Toward a Critical Rhetoric on the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Matthew Abraham

Author:Matthew Abraham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Israel;Palestine;rhetoric;political discourse;peace studies;conflict resolution;Middle East
Publisher: Parlor Press, LLC
Published: 2021-12-05T17:21:15+00:00

7 Dueling Visions of Israel and the World: Netanyahu and Obama at AIPAC

Robert Rowland

In March of 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama each made major policy speeches to the American-Israel Political Action Committee policy conference focused on ties between Israel and the United States and the threat posed to Israel by the Iranian nuclear program.1 In many ways, the two speeches functioned as campaign speeches in which the two leaders vied for the support of the American Jewish community. Netanyahu began his speech by praising the “more than a half of the members of Congress [who] are in attendance here tonight” (5), and then spoke of the strong support Israel had received from leaders of both parties. At one point, he asked the audience if there was anyone in attendance from Florida, New York, Wisconsin or California (19), important states in the American election, each with a sizable Jewish population. The strong message was that the Obama administration needed to be unwavering in support of Israel or Jewish Americans might support the Republicans. Obama clearly recognized the potential political danger and focused his appeal to the community on “the unbreakable bond between Israel and the United States,” “the partnership between the United States and Israel,” the “more than six decades of friendship between the United States and Israel,” the fact that the United States and Israel share “common ideals,” and asked to be judged based on “my deeds” as President (2, 3, 5, 12).

In these passages and others, the Prime Minister and the President clearly sought the support of the immediate audience and the larger American Jewish audience by emphasizing commonality between the United States and Israel. If this contest for the support of American Jews was all that was at stake in the two speeches, there would be little to be gained from a detailed consideration of them. However, underneath the surface, the two leaders present very different views about the nature of Israeli society and the continuing threats it must confront.

Underlying the views of the president is a pragmatic assessment of the world situation and the threats to Israel, an assessment that recognizes the genuine danger posed by the Iranian nuclear program for Israeli security, but also recognizes other threats and that all actions have potential risks as well as potential benefits. While the bulk of Obama’s speech is aimed at minimizing political risks facing his reelection campaign and persuading Israel that there is no current necessity of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, the underlying worldview is that Israel is a normal state and must pragmatically assess the world situation. Netanyahu’s worldview is quite different. Prime Minister Netanyahu sees the world through the lens of the Holocaust, in this way staying true to the ideological roots of the Likud in the Holocaust-centered worldview of Menachem Begin.2 Netanyahu’s focus on the Holocaust provides great power to his message, but at the cost of obscuring differences between the threat posed by Hitler to the Jews of Europe and the dangers posed by Iran to the nation of Israel.

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