Channels

Photo: Ido Boker
Dan Shapiro visiting USS Porter
Photo: Ido Boker
Nahum Barnea

Did Ya'alon intentionally skip docking ceremony for US ship in Israel?

Op-ed: The defense minister missing US Ambassador Shapiro's ceremonial visit to the USS Porter in Haifa was a lost opportunity at calming the flames of the current crisis in Israeli-US relations.

Last Friday saw the USS Porter visit the port of Haifa. The Porter is a part of the United States Sixth Fleet. Its specialty is ballistic missiles. Its claim to fame comes from the days of the Gulf War, when it launched Tomahawk missiles at targets in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Since then it has been renovated and upgraded. Its current home port is in Rota, Spain.

 

 

The American Navy is strict about ceremony. Every time a vessel officially visits a foreign port, the American ambassador is welcomed on board in a military ceremony. The ambassador tends to invite one of the host country’s leaders (the president, prime minister, or defense minister) to come aboard with him. It’s protocol.

 

The ceremony is filmed and photographed. It sends out a three-fold message: America is strong; America is present; the military relationship is close.

 

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro visits the USS Porter

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro visits the USS Porter

סגורסגור

שליחה לחבר

 הקלידו את הקוד המוצג
תמונה חדשה

שלח
הסרטון נשלח לחברך

סגורסגור

הטמעת הסרטון באתר שלך

 קוד להטמעה:

The ceremony on the Porter went according to traditional rules. The honor guard wore white, the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Blair Guy, greeted the guests with a salute. Daniel Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel, returned a salute and inspected the honor guard. But he walked alone: No Israeli representative was beside him.

 

Later, the ambassador gave the requisite speech on the American government’s commitment to Israel’s security and the close cooperation between the two countries. The Israeli representative’s job in these cases is to echo the ambassador’s words: The cooperation has never been closer, America is by our side and we’re by its side.

 

But no Israeli representatives came to the Haifa Port. In their absence, the ceremony felt somewhat hollow, fake. Like a wedding that the groom skipped out on, or a bounced check. The USS Porter’s visit was intended to show Israel and its enemies, from Iran to ISIS, how close the relationship between the two countries is. It showed the opposite.

 

How is it that Israeli leaders were absent from the ceremony in Haifa? The story is incredible, but before I tell it, allow me to go back 19 years, to August 1996. The USS Enterprise was visiting Haifa. US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk invites Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit the ship at sea along with him.

 

Netanyahu agrees. He is accompanied by his wife, Sara. The group’s helicopter lands on board. Netanyahu is invited to the bridge. The Americans give the prime minister the full show, just like in the movie Top Gun, sans Tom Cruise: Fighter jets taking off with great noise and then landing back on the ship with precision. Netanyahu is filled with child-like excitement. “I want three of these aircraft carriers,” he tells Indyk.

 

From time to time, about once a month on average, Ambassador Shapiro visits President Reuven Rivlin. During their latest meeting, he asked the president to come visit the Porter with him when it reached Haifa. President Rivlin thanked him for the offer, but said he could not. The disagreements between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding Israeli-US relations could make this look like undue political interference by Rivlin. He advised the ambassador to invite Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon instead. Shapiro and his deputy, William Grant, promised to try. If they could get Washington’s approval, Ya’alon would be invited.

 

A few days later, the president met Defense Minister Ya’alon at the Western Wall, where they were attending a ceremony at the local synagogue. Rivlin told Ya’alon about the talk he had with Shapiro, and advised him to accept: It’s very important for the defense minister to show his presence in charged times like these. It’s a good way to calm the flames.

 

The American government has a complicated relationship with Defense Minister Ya’alon due to the insults he flung at Secretary of State Kerry in the past. Even so, he was invited. The defense minister’s office responded by saying that his schedule was busy. He cannot be in Haifa Friday morning. The Americans took note.

 

Defense Minister Ya'alon. A missed oppotunity (Photo: Ido Becker)
Defense Minister Ya'alon. A missed oppotunity (Photo: Ido Becker)

 

Did Ya’alon reject the offer as part of Netanyahu’s policy of boycotting the Obama government? I’m not sure. It seems that more than malice, this was a missed opportunity. These kinds of mishaps happen to Ya’alon from time to time. Sometimes they’re the result of overthinking, sometimes the result of simple squareness.

 

Ofer Harel, the defense minister’s media advisor, told me that the invitation landed on Ya’alon’s desk a day or two before the ceremony, and he couldn’t make the time in his schedule.

 

Talks with the Americans are going on as usual, Harel said. On Thursday, Ya’alon was going to meet with General Philip Breedlove, Head of United States European Command (EUCOM), who came to visit Israel as an IDF guest. If Ya’alon was boycotting the Americans, Harel said, he would have skipped the meeting (IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot invited Gen. Breedlove to join him in the annual ceremony commemorating fallen soldiers of the Golani Brigade, which Lt. Gen. Eisenkot began his military service in, and later commanded. The American General accepted).

 

A lost battle

When it comes to relations with the United States, it seems Israel has more than one government. Netanyahu and his representative in Washington, Ambassador Ron Dremer, are working against the Iran deal like there’s no tomorrow. Other members of the Israeli political system, from the president down, are trying to deescalate the situation, and the IDF is trying to keep business going as usual.

 

But their efforts are dwarfed by the huge levers operated by the prime minister and the power he holds. Netanyahu is like a driver hurtling downhill but refusing to hit the breaks, for fear that he’ll flip.

 

Last week I talked about how the White House sees the actions of our ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, fighting the Iran deal. They say he goes around Capitol Hill, knocking on door after door and lobbying senators and congressmen to vote against the deal. No other Israeli ambassador dares to behave this way in any other country, they say. No other foreign ambassador dares to behave this way in the US, they say.

 

President Obama and Ambassador Dermer (Photo: White House) (Photo: The White House)
President Obama and Ambassador Dermer (Photo: White House)

 

In other countries, Dermer would have already been declared a persona non grata. He’d have to pack his bags and go back home in 48 hours. The American government is too arrogant to do this. At this point, it remains sufficed with barring White House and State Department clerks from meeting with Dermer.

 

The word “unprecedented” is often overused in journalism. Most events that happen here have precedents. Crises between the governments in Washington and Jerusalem have occurred before; the same goes for periods of cold relations.

 

What justifies the use of the word “unprecedented” in the current crisis is that the Israeli government, rather than the American, is pulling back. It’s a lost battle: the Iran deal can’t be stopped. The only thing left is the ego, the chest-puffing, the tempting game of American internal politics. This isn’t Israeli chutzpah: It’s a dangerous gamble in a casino. It’s playing with fire.

 

President Obama spent this week vacationing with his family in Martha’s Vineyard, an Island off the Massachusetts coast. He played golf, swam in the sea, had dinner with friends. The only political activity he engaged in, according to the American media, was phoning Democratic members of Congress about the Iran deal. Netanyahu is calling; Dermer is calling; Obama is calling. No American president gets this kind of competition over the attention of his party’s elected representatives.

 

The leaders of the Jewish community in the United States are stuck in the middle. The word “community” is misleading. There is no community. The word “leaders” is also misleading. There are no leaders. There are lobbyist groups that take orders from the Israeli prime minister, there are a few wheeler-dealers close to the top, and there are Republican billionaires whose ego has become as inflated as their bank accounts. They have contempt for Obama for all the wrong reasons, including his skin color. “Who’s Obama?” One of them said recently, “He’s one of 350 million Americans.”

 


פרסום ראשון: 08.22.15, 23:24
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment