What Makes a President "Good for Israel"?

OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS, I’ve heard a number of Jewish friends say in private and other Jewish voices say in public that they worry that Barack Obama will be “bad for Israel.”

What’s most intriguing about these observations is that, while Obama is maddeningly vague and unspecific on practically every issue (which is mostly why I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary), these American Jews somehow seem to know for certain where he stands on Israel.

Much of the present whisper campaign against Obama seems curiously to have emanated from Jewish Republicans. For example Marc Zell, who identifies himself as Co-Chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel (boy, there’s an organization for everything), went after Obama in a Jerusalem Post piece recently. So did the Republican Jewish Coalition, which regularly and shamelessly plays a more-pro-Israel-than-thou act, accusing Jewish Democrats of selling out the Jewish State. Strangely enough, for example, the RJC gladly quoted Ralph Nader recently, for saying that Sen. Obama was "pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate" and "during the state Senate." All of the sudden, Nader’s a credible source for the RJC.

But, to be fair the attacks on Obama don’t appear to be only the work of a Republican smear campaign. I’ve heard nervousness about Obama, too, in the voices of many committed Democrats who are Jewish.

Of course, everyone (even his supporters) is reading Obama's tea leaves.  He offered a little more substance (but not a lot) to his thinking about the Israeli-Arab conflict and about how he finds Louis Farrakhan unsavory, in some recent public utterances on the subject, meant to disarm the charges against him. I personally find what he said fairly unobjectionable, though his past statements such as, "Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people" are troubling in their ignorance.

Obama’s Jewish critics are focusing less on what he has said (or not said) than on the advisors who surround him –- “guilt by association,” he calls it.

Frankly, I think assessing any candidate by the company he keeps is fair game, especially in Obama’s case. While he may not himself know or want to articulate in detail what he will do on any of the wide range of policy challenges he would face as President, I have to believe –- or, better yet, I sincerely hope –- he will have the good judgment to bring in good people who know about specific issues. So it’s not unreasonable to look at the credentials and views of the people on his campaign foreign policy team.

On that criterion, Obama’s candidacy turns out to be a mixed bag, at least as far as some people are concerned. Some of his advisors (some of which are truly advising him, he says, and some are pretty much in name only) have reputations as solidly “good for Israel,” and a few –- really only a few –- have records that have for understandably concerned some in the pro-Israel community.

Even Martin Peretz, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic, and a full-throated supporter of Obama, conceded recently that a “charge, circulating on the Internet, has not yet been sufficiently refuted. This is that he has advisers on the Middle East who despise Israel.”

Interestingly, however, Peretz, is a hawkish supporter of Israel, which might surprise many who are responsible for or influenced by the anti-Obama whisper campaign.  “Barack Obama's views on Israel and the possibilities of peace between it and the Palestinians are both tough-minded and deeply comprehending,” Peretz wrote. “I don't at all think that I'd be disappointed with an Obama presidency, and certainly not with his attitude towards the Jewish State."

I really don't think Obama will be hostile to Israel. But the truth is, we never really know what someone’s position on Israel (or any other major policy issue) will be until he’s faced with real and difficult decisions as President of the United States. 

Most of the pro-Israel hardliners’ money in 2000 said that George W. Bush would be “good on Israel,” and in 2004, I heard that sentiment again, even from some Jewish Democrats who were concerned that John Kerry would not be sympathetic enough (based on seemingly no good evidence).

But who among those hardliners would have believed that George W. Bush would endorse –- as President! –- the idea of a fully autonomous Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel? Who would have thought that his administration would use up all-too-little political capital on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for most his presidency –- at least not until a few months ago in Annapolis when most of that political capital had waned? If pro-Israel supporters of candidate Bush had known that’s how President Bush’s term would have turned, I have to believe they would have roundly criticized him in 2000, and opposed him again in 2004, too.

And one has to wonder whether the invasion of Iraq, President Bush’s biggest foreign policy initiative -– and the perhaps the biggest foreign policy disaster in the history of the republic -– was ultimately good for Israel. I know a lot of pro-Israel people thought it would be (which is not to say, as some vile critics of Israel and Jews have, that the Jewish community somehow duped our nation’s leaders into this war). But in retrospect these pro-Israel supporters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq have to admit that things didn’t turn out the way they had hoped. Arguably, Israel’s neighborhood is even more dangerous and unstable now than it was before March 2003. Still think George W. Bush was “good for Israel”?

All of this, of course, prompts the question: what makes a U.S. President good for Israel? I’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts, but here are a few from me (not necessarily an exhaustive list). He or she recognizes and acts on the principle that:

• Israel is an ally that shares the values of the U.S., and it is a critical fulcrum of economic and political progress in the Middle East.
• Israel is not to blame for all the calamities of the Middle East.
• The conflict in the Middle East is ostensibly between Israel and its Arab adversaries, but really between moderates (Arabs, Muslims, Jews and many others in the region), who would be happy living side-by-side, and extremists, who only want to create chaos.
• Israel has been forced to fight a frontline battle against extremism that is aimed not just at the Jewish state but at many other countries. For this reason, those countries should be respectful and sympathetic to Israel, which is fighting their war for them, not critical of its every action.
• Israel’s military actions are, at their root, defensive, borne of the necessity to protect its citizens and, indeed, its existence against those who threaten them.
• Israel is faced with a choice between two bad options: taking military action, which brings about resentment, rage and criticism from the international community, and not defending its citizens against terrorist attacks, an unconscionable path for any sovereign nation.
• A U.S. President must expend some energy and political capital to help move Israel and the Palestinians in the direction of reconciliation.
• There cannot be any progress unless there is an ironclad guarantee that any agreement will make Israelis secure and put Palestinians on a path to prosperity and peace for themselves.
• This is unlikely to materialize so long as there are parties, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, that are out to destroy Israel.
• Israelis truly want peace and deserve it.
• Palestinians, too, deserve what every human being deserves: peace, prosperity and happiness.

Enough for now. I’d like to hear others chime in.

Jeff