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August 6, 2009
I realized something about last week’s Beer Garden summit on the White House lawn: Professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley are actually Israel and the Obama administration.
Bear with me here.
“Skip” Gates is the distinguished African-American studies professor at Harvard who was arrested in his own home after police reponded to a mistaken report of a break-in; Crowley was the arresting officer.
Gates, sensitive professionally and personally to racial slights, was outraged that the white Crowley would suspect him of breaking into his own home and demanded the officer’s name and badge number. Crowley, representing law and order, insisted he was merely following procedures and claimed Gates was acting belligerently before he put him in handcuffs.
It was a classic he said/he said. Both parties brought a lot of baggage to their encounter and read the same set of facts and impressions in wildly divergent ways. Each felt he had acted appropriately and in accordance with his deepest principles.
So we come to the Middle East. Israel, like Gates, is small, prosperous, and bookish, with a feisty streak. It is a country carrying a heavy historical burden of persecution and is justifiably sensitive to ethnic and religious animosity, both real and imagined (and usually real).
Its leaders are fiercely protective of their home. They resent when outsiders presume to tell them what is in their own security interests, even when they rely on those outsiders for protection and keeping their disorderly neighbors in check.
So when the White House demands a halt to settlement construction, Israel and its supporters — including many who were not great fans of the settlements to begin with — see something deeper and more ominous at work. Just as Gates plugged Crowley’s behavior into the paradigm of race, Israel plugs the White House demands into the paradigm of “pressure.” “This is my house,” you can almost hear Netanyahu saying. “I will not be moved.”
Obama and his advisers, meanwhile, are Crowley-like in this regard: As leaders of the reigning superpower, tasked with solving the world’s problems (they don’t call cops “peace officers” for nothing), they place Israel into a larger, regional strategy. Cops are supposed to be cool and disinterested and enforce the law without fear or favor. Call them “honest brokers,” if you will.
When Obama calls for a settlement freeze, he is not only on the side of law enforcement (even Israel acknowledges that some of the settlement activity violates Israeli law), but on the side of what he perceives to be the greater good, for Israel and beyond. If the Arabs can be convinced that America is willing to hold Israel in check in this instance, he may be able to wring out their cooperation in areas like mutual recognition, ending the boycott, and supporting a peace settlement.
Israel, like Gates, does not want to hear “I’m just doing my job.” It and many of its supporters want the administration to recognize historical relationships, like the one between Israel and previous administrations, and to do a better job of assessing the security situation; as the Anti-Defamation League put it in a newspaper ad on Tuesday: “Mr. President — The problem isn’t settlements, it’s Arab rejection.”
Obama, like Crowley, wants his authority and judgment respected. And just as Crowley says he is no racist, Obama’s team insists they have no animus toward Israel, just a desire to “keep the peace” — or in this case, get a peace process going again.
There’s another way the America-Israel fracas mirrors the Gates-Crowley one: in the way groups are exploiting the disagreements to boost their own agendas, demonize their opponents, and drive a wedge between people who, absent the howling of the activist class, might be able to settle their differences amicably.
Israel may resent any hints of pressure from Washington, but a disagreement over settlement policy — a policy that has stuck in the craw of a generation of American negotiators, Democrat and Republican alike — does not represent the “end of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” as some have declared. The relationship is not that fragile, nor is Israel.
And like Gates-gate, U.S.-Israel tension has diverted attention from infinitely more important issues, such as Iran’s relentless nuclear ambitions, and even the ways the White House has exposed the hypocrisy of the Arab world. On Friday, Saudi Prince Saud al-Faisal bluntly rejected the kinds of concessions Obama had been hoping for. Had Netanyahu not been so eager for a clash with the White House, we might have been reading headlines like, “Despite Israeli overtures, Arabs remain unmoved.” That’s the kind of pro-Israel hasbara — public relations — that you just can’t buy.
So it’s clear what’s needed: the diplomatic version of a White House happy hour. Obama can drink his Bud Light, Netanyahu a Maccabi. Obama can explain how he needs Israel’s help in calling the Arabs’ bluff; Netanyahu can draw helpful distinctions between isolated settlements and illegal outposts, on the one hand, and the large West Bank population centers that will surely be Israel’s come a peace treaty, on the other.
And perhaps both sides might emerge, quoting Gates: “We’ve learned that we can have our differences without demonizing one another.”
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