After meeting with Obama, what's next?

I had the opportunity to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House on July 13, along with fifteen other representatives of Jewish organizations. Afterwards, everyone wanted to know whether I now felt reassured about the state of US-Israel relations.
  
I start off with the premise that pro-Israeli attitudes in this country are so deeply embedded and multi-layered that no particular policy approach can easily change that. On top of that, the President said a number of things that reminded me of the bi-partisan character of support for Israel which has been the hallmark of the relationship.

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Seeing the glass half full - for now

Perspective is everything.  The glass can be half full or half empty.

These unoriginal thoughts came to mind after two significant events in the life of the state of Israel and the Jewish people - the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Israel and the meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The tendency in the Israeli press was to focus on the negative. The Pope was widely criticized for the things he failed to say or said in an infelicitous way. And the Washington summit meeting was picked apart for the alleged lack of warmth between the leaders and for the pressure points and disagreements.

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Dubai's unfortunate decision

The decision by the United Arab Emirates not to grant a visa to Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer is a shocking development which raises broader questions about the progress that has been assumed to have been made in Arab-Israel relations.
 
The decision is shocking because of its source. Let's remember that Peer played last year in a Women's Tennis Association tournament in Doha, Qatar, and spoke openly about how warmly she was received. Dubai, the home of the current event, is a place that has cultivated an image of openness to the world. Nowhere was this more evident than in past years' television coverage of the event, with pictures of mini-skirted ball girls running around the court while traditionally robed Sheikhs sat in attendance.

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Gaza goes global

Israel's operation to defend its people from Hamas rockets is having repercussions far beyond Gaza and the besieged cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. It is taking on a global reach and having a global impact, particularly for Jews in much of Western Europe and Latin America.

Assaults against Jews are on the rise. In Europe, Jews have been threatened and beaten on the street and synagogues firebombed. "Jews to the gas chambers" has been chanted at anti-Israel demonstrations in Europe and similar calls for death to Jews have been heard across the Arab and Muslim world.

While much of the violence and anti-Semitic graffiti has spilled over from anti-Israel rallies, where Israel and Jews are routinely likened to Nazis, it is part and parcel of the incitement against Jews and "World Zionism" endorsed by the terrorist leaders of Hamas. 

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Preventing the weapons flow to Hamas

In a media world which features images of destruction of human beings and property, the words "cease fire" have an understandable allure. Israel itself succumbed to that allure six months ago to bring respite to Sderot.
    
Whether a cease-fire is a good thing or instead an event that makes the next conflict inevitable at a higher level of violence depends almost entirely on whether it will provide mechanisms to ensure its reliable implementation.
     
Look at Lebanon and UN resolution 1701 which generated the cease-fire there. Its two most important components were barring Hizbullah from entering territory south of the Litani river and from getting weapons from Syria and Iran.

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Zionism, racism and a misbegotten encyclopedia entry

When Jimmy Carter published his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" he was appropriately criticized for linking Israel's policies in the territories to that of apartheid South Africa. Whatever one's views of Israeli policy, comparing it to the ideological, race-based approach of South African white supremacists was outrageous.
 
Some of us, at the time, also noted that as bad as Carter's perspective was, it wasn't even the worst use of the term or the concept with regard to Israel. Even worse would be the accusation that Israel itself -- forget about the territories -- is a manifestation of racism and apartheid ideology. This, of course, was not a new concept; recall the abominable Zionism is racism resolution of the United Nations, passed in 1975 and on the books until the early 1990s, and the Durban UN Conference Against Racism in 2001 with its focus on alleged Israeli racism.

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ADL at 95: Battling old hatreds in new forms

As the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Anti-Defamation League approaches on July 10th, I can't help but think that its founder, Sigmund Livingston, probably would have wished we had not reached this milestone. After all, when you create an organization with the aim of ending anti-Semitism and seeking to erase bigotry in all its forms, you can't help but want to achieve your goal and put yourself out of business.

The hard realist in me tells me that Livingston, a Chicago lawyer and nobody's fool, likely knew that ADL was to be his life's work - and that it would take generations beyond his own to come to the end of a difficult road. Today, more than 60 years after World War II and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, we know only too well that not only did anti-Semitism not end in the ashes of that global war stamped with Hitler's genocidal Jew-hatred, but that a new if not improved kind of Jew-hate has replaced it.

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Playing the 'Nakba' Card

As Israelis watched fireworks, went to barbeques and celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut, American media coverage of Israel's 60th anniversary was overwhelmingly canned and formulaic. For every veteran of the Haganah featured, there was an accompanying interview with a Palestinian who left his home in Israel in 1948. For every examination of the significance of six decades of Israel's independence, there was a reference to what Palestinians call the "nakba," or catastrophe.

This symmetry, evident in features, articles, op-eds and interviews that appeared over the weeks leading up to the start of the 60th celebrations, may have made self-satisfied editors believe they were demonstrating their impartiality.  In fact, they established a false moral equivalency between the founding of Israel and a Palestinian "catastrophe," feeding into a dangerous misperception of what happened 60 years ago and what must happen today.

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'Neutral' on Israel's security

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey's visit to Teheran was billed as an opportunity to deliver a stern message about the need for Iran to end its human rights violations and its threats to destroy Israel. This was according to the government's official announcement of her March 17 diplomatic visit.

As a secondary matter, the announcement noted, Calmy-Rey would attend the signing of a gas deal between Iran and a Swiss energy company.

But Calmy-Rey herself inadvertently exposed the flimsy human rights pretext when she acknowledged on the day of her departure that she was traveling to Teheran in response to Iran's invitation.

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Why the US and moderate Arabs need each other

Relating American interests in the larger Middle East to the US role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a necessary and sometimes controversial element of US policy making.

During the Cold War, two predominant models emerged.  Zbignew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, postulated the concept that protection of key American interests -- limiting Soviet influence and retaining access to Mideast oil -- required achieving as soon as possible a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Brzezinski and Carter saw obstacles to American interests in the continuing conflict and saw great advantages for the US in the larger region if the conflict were resolved.

The problems with this approach were many and were so evident to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who sought progress toward peace, that he decided to go it alone with Israel, much to the initial dismay of the Carter Administration.  First, it was unreal to expect all the Arabs, including the radicals, to reach peace with Israel.  Second, it put an unreasonable weight on the Israeli-Arab conflict to influence the many other conflicts and challenges in the region. And third, it was a process that would inevitably lead to undue pressure on Israel, the logic being that if this was the key to all America's problems in the region, and if as anyone could see the Arabs weren't ready, then advocates of such an approach would invariably play the mind game of telling themselves "If only Israel would make the appropriate concessions."

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