Zionism needs Israeli Jews to feel frightened
About President Obama let me first of all say this. I do not believe as many of his anti-Zionist critics do that he came into office as a Zionist stooge, programmed to do Zionism’s bidding. If that was the case, why would he have challenged Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby over the settlements and set himself up to be humiliated? My view is that Obama meant well but was too naïve and inexperienced for the job and was therefore bound to become a prisoner of the Zionist lobby. I also think it is impossible for any new, first term president to be completely aware of the full extent of the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress until he is in the Oval Office trying to get things done.
As I write in Is Peace Possible?, the Epilogue of Volume Three of the American edition of my book, I think there was a reason why Obama moved so quickly to try to get a Middle East peace process going.
He knew something that all American presidents know about when serious initiatives for peace can and cannot be taken. I know what that something is because a president told me a few months after events had denied him a second term in office. Any American president has only two windows of opportunity to break or try to break the Zionist lobby’s stranglehold on Congress on matters to do with Israel/Palestine.
The first window is during the first nine months of his first term because after that the soliciting of funds for the mid-term elections begins. Presidents don’t have to worry on their own account about funds for the mid-term elections, but with their approach no president can do or say anything that would cost his party seats in Congress. The second window of opportunity is the last year of his second term if he has one. In that year, because he can’t run for a third term, no president has a personal need for election campaign funds or organized votes.
As things are there’s a question mark over whether Obama will get a second term, but with the mid-term elections are out of the way, he might have one more opportunity to put some real pressure on Israel – if he has the will. There has been talk of a Palestinian and presumably wider Arab initiative to have the Security Council recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. If such a resolution does find its way to the Security Council, Obama could do what American Presidents always do when resolutions are not to Israel’s liking – veto it. But he could also say and do nothing and effectively let the resolution pass. What then?
In Ha’aretz on 20 October, Israeli commentator Aluf Benn offered this answer. A Security Council decision to recognize Palestinian independence on the West Bank and Gaza “would deem Israel an invader and occupier, paving the way for measures against Israel.” In Aluff Benn’s view the international movement to boycott Israel would “gain massive encouragement when Europe, China and India turn their backs on Israel and erode the last remnants of its legitimacy. Gradually the Israeli public will also feel the diplomatic and economic stranglehold.”
My guess is that such a resolution will not find its way to the Security Council because the Arab regimes are too frightened of offending Zionism too much; but if it does, Obama will have his last chance to demonstrate that, as it relates to American efforts for peace in the Middle East, his “Yes, we can” has not become “No, we can’t.”
Arab leaders have shown signs that they’re willing to renormalize their ties with Israel. Politicians in some of the Arab states have openly negotiated with high-ranking Israeli officials and invited them to their events. What are the benefits of this renormalization for the Arab leaders while anger and hatred against the Israeli regime is growing in the Arab world on a daily basis? How can the Arab leaders disregard the crowds of people who storm into streets en masse to protest the aggressive and belligerent policies of Israel in the West Bank and Gaza?
Most Arabs quietly despise their leaders but I’m not aware that they have stormed into the streets to protest against Israel’s policies. I would re-phrase what I think is the essence of your question in this way: “Do Arab leaders care about what happens to the occupied and oppressed Palestinians?”
My short answer is “No”. My longer answer is this.
The real history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel invites the conclusion that the Arab regimes, more by default than design in my view, betrayed the Palestinians. And there’s no mystery about the nature of this betrayal.
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