Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East by Rashid Khalidi

Author:Rashid Khalidi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: International Relations, 21st Century, General, United States, Middle East, Political Science, History
ISBN: 080704475X
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2013-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Despite his strong and unequivocal support for Israel, Obama is frequently portrayed as not having done enough for this American ally. Many Republicans and other fervent supporters of Israel espouse rhetoric demanding that there be “no daylight” between the United States and Israel, on top of the assertion that the president has “thrown Israel under the bus.”38 The latter phrase was used repeatedly by Mitt Romney, notably during the Republican presidential primary debates in Florida in January 2012, in regard to the Obama administration’s assertion that the 1967 frontiers were the basis for any negotiation of frontiers—a heretofore utterly conventional US policy position.

It is worth reflecting on precisely what is being said and done here. Some Republicans, in close coordination with the Israeli government and its Washington lobby, are saying that a Democratic administration should follow exactly the same line as does an American ally and not allow any visible differences between the two. They are in effect supporting a foreign government over their own on questions of foreign policy, indeed on weighty questions of war and peace. Further, attempts by the United States government to assert traditional US policies are described by them as amounting to a hostile act against this ally. It is becoming increasingly clear from these and other instances that Israel represents a realm where politics does not stop at the water’s edge, as has traditionally been the case with foreign policy: quite the contrary, the domestic politics of the United States and Israel are today deeply intertwined. Indeed, the two political systems are becoming interpenetrated. This should be no surprise, in view of the two-way flow between the two countries of political, media, and strategic consultants, contributions to political campaigns,39 funding for think tanks,40 and the influence of big money on the media.41 There is thus almost no longer a significant distinction between “foreign” and “domestic” policy where Israel is concerned (Truman’s handling of the Palestine issue suggests that already in 1945–48 there never was such a distinction in some respects).

It has long been the case that the United States was heavily involved in the internal politics of many Middle Eastern states, including Israel, as we have seen in a couple of cases. This current now flows both ways, with a shrewd Israeli politician like Netanyahu in effect inserting himself into American politics, as is evidenced by his increasingly partisan speeches to an ever more welcoming US Congress. His speech before a joint session of Congress on May 24, 2011, received thirty-five standing ovations.42 It is reported that Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz raised her arm to signal her colleagues to rise and applaud when the Republicans did.43 Netanyahu spoke to Congress on the same date a year later, and was similarly rapturously received, in both cases at times when his relations with the president were tense: Netanyahu was thus playing a supine and complicit legislative branch, with bipartisan support, against the executive branch.

The disaffection of some on the Right with Obama over his policies

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