Narrow Interests

The Washington Jewish Week has a new piece up on the ongoing skirmishes between the liberal J Street and conservative Emergency Committee for Israel. The story's focus is on the ECI taking credit for reducing the number of congressional signatures on a J Street-backed letter -- even though everyone agrees that the letter is "staunchly pro-Israel". In fact, the ECI hasn't quibbled with the letter's content at all. It simply is wreaking havoc for havoc's sake -- and declaring victory because fewer legislators are putting their names on a document defending Israel's security.

And so a J Street spokesperson replied "It's a sad day when ECI puts narrow partisan interests over Israeli security and calls it a victory." To which I say that's far, far too kind. The ECI's entire raison d'etre is to put narrow partisan interests over Israeli security. I asked some veteran Jewish journalists whether they could think of a single instance where the ECI hadn't done this -- where it had acted to put Israeli security over narrow GOP partisan interests. So far, no response -- but it's a fun parlor game you can play with the whole family.

Of course, it shouldn't surprise us that the ECI's commitment to Israel is so thin. That's what happens when you let the notoriously mercurial Noah Pollak be Executive Director of your allegedly "pro-Israel". What you get is a group that cares a lot about seeing Democratic politicians defeated, and very little about seeing Israel survive and thrive as a secure, Jewish, democratic state.

The Puzzle of Obama as Not Pro-Israel

NY Mag has a good and much-talked about article up on President Obama's struggles to be seen as "pro-Israel", even though by any objective metric he has been a stalwart supporter of the Jewish state. President Obama has leaned upon Israel, this is true, but he has also leaned upon the Palestinians as well. Moreover, Obama's pressure on Israel has in my view clearly been in support of policies in Israel's own interests anyway (the settlements are catastrophic for Israel from both a moral and strategic perspective). His outlook on the conflict mirrors of that of many prominent Israelis, most notably opposition leader Tzipi Livni.

But therein lies a large part of the problem. President Obama's positions are perfectly within the Israeli mainstream. But they happen to be reflected by the party out of power. The current Prime Minister and Obama do not see eye-to-eye. It is easy to cast personal and political tensions between the two as tension between America and Israel.

I actually think David Bernstein has a solid read on this. I don't think that Obama was actively trying to bring down Bibi's coalition (though I don't think he would have shed any tears if it had happened), but I agree that President Obama's avowed "anti-Likud" standpoint is going to be problematic when Likud is in power. President Obama is clearly correct that "pro-Israel" and "pro-Likud" are not the same thing, but the potential for political awkwardness is obvious.

Bernstein also notes the rise of Israel as a central part of conservative domestic political mobilization as something President Obama didn't anticipate. I think this is right as well, but I think Bernstein elides a critical part of this story. The effort by the GOP to turn Israel into a partisan wedge necessarily implies that there will be a concerted effort by GOP operatives to cast President Obama as anti-Israel regardless of whether the attack is fair or not. That's how politics works, of course -- it is not as if virulent Obama opponents are going to come out and say "hey, he's got a point." They are going to try and find an avenue for why whatever it is he's advocating represents bad policy by a bad president who should be defeated. The conservative critique, in other words, doesn't flow organically out of policy disputes, but is political theater promulgated by political opponents who hate Obama far more than they love Israel.

The most obvious example of this was Noah Pollak, who in 24 hours did a complete 180 on his beliefs about what policies were good for Israel after realizing the opportunity to launch an attack ad against the President. This helps illuminate part of President Obama's sin: he is guilty of caring about Israel enough to actually have opinions about it, and try and promote them. People like Pollak, on the other hand, appear to be complete mercenaries when it comes to Israel -- they don't have actual beliefs about what is best for Israel, they just have a political calculation about how to use Israel to hurt Obama. Others explicitly urge that to be "pro-Israel" is to lack any such beliefs -- a standpoint which is frankly bizarre. If I told you I cared deeply about America and its future, and you said "Oh really? What policies do you support?" and I replied "oh, it doesn't matter to me -- whatever the current government decides, I'll just support that", you'd be right to challenge just how deep my commitment runs. Caring about something means having opinions about it.

Obviously, one can be genuinely pro-Israel and disagree with President Obama. But a sober look at political realities requires us to admit that a not-insubstantial portion of the political attack on Obama comes from those who have no discernible (or at least stable) opinions about Israel at all -- who view Israel as a useful rhetorical tool to bash the President and will happily mouth whatever position makes those attacks feasible at any given time. These people, of course, are no real friends of Israel at all, and as Robert Wexler boldly put forth today, it is Israelis who will "pay in blood" for it.

Hackery in its Most Crystalline Form

One of the more frustrating things about this whole "based on '67 lines" flap is that, right up until the moment someone decided to make it into a "controversy", it was one of those things that was so obvious nobody dreamed it was ever controversial. I mean, on what other basis could one possibly base the borders of a two-state solution? The original partition plan? Do we simply divide up all the cities and draw straws? Of course the final borders are going to track '67 lines, with mutually-agreed upon swaps. There is literally no other conceivable starting point one could have for negotiations predicated on the creation of two states for two peoples.

Which is why "based on '67 lines with swaps" was the consensus pro-Israel position right up until the moment Republicans decided it wasn't. And there is perhaps no clearer demonstration of the utter hackery that has accompanied this "controversy" than the behavior of -- surprise -- Noah Pollak and his "Emergency Committee for Israel" (last seen backing Senate candidates who voted to cut off aid to Israel).

The committee put up an ad which, of course, is all up in arms about this '67 lines thing. Except -- whoops! -- Pollak live-tweeted Obama's speech, and at the time (not realizing -- reasonably -- that the consensus position on the conflict would suddenly become ripe for exploitation) was all about praising it. "Nothing new" about Obama's statement regarding the '67 borders. "I don't think there is anything in this speech that Netanyahu will find surprising or even disagreeable." And, most hilariously, "If someone had said to me yesterday, 'you'll be defending Obama on Israel tomorrow,' I would have laughed." Turns out, that premise was pretty laughable.

So Pollak is little more than a partisan hack, who reversed his own position on what Israel needs for its security based on nothing more than an opportunistic desire to attack the President. Israel hardly needs "friends" whose devotion is so thin. So step aside Pollak: some of us think Israel security is actually important -- more important, even, than scoring short-term political points at the expense of those actually working to bring peace and security to Israel.

Dershowitz Tries To Knock Off Pro-Israel Congresswoman for not Hating Obama Enough

Back in September, I became aware that Joel Pollak, brother of Commentary contributor Noah Pollak, was going to challenge Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), on the grounds that the latter was insufficiently pro-Israel. It struck me then as an odd choice: Rep. Schakowsky has a well-known and well-deserved pro-Israel reputation stretching through her whole career. Not to mention Schakowksy represents an overwhelmingly Democratic district that agrees with her on near-every issue and, um, doesn't agree with Pollak or his brand of conservatism.

Nonethelss, Alan Dershowitz, either out of loyalty to a former student or a desire to shrink the definition of pro-Israel such that its adherents could fit into a Saskatoon synagogue, has decided to endorse Pollak. It won't really matter -- Schakowsky has never even dipped below 70% in any of her re-election fights -- but it is a sad commentary on Dershowitz, whose only apparent beef with Schakowsky is her alleged failure to "speak out" on alleged wrongs done by the Obama administration toward Israel.

In any event, J Street has risen to Rep. Schakowsky's defense. Good for them -- there are serious problems facing Israel, the US, and the world today, and we need serious people like Jan Schakowsky in Congress facing them. Now is not the time to elect some random political neophyte whose campaign alpha and omega is "Obama is teh suckz". And shame on Alan Dershowitz for electing to sacrifice his pro-Israel credibility so cheaply.