Foreign Affairs and Defense
Israeli PR’s focus on the peace process highlights the country’s failures rather than its successes, and people dislike failures
Commenting last week on Israel’s surprising ninth-place Eurovision finish, achieved thanks to votes from millions of usually anti-Israel Europeans, Avshalom Halutz of Haaretz wrote sarcastically that the dramatic improvement over previous results “seems to validate Israel’s decision…to send its carefree ‘Golden Boy’ party anthem to Eurovision, after years of trying in vain to find favor with the Europeans with apologetic and hypocritical songs about peace and tolerance, and failed gimmicks like candlelight or a duet between a Jewish and an Arab singer.” Despite being an exaggeration, there’s something to what he says. And it’s something that goes to the heart of what’s wrong with Israel’s public diplomacy effort.
Because while most of Israel’s Eurovision entries don’t actually focus on peace (aside from the one Jewish-Arab duet Halutz mentioned), its real-world public diplomacy definitely does. Indeed, public relations experts have told us for years that only by constantly stressing Israel’s desire for peace can it possibly win Western hearts. Yet somehow, this “expert” strategy keeps failing – and this failure shouldn’t actually surprise anyone.
To understand why, consider one of history’s epic PR battles: the American-Soviet one. During their five-decade Cold War, Americans and Soviets fought militarily, economically and diplomatically. But they also waged a worldwide battle for public opinion – just as Israel and the Palestinians are doing (on a smaller scale) today. The USSR, for instance, funded pro-Communist front groups throughout the West, while America created global radio stations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.
But ultimately, America won on the PR front no less decisively than it did on other fronts. So it’s worth examining how and why.
Clearly, one factor is that America invested heavily in this fight – something Israel, unlike the Palestinians, has signally failed to do. But since the Soviets also invested massively in public diplomacy, resources alone can’t explain America’s victory.
Another factor is that America had a genuinely compelling narrative to tell about itself: one of freedom, opportunity and economic growth. But at least initially, the Soviet narrative – of economic development combined with equality and social justice – seemed no less compelling. Indeed, the Communist vision attracted millions of adherents worldwide throughout the Cold War.
So why did America’s vision ultimately triumph over the equally compelling Communist one? The answer is that America sold a vision it could actually deliver on: America really did provide freedom, opportunity and economic development. In contrast, as the decades passed, it became increasingly clear that the USSR couldn’t deliver on its vision. The Soviet Union ultimately provided neither equality nor social justice nor economic growth. And a failed promise is not a compelling narrative; it provokes deep disappointment that can easily morph into anger and disgust.
Yet a failed promise is precisely what Israel has been trying to sell the world for 20 years now. For two decades, the main story Israel has told about itself is that it wants peace. And since peace is clearly an attractive value, this story initially generated global enthusiasm.
But 20 years later, Israel still hasn’t achieved peace – which means that judged on its own terms, Israel is a failure. And a failure is the opposite of a compelling story: It provokes disappointment, anger and disgust.
What’s shocking about this is that Israel has numerous compelling stories to tell that it really has delivered on: the Jewish people’s rebirth from the ashes of the Holocaust, the only democracy in the Middle East, making the desert bloom, the ingathering of the exiles after 2,000 years, the West’s front line against Islamic extremism, the start-up nation, and much more. Each of these stories could be attractive to particular audiences. For instance, making the desert bloom might not resonate in water-rich Scandinavia, but it certainly could in drought-stricken places like California and China, both of which signed bilateral agreements last year under which Israel will share its water-management expertise and technologies with them.
Indeed, if you examine Israel’s supporters around the world – and it still has many – you’ll find very few who admire it mainly because of its desire for peace. Israel’s supporters admire it for its successes, not its failures. In America, for instance, Israel is admired as the Mideast’s only democracy and an ally in the battle against Islamic terror. Evangelical Christians worldwide support Israel because the Jewish return to Zion after 2,000 years resonates with Biblical prophesies. In China and India, Israel is generally admired for its high-tech innovations. And so forth.
Moreover, these successes have far more to do with what Israel is all about than its failure to make peace does. While peace is obviously a good thing, and it would be nice if Israel could achieve it, it isn’t Israel’s raison d’etre. Israel’s raison d’etre is to create a thriving Jewish state in the Jewish people’s historic homeland – something at which it has been stunningly successful.
But in contrast to American public diplomacy during the Cold War, which talked constantly about the public goods, like freedom and opportunity, that America really provided, Israel’s public diplomacy over the past 20 years has focused almost exclusively on its desire to make peace and to create a Palestinian state. In short, it has focused on Israel’s failures rather than its successes. And it has thereby created the impression that Israel itself is a failure – because it has created the impression that Israel should be judged by its success or failure in making peace rather than its success or failure in creating a flourishing Jewish state.
This year’s Eurovision entry, by contrast, reminded audiences not of Israel’s failures, but of one of its myriad successes: The admittedly inane lyrics were about the fun life in Tel Aviv. And millions of viewers responded.
This, on a more sophisticated level, is precisely what Israel’s public diplomacy should be doing. Because if Israel reduces itself to nothing but a failed effort at peace-making, it can hardly blame the world for doing the same. Only by portraying itself as it really is – a rousing success on multiple fronts – can Israel hope to persuade the world to see it the same way.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on June 3, 2015
The new deputy minister won’t appeal to Europe, which might spur her to focus on an area long neglected: the non-Western world
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made many surprising choices when assigning cabinet posts to members of his Likud party, but perhaps none more so than Tzipi Hotovely’s appointment as deputy foreign minister.
First, she’s a novice who has never held any executive branch position before, yet will now exercise de facto control over one of the cabinet’s most important ministries. Technically, she serves under Netanyahu, who retained the foreign affairs portfolio for himself. But since Netanyahu already has a full-time job as prime minister, she will largely run the ministry.
Second, she’s one of the most hawkish members of Netanyahu’s coalition and an outspoken opponent of Palestinian statehood. As The Jerusalem Post’s diplomatic correspondent, Herb Keinon, put it, “Hotovely represents the opposite of everything much of the world…wants to see in Israel.”
Third, in contrast to appointees like Miri Regev or Haim Katz, whose power bases within Likud were simply too strong for Netanyahu to ignore, Hotovely’s support inside the party is tenuous; in the last primary, she barely scraped into the 20th slot. Nor is she known as one of the premier’s own loyalists. Thus he was under no political compulsion to reward her with such a lofty post.
Finally, there were plenty of other candidates who would seemingly have been more suitable, including the one many American Jews undoubtedly hoped to see there: former ambassador to Washington and current Kulanu MK Michael Oren.
Indeed, Hotovely’s main qualification for the post – aside from being pretty, personable and reportedly speaking excellent English – would seem to be that she constitutes no threat to Netanyahu, who notoriously squelches anyone he does consider a potential political threat. That’s why so many ambitious Likudniks eventually quit the party to run their own parties (see Moshe Kahlon, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman).
Nevertheless, Hotovely could end up being an excellent choice, for the same reason I thought the indisputably talented Oren would actually be a bad one: In my view, the ministry’s main focus right now should be the vast stretch of the world outside North America and Europe.
For decades, the Foreign Ministry has focused almost exclusively on the West, for very good reason: The West was Israel’s main source of both trade and diplomatic support.
But in recent years, the second half of that equation has been changing. As evidence, consider last December’s United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution to recognize a Palestinian state despite the absence of a peace agreement. America and Australia voted against, while Britain and Lithuania abstained. But two of Israel’s other European “allies,” France and Luxembourg, voted in favor; it was three non-European countries – Rwanda, Nigeria and South Korea – that provided the final crucial abstentions which deprived the resolution of the nine votes needed for passage. In other words, while Europe split evenly on the vote, the African delegates split 2-1 in Israel’s favor (Chad voted for recognition).
Granted, the comparison is somewhat unfair – Rwanda and Nigeria are two of Israel’s best friends in Africa. Nevertheless, the fact remains that many countries in Africa, Asia and even South America have no particular grievances against Israel. Thus with diplomatic effort, it might be possible to persuade them to support Israel in critical venues like the Security Council.
In contrast, much of Europe is rapidly becoming viscerally anti-Israel – and no amount of diplomatic effort is going to change that. Effective diplomacy can sometimes alter a country’s rational calculations, but it can’t do anything to mitigate irrational hatred. And Europe’s hatred for Israel is utterly irrational; there’s no other way to describe an emotion that sent hundreds of thousands of Europeans into the streets to denounce Israel over a war in Gaza that killed 2,000 people and affected Europe not at all, but brings zero people into the streets to protest a war in Syria that has killed 200,000 people and deluged Europe with unwanted refugees.
Thus a deputy minister who maintained the ministry’s traditional westward focus would inevitably end up wasting much of his own and his diplomats’ time and resources. And Israel needs new friends too, in order to not waste another four years banging its head against a European wall.
Yet Oren, by instinct and training, would have done exactly that; he has repeatedly declared Israel’s eroding position in the West to be his primary concern. Even worse, he belongs to the school which holds that in an attempt to buy the love of Western liberals, Israel should endanger its own security by unilaterally withdrawing from much of the West Bank. Thus not only would he likely have misdirected the ministry’s resources, but, like too many other Israeli diplomats, he might also have ended up undermining Israel’s diplomatic position still further by serving as an outspoken advocate of greater Israeli appeasement.
Hotovely, in contrast, has no such instincts or training; she’s part of a generation and a community (hawkish religious Zionists) that have no illusions about Europe’s attitude toward Israel. Consequently, she might be open to the idea of focusing her ministry’s energies in more promising directions. Indeed, Europe’s demonstrative coolness toward her will push her to do so, since the alternative will be doing nothing.
It’s true that Europe remains Israel’s largest trading partner, and as such, requires some attention. But that trade is a bilateral interest, and has consequently continued growing despite the increasingly vociferous anti-Israel boycott movement.
It’s also true that Washington’s diplomatic support remains crucial. Yet for better or for worse, relations with Washington have always been handled by the Prime Minister’s Office; no deputy or even full-time foreign minister would have been given responsibility for America.
In contrast, Netanyahu has neither time nor energy to spend “cultivating…ties with Kazakhstan, Angola and Colombia” (to quote Keinon again). That leaves his deputy free to do so without fear of stepping on his toes – something that could easily happen with a deputy focused on countries the premier actually cares about.
Hotovely would win little public acclaim by focusing on Africa, Asia and South America, but she would do a great service to her country. And by so doing, she would prove herself worthy of her lofty position after all.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on May 19, 2015
I know it’s been a busy two weeks, but I’m still waiting for that apology. I’ve been waiting for it ever since the U.S. admitted on April 23 to accidentally killing two Western hostages in Pakistan, and doubly so after a U.S. airstrike allegedly killed 52 civilians in Syria last Friday. Clearly, I don’t expect an apology for the fact that American forces are composed of men rather than angels, and therefore sometimes makes mistakes. But I certainly do expect an apology for the Obama Administration’s refusal to acknowledge that so are Israel’s forces. In the administration’s view, Israel never makes honest mistakes. If Israel inadvertently kills civilians in wartime, then it wasn’t trying hard enough not to do so.
We don’t yet know what happened in Syria, but the drone strike on an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan is instructive. Administration officials told the New York Times that the CIA had “no idea that the hostages were being held there despite hundreds of hours of surveillance.” Yet they apparently can’t conceive of Israel — in the midst of a shooting war where decisions on whether to return fire must be made instantly, rather than with the benefit of hundreds of hours of surveillance — being similarly unaware that civilians were present at various sites it targeted during last summer’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
Needless to say, American military professionals don’t share the administration’s view. The day after the White House announced the hostages’ deaths; Michael Schmitt and John Merriam published a summary of their detailed investigation into Israel’s targeting practices during that war. Schmitt, a professor of international law, heads the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and is considered a leading expert on the laws of armed conflict (LOAC). Merriam is a U.S. Army Judge Advocate and associate director of the Stockton Center. They were given unusual access to information, like targeting procedures that the Israel Defense Forces usually keeps secret; they were also allowed to observe IDF targeting cells at work and examine combat footage that hasn’t been publicly released. And here’s their conclusion:
Broadly speaking, we concluded that IDF positions on targeting law largely track those of the United States military. Moreover, even when they differ, the Israeli approach remains within the ambit of generally acceptable State practice … we found that their approach to targeting is consistent with the law and, in many cases, worthy of emulation.
They also pointed out that “the nuances of the Israeli approach … can only be understood in the context of the specific operational and strategic environment in which the IDF must fight.” And the complexities of that environment, which Israel’s critics largely ignore, go beyond such simple facts as Hamas’s penchant for launching rockets from civilian homes.
For instance, one key principle of LOAC is proportionality, meaning that an attack is illegal if the anticipated harm to civilians is disproportionate to the anticipated military benefit. But for a country that routinely trades hundreds of terrorists – who then resume killing Israelis – for a single captured soldier, the anticipated military benefit of preventing a soldier from being captured may be much higher than it would be for countries that don’t routinely make such trades, Schmitt and Merriam noted.
Yet the professionals’ view – also voiced by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey last November – never mattered to their civilian superiors. Even a Pentagon spokesman joined the administration pile-on accusing Israel of callous disregard for civilian life, declaring in a news briefing last July that “the Israelis need to do more to live up to their very high standards … for protecting civilian life.”
I don’t expect anything of people who think U.S. drone strikes are no less evil than Israel’s actions in Gaza. But the Obama Administration routinely defends its own civilian casualties as honest mistakes that occurred despite the strictest precautions. And to do that while simultaneously insisting that Israel’s can’t possibly be the same is the height of hypocrisy.
Originally published in Commentary on May 6, 2015
Responding to last week’s post about a poll showing that young Arabs no longer see Israel as the Mideast’s biggest problem, a reader pointed out that this doesn’t mean they’ve stopped hating Israel or wanting it to disappear. That’s unarguable; recognizing that Israel isn’t the source of all the region’s ills is merely the first step on a long road toward accepting its existence. But as one of the most remarkable stories I’ve read in years makes clear, it’s a very significant step. And how Israel responds to it will matter greatly.
The story, reported by Shlomi Eldar in Al-Monitor, began with a Muslim Arab veteran of the Israel Defense Forces–a rarity in itself, since few Israeli Arabs enlist. Outraged at hearing his own community’s leaders vilifying the IDF, M. made a Facebook page aimed at convincing other Israeli Arabs that the IDF isn’t evil and more of them should enlist.
What he got instead was an outpouring of love for Israel from across the Arab world. A young Saudi woman, for instance, posted a video clip saying, “I’d like to send a message of peace and love to Israel and its dear citizens … I hope the Arabs will be sensible like me and recognize the fact that Israel also has rights to the lands of Palestine.” A young Iraqi man posted a clip saying, “I want to send a message of peace and love to the dear Israeli people … I believe that the number of people who support Israel here will grow consistently.”
Stunned by these messages–and there were “lots of them,” Eldar reported–M. began asking their authors what prompted them to support Israel. Some had personal reasons, like a Jordanian lesbian envious of Israel’s gay rights. But others cited the crucial realization of that poll data.
“There are a lot of young people here who think like me,” the Iraqi man said. “Everything that is happening to us here in Iraq — the killings, the terrorism, the veritable bloodbath — showed us that Israel has nothing to do with it.” In other words, his recognition that Israel wasn’t the cause of the Arab world’s problems is what enabled him to start seeing it as it actually is.
Or take the Egyptian police officer who wrote, “We love, love, love Israel and its army,” even adding a heart with a Star of David inside. Four years ago, that would have been unthinkable. But today, Egyptian policemen are on the front lines against the brutal terrorism of homegrown Islamic extremists, and the IDF is one of Egypt’s closest allies in this fight. So instead of seeing Israel as the problem, some Egyptians now see it as part of the solution.
None of this means a New Middle East will break out tomorrow; these young Arabs remain a minority. Moreover, the ones who still hate Israel passionately are often the ones with the guns and bombs and missiles, which means they’re the ones who will take over any territory up for grabs.
Hence the last conclusion to draw from this is the one leftists routinely do: that Israel should attempt to accelerate this budding rapprochement by making territorial concessions. That would actually be counterproductive: It would further empower the extremists against the moderates by giving them more territory to control, endanger Israel by giving the extremists new bases from which to attack it, and thereby ensure more Israeli-Arab bloodshed.
Instead, Israel should recognize that since this new openness stems entirely from internal changes in the Arab world; the Palestinian issue is largely irrelevant to it. As evidence, consider that repeated Israeli pullouts, from Sinai, Lebanon, and Gaza, produced no such upsurge in Arab affection, whereas the past four years did, despite two wars in Gaza, zero pullouts, and zero progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks.
That doesn’t mean Israel can do nothing; it can and should try to help Arabs improve their own lives. And in fact, it’s already doing that in numerous ways, from counterterrorism assistance to Egypt through economic aid to Jordan to medical care for wounded Syrians. But it shouldn’t forget that this change in Arab attitudes is merely the start of a long process of baby steps. Any attempt at a “great leap forward” is liable to end in a painful fall.
Originally published in Commentary on May 1, 2015
One of the most positive strategic developments for Israel of the past few years has been its marked improvement in relations with significant parts of the Arab world. Three years ago, for instance, the most cockeyed optimist wouldn’t have predicted a letter like Israel received this week from a senior official of the Free Syrian Army, who congratulated it on its 67th anniversary and voiced hope that next year, Israel’s Independence Day would be celebrated at an Israeli embassy in Damascus.
Yet many analysts have cautioned that even if Arab leaders were quietly cooperating with Israel for reasons of realpolitik, anti-Israel hostility in the “Arab street” hadn’t abated. So a new poll showing that this, too, is changing came as a lovely Independence Day gift.
The ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey, which has been conducted annually for the last seven years, polls 3,500 Arabs aged 18 to 24 from 16 Arab countries in face-to-face interviews. One of the standard questions is “What do you believe is the biggest obstacle facing the Middle East?”
This year, defying a long tradition of blaming all the Arab world’s problems on Israel, only 23 percent of respondents cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the region’s main obstacle. In fact, the conflict came in fourth, trailing ISIS (37 percent), terrorism (32 percent) and unemployment (29 percent). Given that respondents were evidently allowed to choose more than one of the 15 options (the total adds up to 235 percent rather than 100), it’s even more noteworthy that only 23 percent thought the conflict worth mentioning.
A comparison to previous surveys shows that this figure has been declining slowly but steadily for the past few years: In 2012, for instance, it was 27 percent, a statistically significant difference given the poll’s margin of error (1.65 percent). But the 2015 decline is particularly remarkable because last summer’s war in Gaza made the past year the conflict’s bloodiest in decades for Palestinians. Hence one would have expected Arab concern about the conflict to increase. Instead, it dropped.
The poll also highlights another encouraging fact: The issues young Arabs do see as their top concerns–ISIS, terrorism, and unemployment–are all issues on which cooperation with Israel could be beneficial, and in some cases, it’s already taking place. For instance, Israeli-Egyptian cooperation on counterterrorism is closer than it’s been in years–not only against Hamas, but also against the ISIS branch in Sinai, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. Israel and Jordan cooperate closely on counterterrorism as well, and it’s a safe bet that quiet cooperation is also occurring with certain other Arab states that officially have no relations with Israel.
Egypt and Israel have also ramped up economic cooperation, even manning a joint booth at a major trade fair earlier this year.
In short, the issues currently of greatest concern to young Arabs are precisely the issues most conducive to a further thawing of Israeli-Arab relations.
What the poll shows, in a nutshell, is that young Arabs have reached the same conclusion Arab leaders made glaringly evident at the last year’s inaugural session of the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate: Israel simply isn’t one of the Arab world’s major problems anymore, if it ever was. Now all Israel needs is for the West to finally come to the same realization.
Originally published in Commentary on April 24, 2015
A man I once admired has begun subordinating vital security interests to the needs of partisan politics
As of this writing, the election is still too close to call. But there’s a reasonable chance that our next prime minister will be Isaac Herzog. And that prospect worries me far more than I would have expected when the campaign began, because he’s a politician I had previously admired and even publicly praised, despite our serious political differences. So although I expected to disagree with his policies, I didn’t expect to be concerned about his character.
Lest there be any confusion, policy disputes are not the same as character flaws. For instance, I think unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank would be far more dangerous than remaining there, while senior members of Herzog’s team publicly espouse the opposite view, but that’s a policy dispute: Each side genuinely believes his own position is right.
A character flaw is when a politician sacrifices something he himself considers vital to the country for personal or political benefit. And that’s precisely what Herzog did during this campaign: He publicly undermined Israel’s ability to present a united front on Iran, despite the fact that by his own admission, he has no substantive disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this issue. Moreover, he did this even though thoughtful members of his own political camp publicly urged him not to, arguing that a united front on Iran was too important to sacrifice to partisan politics.
A brief recap of the facts: Netanyahu decided to give a highly controversial speech to Congress opposing the emerging nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran. Though many moderate leftists share Netanyahu’s concerns about the emerging deal, they thought the speech was a terrible idea. So they proposed that Herzog also publicly speak out against the deal, thereby emphasizing the unanimity of Israeli concern, while simultaneously making it clear that he doesn’t endorse Netanyahu’s tactics.
Here, for instance, is Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit: “In a place where there are no men, Herzog must be the man. He must make the appropriate, seminal speech about the Iranian nuclear threat in Jerusalem. He must call on Obama not to make an irrevocable move that will undermine world order. He must act now as a national leader and steer the international campaign against Obama and Khamenei’s disastrous deal.”
Or here is Jerusalem Post columnist Susan Hattis Rolef: “I cannot for the life of me understand why the Zionist Union in general and the Labor Party in particular has not been saying from every possible podium and on all the social media in Israel that they are in absolute agreement with Netanyahu that Iran poses a serious threat to Israel, and that the policy of the US and of Europe toward Iran, and especially on the issue of what sort of nuclear capability it should be allowed to maintain, and whether the economic sanctions on it ought to be lifted, is of great concern to Israel and liable to backfire … The speech in Congress is simply considered to be the wrong tactics.”
And then there’s Times of Israel editor-in-chief David Horovitz, who even proposed that Herzog accompany Netanyahu to Congress and give a speech of his own, thereby “underlining their common conviction that the regime in Tehran cannot be appeased and must be faced down … What better way for the US to show common cause with Israel, without taking sides in its election? And what better way to present a united front against Iran?”
But Herzog rejected all this advice. He refused to go to Washington. He refused to speak out on the Iranian issue from Jerusalem. To be fair, he did write one New York Times op-ed which, though mostly devoted to attacking Netanyahu’s speech, revealed at the tail end (if anyone read that far) that he actually agreed with all of Netanyahu’s substantive concerns. But that was overshadowed by a high-profile Washington Post interview in which he said exactly the opposite: Far from highlighting the emerging deal’s problems, he declared, “I trust Obama to get a good deal.”
In short, Herzog did everything possible to persuade Americans – and especially American Democrats, the party most attentive to his left-leaning Zionist Union – that concerns about the emerging deal weren’t a bipartisan issue in Israel, but solely the province of the right, and that Democrats should therefore dismiss everything Netanyahu said as mere partisan politics. And he thereby made it far harder to mobilize the necessary bipartisan consensus in America against a bad deal.
If Herzog did this simply because he was unwilling to publicly agree with Netanyahu on any issue during a campaign, then he was sacrificing a vital security issue – the Iranian nuclear threat – on the altar of petty politics. That would be bad enough. But his own statements give rise to a possibility that’s even more frightening: He’s simply unwilling to challenge the Obama Administration on any issue, even one of existential importance to Israel. He’s willing to “trust Obama” on this deal (Washington Post) despite warning that it’s one “we might live to regret” (New York Times).
I began this column by saying I used to admire Herzog. I admired him for a very specific reason: his four-year, almost single-handed battle to pass legislation granting citizenship and compensation to members of the South Lebanon Army who fled to Israel after it unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Despite repeated failures, he never gave up; he kept trying until he succeeded. He invested sizable amounts of time, energy and political capital in a cause that had no real political constituency and would reap him no political rewards, simply because it was the right thing to do.
But the man I once admired just went AWOL on one of the most important issues Israel will ever face – the emerging nuclear deal with Iran. Instead, we got a petty politician who is either willing to sacrifice vital national interests for the sake of partisan politics, lacks the courage to stand up to the Obama Administration on a crucial national security issue, or perhaps both. And that doesn’t bode well for his performance in office should he become our next prime minister.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on January 16, 2015
According to official data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, housing construction in West Bank settlements fell by a whopping 52 percent last year–far greater than the 8 percent decline in construction nationwide. Moreover, the bureau said, settlement construction throughout Benjamin Netanyahu’s six years as prime minister has been significantly lower than it was under his predecessors: Overall, the number of housing starts in the settlements was 19 percent lower in 2009-2014 than it was in 2003-2008, under prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, while the number of housing completions was 15 percent lower.
This, of course, doesn’t match the popular perception of Netanyahu: The accepted wisdom among international journalists and diplomats is that he’s a major backer of the settlements who has presided over massive building there. Indeed, just last year, President Barack Obama declared that “we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time”–a claim belied by the official data at the time and once again belied by the new statistics released yesterday. But it was nevertheless widely believed, because it fit the accepted narrative of Netanyahu as “hardline” and “right-wing.”
And this is just one example of a far broader problem: Too many international journalists and diplomats see Israel and its leaders through the prism of a preconceived narrative, and any facts that don’t conform to this narrative are simply ignored. Netanyahu is “right-wing,” so he must be building massively in the settlements, even if he isn’t. Israeli voters have elected him twice in the last six years, so the country must have become more right-wing, even if in reality–as I explained in detail in my article for COMMENTARY this month–most Israelis have moved so far to the left over the last two decades that they now hold positions formerly held only by the far-left Arab-Jewish Communist Party. Netanyahu is “hardline,” so he must be to blame for the failure of peace talks, even if in reality–as was evident from American officials’ own testimony at the time and confirmed by a leaked document just last week–Netanyahu was prepared to make dramatic concessions, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to budge.
And of course, settlement construction itself is another salient example of this problem. It is almost universally considered the major obstacle to peace. Yet as Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot explained last year, the vast majority of settlement construction is in the major settlement blocs that everyone knows Israel will end up keeping under any deal with the Palestinians, so it doesn’t affect the contours of a deal at all. Annual construction in non-bloc settlements amounted to only a few hundred houses even in Netanyahu’s peak construction year. And since the non-bloc settlements already contain some 80,000 Israelis, the idea that a few hundred additional families would be a deal-breaker is fatuous even if you think the PA’s demand for a judenrein Palestine is legitimate and all these settlements should indeed be evacuated.
Over the last six years, while the Obama Administration was wasting its time and energy complaining about “aggressive” settlement construction that was actually far less aggressive than it was under Netanyahu’s predecessors, Israeli-Palestinian relations have deteriorated drastically. That outcome might have been averted had the administration focused on the real problems in the relationship rather than inflating the settlement issue out of all proportion.
But that’s the problem with bad facts; they usually produce bad policy. And it’s hard for journalists and diplomats to obtain good facts if they systematically ignore any data that conflicts with their preconceived narrative.
Originally published in Commentary on March 11, 2015
That was Netanyahu’s goal in addressing Congress. And so far, he’s been surprisingly successful
Had anyone told me a week ago that a single speech, however eloquent, could shift the entire tenor of America’s public debate over the nuclear negotiations with Iran, I’d have considered him a fantasist. Yet judging by the reactions of many American pundits who weren’t previously anti-Obama or pro-Netanyahu, that’s exactly what Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last Tuesday did. And on this particular issue, American public opinion matters greatly.
To understand why, it helps to read some of those pundits’ reactions. Take, for instance, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who has close ties with the Obama Administration and has served in the past as a conduit for the administration’s anti-Netanyahu leaks. Despite criticizing many aspects of the speech, Ignatius concluded that it had significantly influenced the debate. “What Netanyahu did Tuesday was raise the bar for Obama,” he wrote. “Any deal that the administration signs will have to address the concerns Netanyahu voiced. Given what’s at stake in the Middle East, that’s probably a good thing.”
And here’s liberal Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi: “Maybe President Obama didn’t hear anything new when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress,” she wrote. “But I did. And I bet I’m not the only American who appreciated a leader who used simple, direct language to tell his audience exactly what he thinks about a complex subject. Americans heard Netanyahu make a powerful case for why a still unfinalized nuclear weapons agreement with Iran is a bad deal … With the Iran negotiations, Obama and Kerry wanted to present Americans with a deal, tell them how good it is and expect them to accept their word. Netanyahu got in the way of that strategy.”
Or consider this apology from popular blogger Jazz Shaw, who publicly opposed the speech before it was given. “I was wrong … when I supposed that this speech was a pointless, partisan, political ploy,” he wrote. In reality, it proved “one of the most powerful speeches which I have seen delivered in that chamber in the modern era.”
But why do such reactions matter? After all, the speech didn’t change any minds in the Obama Administration, and they’re the ones negotiating the deal. Nor did it sway the only reference group Obama cares about – his diehard cheerleaders in places like the New York Times.
The answer is that Netanyahu wasn’t trying to influence Obama or his cheerleaders; he knows they’re a lost cause. His target was Congress – whose members not only have significant power to influence the talks, but are also generally responsive to the broader public mood.
Congress is currently considering various bills aimed at influencing the nuclear negotiations. These include the Kirk-Menendez bill, which seeks to pressure Iran into further concessions by enacting suspended sanctions that would take effect if no agreement were reached by June 30, and the Corker-Menendez bill, which would require any Iran deal to be submitted to Congress for approval. The problem is that Obama will certainly veto any such bill, and overriding his veto requires a two-thirds majority of Congress. In other words, it requires significant support from Obama’s own Democratic Party, since Republicans don’t control two-thirds of either house.
But for members of any party to buck their own president’s signature foreign policy initiative is extremely rare; it would essentially be a vote of no confidence in their party’s leader. As such, it would be a very difficult thing for any Democrat to do, despite the real concerns many have about the emerging deal with Iran.
Thus achieving the requisite veto-proof majority is possible under only one condition: if Democratic senators and congressmen sense strong concerns about the deal from their own constituents. Because unlike Obama, they’ll be up for reelection in another few years, and therefore, unlike him, they must take public opinion into account.
And that’s where Netanyahu’s speech comes in. Previously, many Americans had heard little about the nuclear negotiations beyond the administration’s talking points. Now, even non-conservative media are suddenly posing tough questions about the emerging agreement. And this growing public skepticism is vital to creating a critical mass of Democratic congressmen willing to defy Obama over the deal.
The irony is that the speech could never have had the impact it did had Obama not turned it into an excuse for a very public rift with Israel. It was only because of the massive media coverage his outraged reaction generated that so many Americans paid attention to the speech’s contents. As Vennochi put it, “with that, people who normally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about nuclear weapons and the best way to keep a country like Iran from building an arsenal of them suddenly wanted to hear what Netanyahu had to say.” In other words, that public rift the administration was a necessary price of the speech’s success.
Was it a price worth paying? If the speech succeeds in generating the veto-proof congressional majority needed to stop a bad deal, then yes. Admittedly, it’s not yet certain the requisite votes will materialize: Though four more Democratic senators have joined Corker-Menendez just since last Tuesday, another three are still needed.
What is certain, however, is that focusing American public attention on the emerging deal’s flaws represents the only possible chance of getting those votes, and thus of influencing the deal. The oft-proposed alternative – that “quiet diplomacy” could persuade Obama to take Israel’s concerns into account – is fatuous: Saudi Arabia and other Arab states have tried that tactic for months, and as their surprising public support for Netanyahu’s speech shows, it’s gotten them exactly nowhere.
In short, Netanyahu’s speech represented the only possible alternative to two terrible options: a bad deal that would let Iran go nuclear, or an Israeli attack on Iran in defiance of the entire world. Given the awfulness of those options, it would have been irresponsible not to try any third way that offered any chance of succeeding.
And however improbably, it turns out Netanyahu’s third way actually offered a good chance. Judging by the results so far, his speech has had exactly the impact he intended it to have.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on March 9, 2015
One very important word was missing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress yesterday. Not that I blame him; inserting “Ukraine” into that particular speech would have been counterproductive. Yet without considering America’s Ukraine policy, it’s impossible to grasp quite how disastrous the emerging Iran deal really is.
To understand why, consider the curious threat issued by an unnamed White House official last week, in the run-up to Netanyahu’s speech: “The dispute with Netanyahu prevents all possibility for discussing security guarantees for Israel as part of the emerging Iran deal.” That particular threat was empty, because Israel has never wanted security guarantees from this or any other administration; its policy has always been that it must be able to defend itself by itself. But if Washington was considering security guarantees for Israel, it’s surely considering them for its Arab allies, since they, unlike Israel, always have relied on America’s protection. In fact, there have been recurrent rumors that it might offer Arab states a nuclear umbrella as part of the deal, so they wouldn’t feel the need to develop nuclear capabilities themselves–something they have long threatened to do if Iran’s nuclear program isn’t stopped.
And a year ago, such a promise might have worked. After all, America’s guarantees had proven trustworthy in the past; see, for instance, 1991, when U.S. troops liberated Kuwait from Iraq’s invasion.
But last year, Russia invaded Ukraine, exactly 20 years after the latter gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a signed commitment by Washington, Moscow, and London to respect its “independence,” “sovereignty,” and “existing borders” and “refrain from the threat or use of force” against its “territorial integrity or political independence.” After swiftly annexing Crimea, Russia proceeded to foment rebellion in eastern Ukraine; the rebels now control sizable chunks of territory, thanks mainly to arms, money, and even “off-duty” troops from Russia.
And what have Ukraine’s other guarantors, America and Britain, done to uphold the commitment they signed in 1994? Absolute zilch. They refuse to even give Ukraine the arms it’s been begging for so it can try to fight back on its own.
Given the Ukrainian example, any Arab leader would be a fool to stake his country’s security on U.S. guarantees against Iran, which, like Russia, is a highly aggressive power. Iran already boasts of controlling four Arab capitals–Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, and, most recently, Sana’a–and shows no signs of wanting to stop. So if Arab leaders think the emerging Iranian deal is a bad one, no U.S. guarantee will suffice to dissuade them from acquiring their own nukes.
And unfortunately, that’s what they do think. As evidence, just consider the cascade of Saudi commentators publicly begging Obama to heed, of all people, the head of a country they don’t even recognize. Like Al Arabiya editor-in-chief Faisal Abbas, who published a column yesterday titled, “President Obama, listen to Netanyahu on Iran,” which began as follows: “It is extremely rare for any reasonable person to ever agree with anything Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says or does. However, one must admit, Bibi did get it right, at least when it came to dealing with Iran.” Or columnist Ahmad al-Faraj, who wrote in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah on Monday: “I am very glad of Netanyahu’s firm stance and [his decision] to speak against the nuclear agreement at the American Congress despite the Obama administration’s anger and fury. I believe that Netanyahu’s conduct will serve our interests, the people of the Gulf, much more than the foolish behavior of one of the worst American presidents.”
Clearly, letting Iran go nuclear would be terrible. But letting the entire Mideast–one of the world’s most unstable regions–go nuclear would be infinitely worse. And the only way any deal with Tehran can prevent that is if it’s acceptable to Iran’s Arab neighbors. Thanks to Ukraine, no U.S. security guarantee can compensate them for a deal they deem inadequate.
Originally published in Commentary on March 4, 2015
An imploding Middle East would seem an unlikely setting for finally realizing the Zionist dream of progress toward normalization with Israel’s neighbors. So I had to rub my eyes when I read the following report: Last week, Israel and Egypt ran a joint booth at the world’s biggest apparel trade fair, in Las Vegas. In addition, they’re discussing plans to double textile exports from the Egyptian-Israeli Qualifying Industrial Zone, and also to expand the zone to other products, like foodstuffs and plastics. Given that normalization with Israel has long been anathema in Egypt, this is an astounding turnabout.
The QIZ, which the U.S. created 10 years ago in order to bolster Egyptian-Israeli peace by encouraging economic collaboration, allows Egypt to export textiles to America duty-free if Israel contributes a certain percentage of their value. But until now, Egypt has kept its cooperation with Israel as low-profile and limited as possible due to the sweeping consensus against normalization.
After all, this is a country where a leading author was expelled from the writers’ union and saw his books banned for the “crime” of traveling to Israel and writing about his experiences. It’s a country where translated Israeli books sparked such outrage that the culture minister had to defend himself from accusations of “normalization” by saying the translations were intended only to enable Egyptians to “know their enemy” and promising that the project would involve no contact with Israeli publishers, but only with the Israeli authors’ foreign publishers. It’s a country where every candidate in the 2012 presidential election vowed to either scrap or “renegotiate” the peace treaty with Israel. And none of this was long ago.
Yet now, suddenly, Egypt is running a joint booth with Israel at a trade fair and discussing ways to expand the QIZ.
In part, this may indicate that Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi is more serious about trying to improve his country’s battered economy than he’s often given credit for–to the point that he’s even willing to bolster cooperate with Israel to do so, despite the risk of antagonizing the anti-normalization trolls, who quite definitely still exist.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine this happening without the growing recognition that Egypt and Israel face a common enemy: the Islamist terrorists in the Sinai and their Palestinian collaborators from Gaza. As a result, not only has security cooperation between the two defense establishments never been closer, but attitudes have also begun changing among ordinary Egyptians. During last summer’s war in Gaza, for instance, some Egyptian media commentators openly rooted for Israel to defeat Hamas (which an Egyptian court has since declared a terrorist organization).
Just how much Egypt’s enemy list has changed in recent years was somewhat ironically highlighted by a front-page article in the daily Al Ahram last week, after ISIS killed 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya and the Obama administration refused to support Egypt’s retaliatory airstrikes. In the best tradition of Egyptian conspiracy theories, the article accused Qatar, Turkey, and the U.S. of collaborating to sow “chaos and destruction” in Egypt. Notably absent from the list was the usual suspect–the one that used to routinely figure as the villain in every Egyptian conspiracy theory, like the 2010 classic that blamed the Mossad for shark attacks on Sinai beaches.
Having long since despaired of the dream that the cold peace with Egypt would someday thaw into normalization, most Israelis figured the new and improved security coordination was as good as it gets and expected nothing more. And yet, improbably, more seems to be happening. After all, it’s hard to imagine anything more “normalized” than a joint booth at a trade fair. And it offers hope that just maybe, something good can emerge from the current Mideast madness.
Originally published in Commentary on February 25, 2015