Caroline Glick
June 15, 2009
Caroline Glick writes for the Jerusalem Post and
her own blog on the Internet
Obama's losing streak and Israel
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech Sunday evening at Bar-Ilan
University had one goal: To get US President Barack Obama off of
Israel's back.
Netanyahu's speech was an eloquent, rational and at times impassioned
defense of Israel. For Israeli ears, after years of former prime
minister Ehud Olmert's and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni's
continuous assaults on Israeli rights, and their strident defenses of
capitulation to the Palestinians and the Syrians, Netanyahu's address
was a breath of fresh air. But it is hard to see how it could have
possibly had any lasting impact on Obama or his advisers.
To be moved by rational argument, a person has to be open to rational
discourse. And what we have witnessed over the past week with the
Obama administration's reactions to both North Korea's nuclear
brinksmanship and Iran's sham elections is that its foreign policy is
not informed by rationality but by the president's morally relative,
post-modern ideology. In this anti-intellectual and anti-rational
climate, Netanyahu's speech has little chance of making a lasting
impact on the White House.
If rational thought was the basis for the administration's
policymaking on foreign affairs, North Korea's decisions to test long
range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, send two US citizens to
long prison terms and then threaten nuclear war should have made the
administration reconsider its current policy of seeking the approval
and assistance of North Korea's primary enabler - China - for any
action it takes against Pyongyang. As Nicholas Eberstadt suggested in
Friday's Wall Street Journal, rather than spending its time passing UN
Security Council resolutions with no enforcement mechanisms against
North Korea, the administration would be working with a coalition of
the willing to adopt measures aimed at lowering the threat North Korea
constitutes to regional, US and global security through its nuclear
and ballistic missile programs and its proliferation activities.
But the administration has done no such thing. Instead of working with
and strengthening its allies, it has opted to work with North Korea's
allies China and Russia to forge a Security Council resolution harsh
enough to convince North Korean leader Kim Jung Il to threaten nuclear
war, but too weak to degrade his capacity to wage one.
Similar to Obama's refusal to reassess his failed policy regarding
North Korea, his nonreaction to the fraudulent Iranian election shows
that he will not allow facts to interfere with his slavish devotion to
his ideological canon that claims that no enemy is unappeasable and no
ally deserves automatic support. Far from standing with the democratic
dissidents now risking their lives to oppose Iran's sham democracy,
the administration has reportedly expressed concern that the current
postelection protests will destabilize the regime. Obama has also
refused to reconsider his decision to reach a grand bargain with the
ayatollahs on Iran's nuclear weapons program that would serve to
legitimize their continued grip on power.
His refusal to make a moral distinction between the mullahs and their
democratic opponents - like his refusal in Cairo to make a moral
distinction between a nuclear-armed Iran and a nuclear-armed America -
makes clear that he is not interested in forging a factually accurate
or morally clear-sighted foreign policy.
ALL OF THIS brings us back to Israel - and Netanyahu's speech about
the nature and causes of the Palestinian conflict and the conditions
that must be met if peace is ever to be achieved. His address aimed in
two ways to lower US pressure while averting an open confrontation
with a president whose approval ratings remain above 60 percent.
First, Netanyahu demonstrated that through their consistent rejection
of Israel's right to exist as the Jewish state, the Palestinians - not
us - are the side responsible for the absence of Middle East peace.
Second, Netanyahu tried to decrease US pressure on his government by
conditionally accepting the idea of a Palestinian state. Clearly, it
was Netanyahu's acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state - albeit
a demilitarized one - that was supposed to do the most to fend off US
pressure. After all, Obama and his advisers have made the swift
establishment of a Palestinian state their primary foreign policy aim.
Irrespective of its impact on the Obama administration, Netanyahu's
speech was a positive contribution to the general discourse on the
Middle East and Israel's place in it. He made good use of his
opportunity to address the nation above the heads of the uniformly
leftist media to forge a new definition of the national consensus.
Whereas his defeatist predecessors consistently spoke of the people's
willingness to make painful concessions for peace, and treated the
establishment of a Jew-free Palestinian state as their primary duty as
Zionists, Netanyahu recast the national consensus along patriotic
lines.
He echoed the sentiments of the vast majority of Israelis when he
refused to end building inside of Jewish communities located beyond
the 1949 armistice lines; when he asserted that he would make no
concessions on sovereignty over Jerusalem; would insist that we retain
defensible borders; would refuse entrance of so-called Palestinian
refugees to our territory; and demanded Palestinian recognition of our
right to exist as the Jewish state.
He stridently and eloquently corrected Obama's false characterization
of this country as the product of the Holocaust during his speeches at
Cairo and Buchenwald by recalling the 3,500 year old Jewish ties to
the Land of Israel. And he made clear that the association Obama made
between the Holocaust and this country's founding was a precise
inversion of the historical record. It is not Israel that owes its
existence to the Holocaust. Rather, the Holocaust was only able to
happen because there was no Israel.
NETANYAHU'S SPEECH was a much-needed strong defense. But it was not a
perfect defense. It suffered from two flaws that may come back to
haunt the premier in the years to come. First, his demand that the US
lead the international community in guaranteeing that the Palestinian
state is demilitarized provided the Obama administration with a new
means to trick Israel into making suicidal concessions.
The only way to ensure that a Palestinian state is demilitarized is to
send in forces to demilitarize it. Obviously the Americans won't take
such a step. In Gaza, a militarized Palestinian state already exists
and the Americans have no intention of demilitarizing it for us. As
for Judea and Samaria, today, the only thing the emerging Palestinian
state has to show for itself is its US-built army.
The only force that would ensure a Palestinian state (or states) stays
demilitarized is the IDF. But by appointing the US the guarantor of
its demilitarized status, Netanyahu is inviting the US to lie and so
make it impossible for us to take the steps necessary to ensure that
the Palestinians lack the means to threaten the country.
In requesting that the US guarantee disarmament, Netanyahu repeated a
mistake he made in his first term in office. In 1996 he conditioned
his willingness to move forward with peace talks with the PLO on the
terror group's amendment of its charter calling for the destruction of
Israel in line with its commitment under the initial Oslo agreement.
Netanyahu empowered Bill Clinton to judge Palestinian compliance with
this demand. In due course, Clinton travelled to Gaza and mendaciously
announced that the PLO had in fact amended the charter. No such action
had been taken, but Netanyahu was in no position to accuse Clinton of
lying.
While his decision to appoint Obama arbiter of Palestinian
demilitarization was ill-conceived, things could have been much worse.
Netanyahu ignored the so-called road map peace plan. That plan is one
long list of Palestinian commitments that the US is empowered to judge
compliance on. From terror fighting to ending incitement, the road map
places Israel in the position of being forced to take America's word
on issues paramount to its national security. By ignoring the road
map, Netanyahu managed to avert the need to call Obama a liar
directly.
The other problem with Netanyahu's speech is that by accepting the
idea of a Palestinian state, and embracing Obama's fantasy that it is
possible to reach a deal with the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu
blocked the possibility that Israel will be able to forge a new policy
that will move it to a more advantageous status quo in the coming
years. That is, Netanyahu's conditional acceptance of Obama's false
and ideologically motivated two-state paradigm damns Israel to the
position of foot dragger in relation to someone else's policy rather
than trailblazer for its own policy.
In fairness to Netanyahu, in light of Obama's ideological commitment
to the two-state paradigm which blames Israel for the absence of
peace, it is far from clear that he has any choice other than to go
along with the president and just play for time. Were Netanyahu to
apply Israeli law to the large settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley
or establish security zones along Gaza's borders with Israel and
Egypt, he would likely instigate a full breach of relations with
Washington.
At this point, it is up to the public and our representatives in the
Knesset to pave the way for a better policy in the future. This we can
do by rejecting the two-state paradigm and conducting a public
discourse relevant to our national interests. For Netanyahu, however,
buying time with a hostile administration may be the best he can
aspire to during his current term in office.
Of course, buying time in and of itself is no great accomplishment.
The voters did not elect Netanyahu to lead us simply to buy time. We
elected him to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. If his
speech succeeded in blunting US pressure on Israel - even temporarily
- on the Palestinian front, and in light of the results of the Iranian
presidential race, Netanyahu has gained the opportunity to act on the
Iranian front. If during his current term he prevents Iran from
becoming a nuclear power and makes no concessions in Judea, Samaria,
Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, he will be remembered as one of our
greatest leaders and his speech will be remembered for posterity as a
pivotal event.
On the other hand, if Netanyahu sits on his laurels, he will be
surprised to see how quickly Obama - desperate for a foreign policy
achievement after being laughed out of Teheran and Pyongyang - forgets
his happiness at Netanyahu's address. In no time flat, Obama will try
to force Israel make him look like he knows what he is doing. At that
point, an open confrontation with the White House will become
unavoidable.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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