November 6, 2008
American Jews have spent much of the past year tying themselves in knots debating which of the presidential candidates is the stronger supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
To the last week of the campaign, Republicans continued to argue that Barack Obama’s protestations of sympathy for the Jewish state were faked. Their last-ditch efforts centered on Obama’s appearance at a 2003 dinner honoring Rashid Khalidi, an anti-Zionist academic, at which various other speakers said some nasty things about Israel without apparently sparking much protest from the Democrats’ standard-bearer.
Decisions on peace and war have their origins in Jerusalem, not Washington.
But, as with the litany of other charges against Obama, this story was unlikely to change anyone’s mind. Indeed, the Democrats have been so effective in conditioning their supporters to dismiss the GOP’s arguments as false or irrational that the reaction from many voters was to merely assume (wrongly) that the incident never happened and to completely ignore it.
Yet for all the ink spilled over the question of which candidate loves Israel the most, there are fundamental problems with the entire debate. Behind the argument was an assumption that Israel’s security, if not its existence, rests on our votes for a president.
While the next president of the United States will, indeed, have a great deal of influence over what happens in the Middle East, no leader will have as much impact on decisions relating to the fate of the Jewish state as the one chosen by Israel’s electorate.
When Israeli voters go to the polls to elect their next Knesset and prime minister in February, certainly the question of which leader can get along better with Washington will factor into their decision. After all, the United States is Israel’s only real ally in a largely hostile world and the source of its military aid.
But the idea that the next American president will be dictating peace terms to the next Israeli prime minister is more an Arab fantasy than reality.
From the first day of Israeli independence to the present, Israeli prime ministers have always been the ones in charge. Peace initiatives involving the Israel-Arab conflict have had their origins in Jerusalem, not Washington.
In 1977, Anwar al-Sadat’s groundbreaking trip to Israel and the subsequent peace with Egypt was hatched in spite of President Jimmy Carter — who was not trusted by either Sadat or Israel’s Menachem Begin — not because of him.
Similarly, the 1993 Oslo Accords were the result of back-channel Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians facilitated by Norway, not the United States.
In both instances, the Americans helped close the deal and, subsequently, took a lot of the credit. Many supporters of Israel feared U.S. pressure for Israeli concessions was at the root of these negotiations, but that wasn’t the case. Each time, Israel decided that the potential risks were outweighed by the benefits of going ahead.
In particular, though the Oslo Accords may be rightly criticized today as being a colossal blunder on Israel’s part, no American twisted the arms of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres to bring Yasser Arafat and the PLO into the territories where they could set up a terrorist-state-in-the-making. They pursued Oslo because they genuinely believed it was in Israel’s best interest.
The same can be said of the most recent example of peace-process folly — the Annapolis Summit — that took place last fall. Though President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hosted this pointless attempt to revive talks with the Palestinian Authority, the man who pushed for it was Israeli PM Ehud Olmert.
By the same token, when Israeli leaders have felt impelled to use force to save Israeli lives, Washington’s calls for “mutual restraint” have not prevented them from acting. That was true when Israel struck first in 1967 to forestall Arab attacks on the eve of the Six-Day War. It was true when Begin launched an air strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. The otherwise-friendly Reagan administration angrily punished Israel but, subsequently, the world, including even other Arab nations, was grateful that Saddam Hussein had been prevented from developing nuclear weapons.
Washington has never been able to prevent Jerusalem from launching a peace feeler to an Arab foe. In the last year, the Olmert government opened not-so-secret talks with the Syrians, whom the Americans preferred to isolate.
There are limitations on what Israel can do on its own. And there are formidable pressures that any American president can bring to bear on the Israelis. The Jewish state is still far too dependent on American military aid and diplomatic support.
But an American president can’t stop Israel from doing something that Israel is convinced is in its interest. On questions relating to their nation’s survival, Israelis always have the option of saying “no” to the Americans.
There may be consequences for challenging the United States. But there are also potential political costs for any American president who wants to go to the mat against the Israelis.
By the spring, the reins of power in Israel will be in the hands of Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, or Labor’s Ehud Barak. Anyone who cares about Israel should keep his or her focus on that contest. As in the past, it will be Israel’s voters who will have the last word, not the Americans.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, where a version of this article first appeared. He can be reached at jtobin@jewishexponent.com.
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