatever.

Since anyone who follows the Israel-Palestine situation knows that for Romney to traduce Obama as anything less than a staunch supporter of Israeli imperiousness is pretty laughable, it seems like we should welcome Efraim Halevy’s op-ed in today’s New York Times which aims to undermine the popular assumption that Democratic administrations are much harder on Israel than Republican ones.  

Unfortunately, the article contains little to recommend it.   

For one thing, rather than pointing out that Obama is as much an enabler of the occupation and its attendant crimes as any of his recent predecessors, Halevy frames his argument in jingoistic terms—for him, the issue is which American political party has greater “regard for Israel’s national pride, strategic interests [and] sensitivities.” 

And more substantively, while his factual claims are basically accurate, the picture he paints with them is extremely misleading.

First of all, the “special relationship” between the US and Israel wasn’t established until the Six Day War (1967), when Israel demonstrated itself to be a valuable strategic asset vis-à-vis Soviet influence in the Arab world broadly and Nasser’s Egypt in particular.  So while what he says about Eisenhower evicting the Israelis from the Sinai in 1956 is true, it isn’t really part of the narrative under consideration.

Second, he appears to assume we all agree that Israel’s concerns are solely vested in the Palestinian question.  This is largely what allows him to make what is in fact a glib argument look convincing. 

I once asked economist and Fatah advisor Husam Zomlot about what strikes me as Halevy's most salient point, namely, that even Bush Sr. seemed to be able to place greater pressure on Israel vis-à-vis the occupation than Obama.

  

His answer struck me as correct, or at least as gripping the right end of the stick.   

The reason why James Baker, Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State, was able to employ serious economic leverage against Israel (i.e. threatening to pull loan guarantees) is the same reason that makes us assume the Republicans are easier on, or at least more supportive of, Israel: the Republican ranks are packed with Evangelical Zionists and imperial interventionist hawks.  Republican leaders thus have far more control over and far less to fear from whatever domestic political backlash might result from giving Israel orders it finds distasteful.

And by the same token, Israel’s leadership knows that a presidential victory for the Republican party means a significant boost for a whole host of political forces that aggressively support one or more of its core geopolitical commitments, most significantly securing (religious) claims to expropriated Arab soil and maintaining regional US-Israeli hegemony through proactive violence.  (By contrast, US moderates tend to feel a little queasy when they have to support the more brazen versions of these policies.) Conversely, it is precisely because the Republicans share much deeper sympathies with Israel’s religious and military commitments that they can get away with occasionally "strong-arm[ing]" the Israeli leadership diplomatically.  Whatever the cost in diplomatic vulnerability, a Republican victory is a net gain for Israel’s core ambitions.

So take two of Halevy’s main pieces of evidence—Bush Sr. and Israel’s non-involvement in the Gulf War/participation at Madrid, and Bush Jr. and the road map:

On March 13, 2003, senior Israeli officials were summarily informed that the United States would publicly adopt the draft road map as its policy. Washington made it clear to us that on the eve of a war, Israel was expected to refrain from criticizing the American policy and also to ensure that its sympathizers got the message.

The United States insisted that the road map be approved without any changes, saying Israel’s concerns would be addressed later. At a long and tense cabinet debate I attended in May 2003, Mr. Sharon reluctantly asked his ministers to accept Washington’s demand. Benjamin Netanyahu, then the finance minister, disagreed, and he abstained during the vote on the cabinet resolution, which eventually passed.

From that point on, the road map, including the language on Jerusalem, became the policy bible for America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. Not only was Israel strong-armed by a Republican president, but it was also compelled to simply acquiesce and swallow the bitterest of pills.
[…]
In 1991, when Iraqi Scud missiles rained down on Tel Aviv, the administration of the first President Bush urged Israel not to strike back so as to preserve the coalition of Arab states fighting Iraq. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir resisted his security chiefs’ recommendation to retaliate and bowed to American demands as his citizens reached for their gas masks.

After the war, Mr. Shamir agreed to go to Madrid for a Middle East peace conference set up by Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Fearful that Mr. Shamir would be intransigent at the negotiating table, the White House pressured him by withholding $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel, causing us serious economic problems. The eventual result was Mr. Shamir’s political downfall. The man who had saved Mr. Bush’s grand coalition against Saddam Hussein in 1991 was “thrown under the bus.”

In both instances what you have is strategic pressure placed on Israel for the sake of invading and crushing one of Israel’s most significant military adversaries in the region.  To say these examples suggest that the Republicans are harder on Israel than the Democrats is like saying that a father who forces his child to floss before and after sharing an enormous bag of candy with her is harder on the kid than the mother who gives their child candy sparingly instead. 

Like so much of what passes for serious commentary on the Middle East, this op-ed just doesn't seem intellectually serious.  Ask yourself, which of these situations do you think the Israelis would prefer:

1. Al Gore wins in 2000, Israelis don’t have to sign onto the road map (and thus swallow that "bitterest of pills": sharing a small part of a stolen city with its rightful owners!), Saddam Hussein remains in power, Cheney and Rumsfeld are not strategically positioned to stonewall bi-partisan receptivity to Iranian interest in opening up diplomatic relations and assisting with the War in Afghanistan.

Or

2. Bush wins, US invades Israel’s second least favorite country: Iraq—long the most militarily ambitious state in the Arab world and the most staunch supporter of Palestinian armed resistance--captures Hussein and throws him to the dogs, and as an added bonus rebukes friendly diplomatic overtures from Iran: the only country Israel loathes more than Iraq.  And yes, Israel has to sign onto a symbolic document outlining a plan to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict in a way that entails concessions from Israel that fall well short of the terms stipulated by international law and that everyone knows will likely never be (and, surprise!, still have not been) implemented. 

Well?

So what I’m saying is that Halevy’s argument is specious.