How to save Israel-US relations
Op-ed: Americans see the Middle East through different lenses than Israelis. In order to save the relationship, Netanyahu must go against his nature and take action.
And I don't mean the usual and almost-comical kind of trouble that stems from the differences in character and temperament between staid and soft-spoken Americans and Israelis who speak too loudly. I'm talking about a deeper kind of trouble, one that is seeping into and gnawing away at the trunk and roots of the relations between the two countries.
"We're starting to wonder," says Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove from the large Conservative synagogue on Park Avenue, New York, "whether Israel loves us as much as we love it."
"I wasn't offended," says my friend Jack Lew, US Treasury Secretary, some 10 minutes after a mixed audience of Israelis and local Jews booed him into the hall at the Jerusalem Post conference in New York last week. But his voice, his flushed face, his body language all say the very opposite. He's an observant Jew, and one of the architects of the sanctions against Iran. If I had to pick out Israel's best friend among the current US administration, I'd probably choose him. "I wasn't offended," he says again.
"You have to help us," says the senior official from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. "They have to understand that Israel also has voices that speak differently."
"As the president explained," the senior White House official says in a tone that is patient and somewhat cold, "we are working on the assumption that you have no intention of conducting a political process."
"I've been doing this for 35 years now," the senior Brookings Institution researcher says to me, "and I don't recall a lower point in the relations."
"I've been a senator now for more than 40 years," says the veteran member of the legislative chamber, "and it's never been this bad."
"I've been covering the relations my entire life," says the well-known journalist. "You've lost your fucking minds."
"I'll remain pro-Israel," says the even-more-famous journalist, "but my daughters get embarrassed when the subject comes up."
"His daughters aren't alone," says one of the leaders of Hillel, the largest Jewish student organization in the United States. "The situation on the campuses is becoming more and more difficult. We're losing an entire generation."
The neglect and the punishment
Politicians around the world are very different, but they all have one thing in common: The first thing they respond to is public opinion. The historical alliance with the United States wasn't born in 1948; it came to life during the nine-year period between the Six-Day War and Operation Entebbe operation – at a time when we were the very best, the most courageous, the most just, a cut above the rest in all.
"That's what we grew up on," Senator Elizabeth Warren says to me, "on Israel's success, on the fact that against all odds it managed to become a liberal democracy in a region of the world that was neither democratic nor liberal."
An academic, Warren is a woman with intelligent eyes and a soft tone of voice. The room goes silent for a moment, because she doesn't want to speak the next sentence; she doesn't want to say that our friends are beginning to ask themselves if we are still that same Israel.
At present, the relations between Israel and the United States revolve around three critical issues – the nuclear deal in the works with Iran; the need for a joint effort to combat the BDS movement; and the political process (or complete lack thereof, to be more precise) with the Palestinians. From our perspective, these three issue are unrelated; but the Americans, and in the White House in particular, see things differently. In relation to ours, their pyramid is upside down. As long as we continue to tread water vis-à-vis the political process, they see no reason to make any efforts on our behalf with respect to the remaining two issues.
And to top it all, there's the ugly and unnecessary quarrel between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama. And while it may not have any substantial influence on any of the three issues, it's enough to poison the mood to an extent that prevents the two countries from joining forces to face up to the various threats.
I explain time and again to our gracious American hosts that when it comes to the Iranian issue, Israel is united. We all feel the same: The agreement in the works is a bad one; the supervision issues remains unresolved; the sanctions are being lifted too soon. They listen patiently, because the Americans are patient people; and then they respond (with a little less patience) by saying that friendship is a two-way street – or should be at least.
The bottom line is that they are trying to tell us that someone who doesn't listen shouldn't be surprised when others stop listening to him. This is something that is deeply rooted in their culture. When they are offered real dialogue, they are happy to cooperate. When I lay out the idea of a regional peace conference that I've been promoting over the past year, they are curious, they ask for more details, and they appear honestly keen to dive into the work process. On the other hand, if they catch you trying to deceive them just once, you've had it forever.
"Phony negotiations designed merely to buy time," a senior White House official tells me, "are even worse than no negotiations at all." That same day, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon spoke at the Herzliya Conference and said he did not believe a stable peace agreement could be reached with the Palestinians in his lifetime.
It's difficult to explain from afar just how harshly such a statement is received in America. They've been part and parcel of the negotiations for years. They've invested countless hours; they've spent all their Middle Eastern credit; they've made the matter Secretary of State John Kerry's principal vocation – and all of a sudden, along comes Israel's defense minister to tell them that we never really meant it. We were simply pretending.
Shortly before I left the government, I left a letter with Yossi Cohen, the head of the National Security Council, in which I called for an urgent cabinet debate on the deteriorating relations with the United States. The debate, to the best of my knowledge, never took place – not when I was there, and not thereafter. Apparently, the prime minister, who can sometimes hold endless discussions about some or other suspicious truck in Lebanon, didn’t think that the need to preserve our ties with the world's biggest superpower is important enough to warrant a two-hour discussion. We're seeing the results now.
Can we turn back the clock? The answer is yes. But speeches and television interviews alone won't do the trick. In order to enlist the United States in the fight against the madness of the intensifying boycott movement and get Washington to listen to us with regard to the Iranian issue, Israel must do the thing that Netanyahu finds particularly hard to do – take action.
Out of everyone I spoke with, the one who puts it best in fact is Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from the party's right-wing faction – and an old friend of Bibi – who recently threw his name into the hat as a presidential candidate. Unlike most American politicians, Graham specializes in US foreign relations.
We're sitting alongside one another on a mustard-colored sofa in his office, and he lays out our problem far better than many Israelis do, including those in the government.
"For a long time," he says, "you were focused on the notion that nothing bad would happen to Israel. It's time you started to take action to make something good happen."
