Relations are strained over Gaza but US support for Israel remains strong
Relations are strained over Gaza but US support for Israel remains strong
By Chris McGreal in Washington The Guardian
Relations are strained over Gaza but US support for Israel remains strong, Sunday 10 August 2014 14.28 EDT
(Somehow I suspect America will be around long after Obama is just a smudge on the pages of American history.-LS)
Even before the smoke clears in Gaza, the damage assessment has begun.
On the face of it, relations between the Obama administration and Binyamin Netanyahu’s government, already marked by antipathy and distrust, have been driven to a new low by very public sniping over Israel’s bloody assault on the Palestinian enclave.
The administration’s public declaration that it was “appalled” by Israel’s “disgraceful” shelling of a UN school, which killed 10 people, and US secretary of state John Kerry’s unguarded mocking of Netanyahu’s claims to be carrying out pinpoint operations to avoid civilian casualties, was a marked break from the largely unquestioning support for military operations the Jewish state has come to expect from Washington. So was Barack Obama’s observation that the deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza “have to weigh on our conscience”.
In contrast, the US Senate gave unanimous backing to a resolution giving unequivocal support to Israel without even mentioning the loss of Palestinian lives.
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu railed against American pressure for a ceasefire, at one point calling the US ambassador to pass on a message to the White House “not to ever second-guess me again”. Israeli press quoted anonymous officials pouring contempt on Kerry.
All of this came after months of tension as the US secretary of state pressed a reluctant Israeli prime minister to take peace negotiations with the Palestinians seriously, and then watched his efforts collapse. The Israeli leadership’s true feelings were laid bare when the defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, branded Kerry “obsessive and messianic”.
Kerry angered the Israelis further by warning, albeit in a private meeting, that the Jewish state risked becoming “an apartheid state” if it maintained the occupation.
Yet, even as what is now regularly described as a dysfunctional relationship between Obama and Netanyahu is increasingly played out in public, those who have viewed US-Israeli dealings from the inside say the airing of frustration and contempt will not, for now at least, change any of the fundamentals about how Washington deals with the Jewish state.
Daniel Levy, a former adviser to Ehud Barak, then Israeli prime minister, and an ex-delegate to peace negotiations with the Palestinians, said the US’s decision to resupply Israel with tank shells, mortars and other weapons to continue the very killings the president and Kerry were questioning said more than the criticisms thrown back and forth.
“The American support in munitions, even in the middle of the Gaza operation, when UN shelters and schools were being hit, and just as European countries were beginning to question their arms exports to Israel, speaks to the fact that we’re more in the arena of continuity than change,” he said.
Still, Levy added that the friction might not be entirely without cost to Israel. “I think there’s going to be far less American willingness to go out of their way to say: ‘How do we help the Israelis in this situation?’. When the cameras are on, America will still do what it feels it needs to do. But I think there are all kinds of areas where they could go the extra mile and they will be less enthusiastic to do that,” he said. “I feel it has weakened Israel’s position when it comes to Iran.”
Aaron David Miller, who served six US secretaries of state as an adviser on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said he has watched relations ebb and flow between several US administrations and Israel. The principal issue for Obama, he said, had been the scale of the killing seen on US TV screens.
“Civilian casualties is in essence the major problem the president has. Make the bad pictures of innocent Palestinians dying go away – that’s the pressure,” said Miller. “Unlike John Kerry, the president’s not interested in transforming this into some major peace deal. He’s preoccupied with so many other issues. He has less than a thousand days left in his presidency. He cares more about the middle class than he does about the Middle East.”
Obama told the New York Times last week that he was not optimistic about the chances of a peace deal because Netanyahu is popular with Israeli voters. The Israeli prime minister doesn’t feel the pressure to reach an agreement, while the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is “too weak”. The president said that worried him because while he has no doubt Israel will survive, its “democratic and civic traditions” are threatened by continuing the occupation.
Kerry has not given up trying to revive long-term peace talks and may see the latest war in Gaza as the beginnings of a path to fresh negotiations. But Miller said there’s little enthusiasm in the White House for the peace process.
“It’s closed for the season right now,” he said. “The president’s seen this movie with Netanyahu before. It’s presented a losing hand to him every single time.”
Yousef Munayyer, director of the Palestine Centre in Washington, said he would be surprised if the US expended more effort on trying to engineer a peace agreement because Obama and Kerry have “learned the hard way that Netanyahu is not going to cooperate in any meaningful way” when much of his cabinet is either opposed to a Palestinian state or to the concessions necessary to bring it about.
“It’s hard to see it really happening again because current political trends in Israel are really on course for right wing governments for the foreseeable future. So there’s really no reason to expect that you’re going to have an Israeli government that’s more conducive to a peace agreement than the Netanyahu government that you have now – and he’s certainly not,” said Munayyer. “At the same time, the United States is not in a position yet where it’s ready to bear the political cost of putting the kind of pressure on the Israelis that’s necessary to get them to change their behaviour. The calculation that they’re probably making is that it’s not worth it to engage right now and that if the Israelis want to drive themselves into international isolation they’re not going to hold them back.”
But the assault on Gaza did highlight a trend that may come to change the political equation about Israel in the US.
Polls show a gradual shift in American public opinion, mostly generational. While a clear majority of Americans overall support Israel’s assault on Gaza as self-defence, a Pew poll last month showed diminishing support for Israel among younger Americans. Over-65s backed Israel over the Palestinians by nearly seven to one. Among young adults, aged 18-29, that support fell to just two to one in favour of Israel.
That appears in part to be because younger Americans are getting their news from sources other than mainstream television and newspapers. Israel’s 2009 assault on Gaza helped boost support for the Palestinian cause on US college campuses because the internet offered access to a much greater variety of reports, analysis and opinion, much of it from outside the US.
Technology widened the field further during the latest conflict in Gaza with many more pictures and eyewitness accounts from Palestinians living under the bombs.
“You have these forums where a girl in the Gaza strip who’s 16 years old can tweet images of bombs falling outside of her house to 160,000 people,” said Munayyer. “That kind of access to disseminating information has never existed before and it’s a game changer. That changes public opinion and ultimately that will change the way policymakers act on this issue but that’s a way down the road.”
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WarSclerotic 
August 22, 2014 at 6:58 AM
Agree with you , LS and appreciate what you do and what good the USA has done / is doing for Israel ! We in the western world need a strong / free USA to stay free ! Thats probably the reason why the enemies of the western / free world brought Mr Obamination in the WH so he could cut down the main pillar of the western world !
Arise, brave and free americans and get your nation back to where it was !
August 22, 2014 at 1:36 PM
Good God man….
I have to say (as if anyone cares what I say, so I guess I’m taking the time to write this for my own entertainment)…..
I have to say, what a knife to the heart of Israel is this article by Mr Chris McGreal.
The impression I’m left with after reading Mr McGreal is that here’s a propaganda hit piece just dripping with hatred and contempt for Israel. Oh yes, the title of the article and many of the statements in the article express support for Israel in so many words, but the subtext of all those statements betrays a desire to undermine the legitimacy of Israel at every turn. Mr. McGreal never misses an opportunity to “slip the knife in” to Israel. Mr McGreal looks to be an expert at practicing the art of “damning by faint praise”. There’s an old Arab saying “the one who insults you is the one who repeats the insult”. By reporting feebly on American support for Israel but then pretending to be even handed by surrounding each statement of support with every kind of qualification, but, and however, Mr. McGreal makes clear his real agenda.
I’m no expert on “the Guardian’s” anti-Israel agenda but here’s one opinion that seems to explain the hateful attitude displayed by Mr. McGreal.
“The left-wing anti-Israeli bias is almost irreversible. I asked an editor of The Guardian: ‘Did you support Israel during the Camp David negotiations?’ He said: ‘Oh no.’ I went on and queried: ‘Why do you always quote extremists in Israel, settlers or left-wingers, rather than spokesmen of the mainstream?’ To defend himself, he answered: ‘Many of our writers are Jews.’ It shows that he does not know much about the British Jewish community and also believes the stereotype that every Jew is pro-Israeli. Writing against Israel advances one’s career. Suzanne Goldenberg, who was The Guardian’s correspondent in Israel, received several awards.
http://www.jcpa.org/israel-europe/ier-shtauber-05.htm
And look up the other articles written for the Guardian by Mr. McGreal. I see a subtle, or not so subtle, agenda, a tilt to the Left, a hostility to the United States and it’s ally Israel.
August 22, 2014 at 3:21 PM
Thanks for your reply TY. Your participation in this site matters a lot and I sincerely appreciate your response. What you say about the author and the source was unfamiliar to me. With so much info out there on the internet today, it’s difficult to weed things out so to speak. That’s why your participation and other knowledgeable readers like yourself are so important to this discussion.
As for the article, on the surface I felt it demonstrated the ‘disconnect’ we see here in the US between the leftist Obama administration and traditional US policy. As you well know, Obama and his minions have worked to nullify this country’s ‘mission statement’ throughout his term in office and will surely continue with this repulsive behavior for the remainder of his term. You see it in everything he touches, domestic and foreign, friend and foe, and now, black and white.
However, the article still had the ‘obligation’ to mention the US support for Israel in a somewhat unwaivering manner. That’s pretty much the point I was trying to make.
August 22, 2014 at 6:03 PM
Absolutely. No offense meant. No criticism, of you, and “Warsclerotic” is the first website I go to every day.
But I had to comment because, more so than any article I can remember, I was struck but the subtlety of the subliminal anti-Israel message in what, on the surface, seems to be a pro-Israel story.