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Go Home How Bill Kristol Unwittingly Joined the Left’s Campaign...

POLITICS JULY 21, 2010

How Bill Kristol Unwittingly Joined the Left’s Campaign Against Israel

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

Neoconservatism long ago ceased to have any meaningful ideological difference with just plain old conservatism. Perhaps the one remaining vestigial trait of the ideological tendency is a mania for forming committees and stuffing them with progenies (of both the ideological and the literal sort). The glory days of neoconservatism in the 1970s revolved around such committees as the Committee on the Present Danger and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Numerous such committees have followed—the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Committee for the Free World, the Project for a New American Century, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Many of them have at least one Kristol or Podhoretz. Last week saw the formation of the latest such group: the Emergency Committee for Israel, whose board consists of Bill Kristol, son of noted neoconservative Irving Kristol; Gary Bauer, a Christian Right activist, Kristol sidekick, and regular on such committees; and Rachel Abrams, stepdaughter of Norman Podhoretz.

The emergency that has instigated the Emergency Committee for Israel—other than the always-urgent need to create more sources of employment for new generations of Podhoretzes, Kristols, and henchmen thereto—is the Obama administration. The committee views the Obama administration, as Bauer puts it, as “the most anti-Israel administration in the history of the United States.”

In fact, it is the policy of “the most anti-Israel administration in the history of the United States” to provide Israel with $3 billion in annual foreign aid along with diplomatic support, deployed most recently when the United States declined to condemn Israel’s response to the Gaza flotilla. This would seem to make Obama more pro-Israel than, at the very least, Lyndon Johnson, who took a neutral stance when Israel faced potential annihilation in 1967, and Dwight Eisenhower, who condemned Israel’s 1956 joint raid with Britain and France on the Suez Canal.

Obama, meanwhile, has actually increased military aid to, and cooperation with, Israel, including an anti-missile defense system. On this matter, Obama has actually taken a more pro-Israel position than George W. Bush. A senior Israeli official recently told The Washington Post, “in many ways the cooperation has been extended and perhaps enhanced in different areas.”

Now, it is true that diplomatic relations between the two countries have worsened noticeably under Obama. Part of the chill results from Obama’s inability to communicate any genuine affinity for, or understanding of, Zionism to Israelis. But a large share of it results from one of the most right-wing governments in the history of Israel, which seems bent upon national suicide in general and the purposeful alienation of the state’s few allies in particular. Last year, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon responded to an actual provocation—Turkey refused to condemn anti-Semitic propaganda on its airwaves—by subjecting the ambassador to a bizarre, televised humiliation, pointing out the absence of a Turkish flag and noting that his guest was seated in a lower chair. The same government proceeded, less flamboyantly, to humiliate Joe Biden on what was intended to be a conciliatory trip to Israel in March.

The combination of the Netanyahu government’s incompetent diplomacy, enthusiasm for settlement construction, and lack of enthusiasm for peace negotiation suggests, at least to me, the need for Israel’s friends to warn it away from the cliff. The Emergency Committee for Israel not only disagrees with the particulars of this assessment, but also seems to regard the notion of Israeli error as a conceptual impossibility. Committee spokesman Michael Goldfarb—also a lobbyist and adviser to Sarah Palin—says, “ECI is for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and a strong, secure Israel at peace with the Palestinians and all its neighbors—but Israel is a democratic ally that must determine for itself the best way to achieve this goal.” This formulation allows for no possibility, even theoretically, that Israel could bear more than zero percent of the responsibility for the failure of peace.

The fact that the committee considers Obama the most anti-Israel president ever betrays the lack of imagination in right-wing Zionist circles. In the minds of the neoconservatives, a president who maintains the U.S.-Israel alliance while scolding a reprobate government for its excesses is as bad as things can get. They seem not to consider the possibility that a future American president might abandon the alliance altogether.

The intellectual groundwork is being laid. Left-wing critics of Israel portray supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance as “Likudnik” or “neoconservative.” The tactic here is to frame support for Israel as incompatible with liberalism, in order to define opposition to Israel as a core liberal value. They define support for Israel as the neocons do: It means unconditional support for Israel, utter indifference to the Palestinians, at least tacit support for settlements. In reality, it is possible to sympathize with Israel in general while opposing its excesses, to believe that the most fundamental obstacle to peace is Palestinian refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state, and that Israeli actions like the settlements and the excessive strictness of the Gaza blockade contribute to the problem.

The neoconservatives are the inadvertent allies of the left-wing critics. They, too, define support for Israel in maximalist terms, as something incompatible with liberalism. It is a pincer attack on liberal Zionism.

Israelis themselves have long feared such a dynamic taking hold. Earlier this year, Israeli officials pleaded with Republicans not to turn support for their country into a partisan issue. The subtlety of this dynamic clearly escapes the neocons, whose process of strategic thought on any political question, domestic or foreign, begins with “identify the bad guys” and ends with “attack the bad guys,” with no steps in between.

The neocons confidently believe they can force pro-Israel Democrats to embrace their maximalist vision. The ECI, writes an excited Jennifer Rubin in Commentary, presents “ostensibly pro-Israel lawmakers [with] the dilemma: partisan loyalty or full-throated support for Israel.” What a brilliant idea—force Democrats who sympathize with Israel to choose between their party and the Likud Party. The neocons really can’t imagine how such brinksmanship could produce a result they don’t want. They never do.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic.

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

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38 comments

Well put. Didn't Lee Hamilton say that we suffer from a "failure of the imagination"?

- jmarshall

July 21, 2010 at 12:41am

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"Israel is a democratic ally that must determine for itself the best way to achieve this goal" I just want to take a moment to demand that this tired argument be put to sleep forever. Israel being democratic is no more relevant than Hamas being democratically elected. Elections confer legitimacy upon domestic political decisions but not foreign policy moves that affect people who never got a vote in the first place. I'm counting the Palestinians as foreign here, because if they aren't foreign, Israel can no longer claim to be democratic.

- WillPastor

July 21, 2010 at 2:26am

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This was so incredibly good. Two further points: Obama's inability to communicate with Israelis is a real problem: it remains a mystery to me why Obama never chose to speak directly to the Israeli public (as Aluf Benn has suggested). For someone known for an ability to communicate authentically to diverse groups, Obama has shown little willingness or ability to empathize with an Israeli public that has become understandably disenchanted with the peace process. This in no way justifies the incompetence of the current government, but Obama would be well-served to at least acknowledge the potential cynicism of many Israelis. Secondly, Chait draws a subtle distinction between the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state as "the fundamental obstacle" while Israel's continuing settlement problem as 'contributing to the problem.' This distinction, however, is really besides the point; the longer Israel continues its current settlement policy, the more the policy goes from being a contributing factor to becoming, for obvious reasons, "the fundamental obstacle." Instead of drawing these theoretical, but practically meaningless distinctions, liberal Zionists concerned about the future of the state of Israel ought to speak more passionately about the painful but necessary choice required to preserve the Jewish state: the abandonment of (most) settlements and the creation of a Palestinian state.

- josh_y

July 21, 2010 at 3:35am

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Will I want to argue with that but simply cannot. But, wouldn't that line of reasoning have the tendency to push Isreal towards accepting a two-state solution?

- jmarshall

July 21, 2010 at 3:41am

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Jonathan Chait writes: -- In reality, it is possible to sympathize with Israel in general while opposing its excesses, to believe that the most fundamental obstacle to peace is Palestinian refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state, and that Israeli actions like the settlements and the excessive strictness of the Gaza blockade contribute to the problem. And Chait will still be blaming Palestinian intransigence when Israel "settles" the last piece of Palestinian land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

- ndmackenzie

July 21, 2010 at 3:57am

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Jonathan Chait scores a conceptual breakthrough with this article.

- LawrenceGulotta

July 21, 2010 at 4:06am

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That's all fair nuff and hard to disagree with but "to believe that the most fundamental obstacle to peace is Palestinian refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state" is itself a mental block to peace. You've quoted polls of Palestinian opinion that backs this up yet refuse to accept that decades of war, misery and refuge camps has no bearing on this opinion. That to me is equivalent to the Whener Fallacy. We had something similar with Northern Unionists claiming that Articles 2 and 3 were proof that the Republic would never give up it's claim on Ulster, which of course was proven wrong. The big differnce of course was Ulster wasn't growing by a settled county every year the debate went on.

- IggyPop

July 21, 2010 at 6:21am

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"The tactic here is to frame support for Israel as incompatible with liberalism, in order to define opposition to Israel as a core liberal value." Correct. This shows that NeoCons don't care about maintaining broad-based support for Israel in the United States. Many wavering liberals may well take their dare. The NeoCons are more loyal to their domestic reactionary American friends: the plutocrats, theocrats, and gun nuts. They promoted removal of Saddam and endless "nation-building" in Iraq. Sharon warned against that. The NeoCons try to link issues that have nothing to do with each other: Ex. Israel and American health care. Incredible. This ideological maximalism is a Trotskyite atavism.

- amidut

July 21, 2010 at 6:37am

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Jon, Brilliant. Please o please take from behind the paywall; this is too important to hide from the larger community.

- rlgordonma

July 21, 2010 at 7:12am

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For Zionists, there is no distinction between the US and Israel. There can't be; otherwise, the Zionists might have to choose between allegiance to the US or allegiance to Israel. I interpret Chait as accepting the Zionist identity of the US and Israel, and to consider disagreement between the US and Israel the same as disagreement between, for example, two political parties, each equally loyal and patriotic, just with a different perspective. Many neocons, unfortunately, don't have the same confidence as Chait to openly accept the identity, so for them any disagreement with Israel necessarily brings into focus their own choice between one nation and the other, a choice Chait understands is unnecessary.

- rayward

July 21, 2010 at 8:08am

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If this is indeed the approach of the neocons, then your editor in chief is undeniably a neocon. Is this the only way you can obliquely criticize your boss and keep your job?

- miceelf

July 21, 2010 at 8:21am

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“…Obama's inability to communicate with Israelis is a real problem: it remains a mystery to me why Obama never chose to speak directly to the Israeli public (as Aluf Benn has suggested). For someone known for an ability to communicate authentically to diverse groups, Obama has shown little willingness or ability to empathize with an Israeli public that has become understandably disenchanted with the peace process…” The President is a Wimp, and a spineless Sissy who can be found groveling at the feet of a host of foreign heads of state (think of his bows before the presence of the Emperor of Japan or the King of Saudi Arabia). But when he gets up from the feet of the King of Saudi Arabia he is still the President of a country with broad, concurrent and non-conflicted national interests in multiple centers of power, and in multiple regions of the world. Take for example the Persian Gulf (hereafter simply the Gulf). It is a separate and distinct region from the strictly Arab Middle-East (which contains Israel, and note, definitional, it also contains Persia, i.e., Iran). And therefore it requires the President and American foreign policy to be so formulated as to match the contours of is distinct boundaries, and areas of concern. To the extent that leading states in the Gulf, have an opinion and foreign policy objectives on the Middle-East Arab – Israeli issue; it is the responsibility of the American President, and American foreign policy to formulate an engagement with Gulf opinion and Gulf foreign policy objectives; and to do so in the light of American national interest with them; and not based upon a mere parroting of the Israeli position vs. the Arabs in the Middle-East. This is so for two reasons. The most important of them being that the foreign policy of a state must always pass the test of being in that state’s national interest. Second, it must always address the issues that are in fact at hand; that is, the construction of a foreign policy which meets the particular situation at hand. The Zionist totalitarian impulse to take the “my-way-or-the-highway” stance to the contrary, notwithstanding. American Persian Gulf policy must (regardless or Zionist paranoia and selfishness) lean toward Saudi Arabia for foreign economic policy reasons (i.e., money and oil); and foreign military policy reasons (i.e., confronting candidate nuclear weaponed Iran). It would be inestimably less desirable for American national security interests for the US to simply parrot Israel’s Iranian anti-nuclear policy (which is to preemptively attack Iran, possibly even by using their nuclear weapons). Since this would certainly lead the Persian Gulf states (principally Saudi Arabia) to “go-nuclear”, including Iran, this, after such an attack (conventional or nuclear in nature) will assuredly become a declared nuclear weapons state. This is precisely not in America’s foreign policy interest both in the region, and globally. Therefore, opposition to a nuclear armed Iran dictates a de-facto coordinate Persian Gulf foreign policy by the United States with the Gulf States, which is different in tone and policy from the Persian Gulf policy that is currently being pursued by the militant Zionism of the Israeli Government. And if the American President is obeying his constitutional oath to serve US interests, he will be found to be at variance in American foreign policy with militant Zionism. Now of course it has come to mean in the Zionist Totalitarian universe, that opposition to Israeli foreign policy in its tactics has come to be defined as opposition to Zionism; and opposition to Zionist strategies has come to be defined as anti-Semitism. But this Stalinist, insistence upon a communist party-like adherence to ideological discipline is for Zionist’s only. It must be opposed by those who are not “in” the Zionist party. They are free to construct and argue on behalf of ideas that are expressly non-Zionist, because that is exactly what they are, not, repeat not Zionists. An ideology is rightfully opposed, by an individual (or institution) which is not a member of the community which adheres to that particular ideology. An American President is not, and can not, by definition be a Zionist or a supporter of Zionism. And that is the real test that is being put upon and measured against this President. The American President is by definition an ideological supporter of the American constitution and American national interests in American foreign policy. If Zionists choose to regard the President’s loyalty to his country, its people and its constitution as showing: “…little willingness or ability to empathize with an Israeli public…” they must simply accept that he is not the Israeli Prime Minister, he is the American President. Zionists in Israel and America must understand that popularity in Israel is not in an American President’s constitutional oath, nor is disregard of his responsibility to construct and execute global and regional foreign policies that are in the final analysis in America’s interests. And are sometimes, just sometimes, not in the interests, approved or liked by, even our foreign friends.

- 12alainu

July 21, 2010 at 9:00am

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amidut, well put. I find the the Emergency Committee for Israel to be anti-Israel in reality. Their language will only alienate those not in total agreement with them.

- blackton

July 21, 2010 at 9:27am

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"Committee spokesman Michael Goldfarb—also a lobbyist and adviser to Sarah Palin ..." Minor point, but of greater importance to Chait's first paragraphs is the fact that Goldfarb is a Kristol lackey who came to his Palinry by being Kristol's man inside Team McCain. It is, as the wise turtle once said, Kristols all the way down.

- rhubarbs

July 21, 2010 at 9:35am

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You say it's one of the "most right-wing governments in Israeli history" and yet it accepted the two-state solution and instituted a settlement freeze while the Palestinians have done nothing to advance peace; they won't even negotiate.

- eytanmirsky

July 21, 2010 at 10:44am

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So, is there now any light between Chait and Beinart? And if not, why the outrage two months ago against Beinart? "It is a pincer attack on liberal Zionism." Does anyone else see this metaphor as a bit of a cheap shot?

- sharib

July 21, 2010 at 10:45am

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Why would "pincer attack" be a cheap-shot metaphor? I could see the point if Chait had said a "Panzer" attack, but a "pincer attack" has nothing to do with German tanks and simply refers to an attack against both flanks. Which is precisely what Chait is describing.

- rhubarbs

July 21, 2010 at 10:50am

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"So, is there now any light between Chait and Beinart?" Possibly. This article refers to a very narrow slice of the pro-Israel community. Beinart was referring to most of the Jewish establishment.

- sighthnd

July 21, 2010 at 11:35am

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"You say it's one of the "most right-wing governments in Israeli history" and yet it accepted the two-state solution and instituted a settlement freeze while the Palestinians have done nothing to advance peace; they won't even negotiate." If Netanyahu's government, with is acceptance of the two-state solution and a settlement freeze, is "most right wing", one can only try to imagine what kind of concessions would be needed for Israel's government to merit the description of being merely "right wing", what would be needed for Israel's government to merit the description of "Centrist" and what the expectations from a Left-wing government would be.

- noga1

July 21, 2010 at 11:51am

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I'd also like to point out that the government minister Yuli-Yoel Edelstein who was arguing the Israeli case in the U.S. just after the flotilla incident has the weirdest haircut of any political representative in the democratic world. He's Israel's Minister of Information and the Diaspora, it appears, and the member of the Diaspora who was sitting next to me on the couch watching the TV said, "Jesus [yes yes I know, it could be my influence]! He needs a better haircut!"

- ironyroad

July 21, 2010 at 11:58am

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On a side note, what a group of scoundrels comprise this "Emergency Committee for Israel". It's just a bunch of right wing nuts. Bauer is a certified, 100% theocrat who believes that we should govern based on his lurid interpretation of the New Testament. He's a big-time statist. And then there's an Abrams...if she shares the foreign policy goals of Eliot Abrams then death squads all over the world are happy. The State of Israel should sue this bunch for trademark violation - besmirch of its name.

- OscarPeck

July 21, 2010 at 12:09pm

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I think Mr Chait it on a real problem in the relationship: Obama is faced with a very right-winged government in Israel. He's just not going to agree with them on a lot of stuff. It doesn't mean he hates the country. I must disagree with one comment a poster. I think the fact that Israel is a democracy IS critical. Yes Hamas was elected, but they don't govern under a democracy, with a series of elections...we'll see if they put themselves up to be unelected. Elections MUST be a guiding principle in our foreign affairs. It's' not our business to judge whether a populace made a good decision (unless their leader overtly attacks us). But elections WITH governing as a democracy with subsequent regular elections should mean a lot. And the far right's insistence on interfering in democracies, and supporting dictatorships, just because they like/dislike the leader, is horribly misguided. Hamas was elected, but they don't govern like a democracy: not in our interests. Israel's government was elected and they govern like a democracy: in our interests.

- OscarPeck

July 21, 2010 at 12:16pm

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Has any American President spoken before the Knesset? Please enlighten me I have heard something about the Roten Bill before the Knesset, another one of these 'Whos A Jew" things the US media and TNR have not brought up where issues of conversion depend on dictate of Israel COuncil of Rabbis. As if there is not enough back biting among Jews already. Does Israel now act as a Papacy from Jerusalem?

- NR027810

July 21, 2010 at 12:21pm

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Noga, I think the recent tape of Netanyahu speaking in 2001 brings into question his sincerity about a viable Palestinian state.

- IggyPop

July 21, 2010 at 12:45pm

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Netanyahu has demonstrated ample restraint, flexibility and good will. It's now up to the Arabs to reciprocate. Statehood has responsibilities as well as privileges. Real liberals are appalled by the racist, churlish, and disingenuous behavior of the Arabs.

- amidut

July 21, 2010 at 4:01pm

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This is, for a reasonable part of it, a balanced and sane piece. Good point on the policy continuum in the U.S. Israel relationship as opposed to some of the chilly diplomacy as partly engendered by Obama's seeming innate attitudinal coolness toward Israel. I do think you overstate Israel's complicity in the creation of that chill. Among other things, Israel has, as noted here, frozen settlement growth, wants to sit down face to face with Abbas and has Netanyahu’s commitment to a two state solution. For myself, I have no problem with ECI maintaining a defiantly stalwart defence of Israel against all comers, even if I disagree with its extreme positions and inflexibility. That kind of support is, I'd argue, a tactical boon to Israel. After all, she needs all the American champions she can find. She has rabid bashers aplenty and has the in house, so to speak, hurtful positions taken by J Street ,which itself gives so much cover and legitimacy to many meaning Israel no good. If ECI can be a force for holding politicians' feet to the fire on their positions on Israel—think Sestak--it's okay with me. When, I am confident, Israel has a partner for peace, operating in good faith, she will make such concessions as she needs to for peace consistent with security. But no such partner appears anywhere even amongst the supposedly Palestinian moderates, who will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state and will not renounce the right of Palestinian return to Israel proper. Arab failing to renounce the latter makes stated recognition of Israel's statehood-even without "Jewish" before it—hollow, merely rhetorical. The concern that ECI will profoundly facilitate the liberal left extreme criticism of Israel is overblown, I think. That criticism exists quite nicely under its own steam and does not need ECI to facilitate it, for all that it is intellectually pleasing for you to imagine rightist support generating that kind of antithetical leftist opposition, sort of, for you, like eating dialectical dessert, a happy meal, if you will. The ubiquitous and disturbing reality of extreme anti Israelism is way beyond whatever may ramify at the margins from ECI and in fact that potency is part of the raison d’être for ECI—just the opposite of your thesis.

- basman

July 22, 2010 at 2:49am

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Mr Chait, You had me until the 5th paragraph when you injected the subjective "national suicide" comment about Israel's current government. What exactly is Bibi doing that is suicidal? Disagreeing with Washington? Refusing to cow-tow to Arab unilateral demands? Wouldn't it really be suicide to leave the Golan Heights? To agree to universal right of return for all Arabs claiming Palestinian descent? Jonathan, you have an agenda. You don't like Netanyahu. You (as an outside foreign observer) disagree with Israel's right-leaning government and the broad support it receives from its (democratic) Israeli electorate. But to call it "suicide"? That's the oldest straw man argument in the book. A couple weeks ago you mentioned that the Israeli settlers were illegal? So whose side are you on? If I want to read that line of attack, I can go to the NYT (which is still free). You often discredit the rest of you're otherwise insightful comments with these tendentious jabs.

- streaming

July 22, 2010 at 8:54am

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I think the "suicidal" was meant loosely to suggest an ominous merging of recent Israeli diplomatic incompetence with a kind of culture-war-type maneuver here that makes supporting Israel seem less and less of a comfortable fit with American liberal political positions. Not jumping from a tall building, but dancing around carelessly on the parapet. It's dangerous to make support for Israel into an exclusively conservative rallying-cry (and loopy-conservative in some cases, not mainstream conservative). Oh yes, and if Jonathan Chait is an identifiably "outside foreign observer" disagreeing with the Netanyahu government which won a fair and democratic election, aren't most Israelis also in that class, as they look at the results of the U.S. presidential election, even if they don't like them? When I was in Israel recently I read an op-ed piece by Daniel Pipes in the Jerusalem Post (on Turkey and the flotilla affair). I was astonished to find (a) that it was moderate and balanced and (b) that I agreed with a lot of it. I read a couple of similar things in the JP but that one was what stuck. It dawned on me that the kind of overheated and uncontrolled rightwing rhetoric that seems to be the unchanging soup du jour here isn't that attractive in Israel itself.

- ironyroad

July 22, 2010 at 2:31pm

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Suicidal” is over the top, all dancing, parapets and tall buildings, notwithstanding, to the contrary or otherwise. Who is making support for Israel an *exclusively* conservative rallying cry? Liberals and conservatives see the world through their own lenses and as such their support for Israel, where that support is principled, will vary accordingly. To think about support for Israel being an “conservative rallying cry” is to buy into Chait’s arm chair and mechanical dialectic about ECI generating an equal and opposite, so to speak, antithesis. I suspect, but don’t know, that amongst the spectrum of American Jewish organizations supporting Israel, Daniel Pipes would find ECI congenial.

- basman

July 22, 2010 at 6:21pm

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Of course it's "buying into Chait's" argument, basman -- I agreed with his argument. It would be weirder if I didn't thus purchase a discursive share.

- ironyroad

July 22, 2010 at 6:28pm

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But I didn't say you bought into his argument. I said you bought into his "arm chair and mechanical dialectic"and thought I set out why what he said amounted to that. The answer is not to reaffirm your purchase but to explain why what you bought has value.

- basman

July 22, 2010 at 11:39pm

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Obama communicate to Israel perfectly: Speech to Muslim in Cairo. Upset at Israel building in it’s eternal capital implying that Israel should not keep Jerusalem. Then primarily Obama’s following Rev. Wright for 20 years and cheering everyone of his anti-Semitic rants. We now that he is in agreement with Wright since he calls him his spiritual mentor, married him, baptized his daughters and gave him the title of his book... Mr. Chait makes a brave effort painting Bibi as the most right wing government of Israel. In fact many in Israel think he went to the left and are not sure they can trust him any longer. Mr. Chait, zvet theich gournsht helfen! November is coming and good Jews like me will vote for anyone opposing Obama. 2 years alter the same against Obama.

- Poupic

July 23, 2010 at 8:35am

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Jonathan Chait knows he is making it up. Barak, a member of a junior coalition party from the left is running around in Washington again and again. That’s “the most right wing?” Every time I read the garbage from this Jonathan Chait I feel like cancelling my subscription to this magazine.

- Poupic

July 26, 2010 at 7:27am

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Liberals and neoconservatves and conservatives and all the rest of the chattering crew, there isn't among them a thought of the techtonic change in this country against Israel. Listen to the evening voices of the average American in his home, now more angry than upon any other subject: "The hell with them...Get them out of our hair... The Holocaust is over....We're sick of hearing of it...Get them out of our sight...Why are our politicians whores for Israel?...Is money being passed? Are they saying that my son should die for Israel? God damn it, just let them try it and see what happens...Who the hell ever said that they have a "special relatiohship" with us? Don't pull that stuff on us", and so on,and on. Part of the ordinary speech of non-Jews in the absence of Jews. You won't find that in Commentary or the Forward or any other Jewish publication, but it's out there.

- CHEKHOV

July 26, 2010 at 8:36pm

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Liberals and neoconservatves and conservatives and all the rest of the chattering crew, there isn't among them a thought of the techtonic change in this country against Israel. Listen to the evening voices of the average American in his home, now more angry about Israel than upon any other subject: "The hell with them...Get them out of our hair... The Holocaust is over....We're sick of hearing of it...Get them out of our sight...Why are our politicians whores for Israel?...Is money being passed? Are they saying that my son should die for Israel? God damn it, just let them try it and see what happens...Who the hell ever said that they have a "special relatiohship" with us? Don't pull that stuff on us...Israel isn't a democracy and if it is, so what", and so on,and on. Part of the ordinary speech of non-Jews in the absence of Jews. You won't find that in Commentary or the Forward or any other Jewish publication, but it's out there, moving towards a tipping point. Post new comment

- CHEKHOV

July 26, 2010 at 8:43pm

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Chait as usual misses the heart of the matter in technicalities. The problem is not that the "neocons" cannot see that the U .S. has not publicly turned against Israel; it is that the U.S. has signalled around the world that it will not draw a line in the sand against fundamentalist Islam. Facing the gathering storm, the U.S. is signalling weakness and fear. Much of Islam is under the influence, and sometimes virtual control, of a murderous medieval ideology which sees the death of the West as its holy task. The more the U.S. signals weakness, the stronger the threat will be. The Left's hostility to Israel,(Zionism--never the Jews!) and its sympathy for many of Israel's enemies, is really a search for some excuse to surrender America's leadership in the world, and curl up in Fortress America. How else would they be indifferent to the sexual gulag of Islam, and the pathological hate of the West brewing within it? Who else could imagine negotiating with a "moderate" wing of the Taliban? Chait looks only at trivial instances of U.S. - Israeli relations. Since, like the Left in general, he is functionally illiterate about the real nature of Radical Islam, he cannot see that Israel is our front line in the struggle for survival. In an age which makes the threat of Hitler and Stalin look superficial, we get Chamberlains when we need Churchills. Thus did the weak counsel reaching out to Hitler in 1938. We are repeating the process now.

- lance00002001

July 27, 2010 at 9:57am

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"The combination of the Netanyahu government’s incompetent diplomacy, enthusiasm for settlement construction, and lack of enthusiasm for peace negotiation suggests, at least to me, the need for Israel’s friends to warn it away from the cliff." This is a monumentally foolish statement. 1. Netanyahu's diplomacy is not relevant; Israel's problems are coming from exterior sources and so would occur regardless of any individual PM's policies. 2. The settlements are not expanding; Netanyahu's policies are the same as previous PM's in allowing the settlements internal construction only. Talk of settlement expansion is the same old Arab-leftist hype. 3. The lack of enthusiasm for peace negotiations is not Netanyahu's but Israel's, the result of the Israeli public's correct conclusion over the past decade that the Palestinians have not et resigned themselves to living in peace alongside an explicitly Jewish state. 4. There is no cliff. Israel may have no choice but to do what it has been doing -- patiently holding firm as one Arab entity after another (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi, maybe even Palestinians) resign themselves to reality. That may take decades and may be delayed, not hastened, by unilateral Israeli concessions.

- TNR.Reader

August 2, 2010 at 1:48am

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Checkov "Part of the ordinary speech of non-Jews in the absence of Jews." Then why does Israel still poll more support among Americans than the US President himself? Streamng and Lance, good comments.

- TNR.Reader

August 2, 2010 at 1:51am

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