May 7, 2009
I’ve been writing this column every week since September 2003, which means I’m closing in on my 300th column. (Please, no gifts. If you must, send donations to the Nature Conservancy, which is trying to save America’s forests.)
I feel I’m due, if not for a vacation, at least for a break from my own opinions. On certain topics — Iran’s nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — I feel the more I learn the less I know. Or rather, the more I think I know, the less sure I become.
Luckily I had the chance this week to sit down with David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. David was in town for a dinner with community members and leaders as part of Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations by United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, and came by the office for a chat.
The London-born Horovitz, 47, has lived in Israel since 1983 and has been the Post’s editor since 2004. Although the Post is inevitably labeled “right-leaning,” I’ve always found Horovitz’ views to be an accurate reflection of the elusive Israeli consensus.
When I asked him about the realistic options available to President Obama in halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, his answer was a characteristic attempt to capture the Israeli mainstream, which he said favored McCain over Obama in the 2008 election.
“The key issue was Iran,” he said. “People looked at McCain and said, ‘Here was a guy who had gone through an extraordinary challenging life and had internalized man’s capacity to do terrible things to his fellow man.’ Therefore, Israel, feeling seriously threatened by Iran, thought McCain would be in the right head.”
Almost half a year later, Israelis are “incredibly admiring of Obama.” And unlike Obama’s critics on the Right, Horovitz is less willing to label Obama’s calls for diplomacy as weakness.
“The president of the United States can’t simply command but has to persuade. So there is an advantage in Obama engaging with Iran and trying diplomacy. Where McCain would have been more instinctively ready for tougher measures, Obama is going the slower route, and the hope is he can potentially galvanize greater American and international support if the time comes for tougher actions.”
Not that Israel is itching for a fight. “The strong conviction in Israel is that Iran can be stopped by non-military means and is vulnerable,” said Horovitz. He praised Stewart Levey, the Treasury Department official who is leading efforts to make Iran a pariah within the international financial system. What Israelis want, Horovitz said, is for America to spread the message that stopping Iran is a free-world priority. “If everyone was doing what America is doing, there wouldn’t be a problem,” said Horovitz.
Similarly, Israel wants the world to know that Iran isn’t an “Israeli problem” — or only an Israeli problem. “Even if you don’t care about Israel, the argument has to be that [Iranian President Ahmadinejad] is really dangerous,” said Horovitz. “This regime and that weaponry is something that it should not fall to Israel to be screaming about.”
Yet should such arguments fail, I asked, is an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities feasible, conceivable, or possible?
“I pray that it doesn’t come to that, and if it does come to that, it will be a terrible failure of the international community,” said Horovitz. “It should not fall to Israel militarily to have to stop Iran. The stakes are so astoundingly, terribly high.”
But if it should come to that, don’t expect a repeat of the daring, surgical strike on the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981. Iran has built its nuclear program, he said, exactly with the example of Osirak in mind.
Certainly, he said, Israel’s military has a plan. “And if we do, I would like to believe that Israel has in mind something that nobody else has thought of.”
Ultimately, Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians cannot be separated from the threat from Iran. The Palestinians’ “moderate” leadership is losing ground to Hamas, and Hamas draws much of its inspiration, and funding, from the Iranian regime.
“That money is flowing in, and Hamas gets stronger so long as Iran is unthwarted,” said Horovitz. “If you were to disable that Iranian threat and destroy some of the confidence of the Islamic extremists — and at the same time gradually try to heal the West Bank economy, which Tony Blair is trying to do and Netanyahu wants to help do — maybe gradually you start to create a climate where people are less attracted to Islamic extremism, have some kind of hope for the future, and therefore are more inclined toward moderate political views.”
I ask David if he would describe the mood in Israel in its 62nd year.
“There have absolutely been periods when people felt much more pessimistic than today. We are not in the mindset we were in 2001 or 2002, when you knew once a week something was going to blow up.
“We feel threatened by Iran but feel the international community is realizing they, too, are threatened by Iran,” he added. “We may be the first in line, but there is a sense that this is wider threat.”
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