The One True Existential Threat

Roger Cohen writes:

When Israeli actions seem arrogant or insulting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is capable of rapid action to repair the damage — provided those offended are American Jews. That is the lesson of the brouhaha over a now-aborted Israeli advertising campaign intended to shame Israeli expatriates in the United States into returning home by suggesting that America is no place for real Jews and that Diaspora life leads to loss of Jewish identity. The Jewish Federations of North America called the ads “outrageous and insulting.”

Cheesy would be a better word. A typical video was a cloying play on how the Hebrew “Abba” can morph to “Daddy” for an Israeli kid overdosing on the U.S.A. The campaign, unsurprisingly, was hatched in a ministry headed by an ultranationalist from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s party. Equally unsurprisingly, Netanyahu nixed it as soon as he heard of the outcry. “We are very attentive to the sensitivities of the American Jewish community,” explained his spokesman, Mark Regev. That’s right: The one true existential threat to Israel is loss of U.S. support — which will never happen, but still.

I have several reactions to this little saga. The first is that I know several Israeli expatriates or would-be expatriates and their feelings are consistent. They are troubled by the illiberal drift of Israeli politics, the growth of a harsh nationalism, the increasing influence of the ultrareligious, the endlessness of the “situation,” and the tension inherent in a status quo that will one day threaten either Israel’s Jewishness or its democracy. They have left or seek to leave because they don’t want all that and no longer believe there is going to be significant change. The ads play to Israeli patriotism, but it’s not patriotism that expatriates lack. It’s hope that their Israel can be salvaged and a two-state peace achieved.

My second reaction is that if Netanyahu could show a fraction of the nimbleness evident when American Jews are offended in instances where Turks are offended (by the killing of their citizens in international waters), or where President Barack Obama is offended (by ongoing settlement expansion in the West Bank against his express request), or where Egyptians are offended (by Israel’s dismissal of their democratic aspirations), then Israel would be in a better, less isolated place today.

That’s what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta means when he tells Israel to “reach out and mend fences” with Turkey and Egypt and engage in “strong diplomacy” rather than pursue policies that have “seen Israel’s isolation from its traditional security partners in the region grow.” As Panetta said, Israel needs to “get to the damn table” with the Palestinians. That, of course, does not depend entirely on Israel but equally will not be achieved through Israeli high-handedness, a trademark of Netanyahu’s administration.

The old Middle East of Israel’s cozy military-to-military relationships with the likes of Turkey and Egypt is gone. A new Middle East where Israel must deal people-to-people is being born. For a democracy this should ultimately be encouraging: People, including Arabs, with control of their lives tend to be focused on improving those lives rather than seeking conflict. The rise of Islamic parties opposed to despotism and adjusting painfully to modernity is cause for caution, yes, but not for manipulative Israeli dismissiveness.

My third reaction is that it’s all very well for the Jewish Federations of North America to find the ads insulting, but I’d be pleased if they could reserve a little of their outrage for times when Israeli insensitivity or arrogance takes more violent form — as is frequently the case with Palestinians in the West Bank. Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian columnist, visited Hebron recently and published a piece called “This Is Israel? Not the One I Love” in London’s Jewish Chronicle. He wrote of Hebron: “A map shows purple roads where no Palestinian cars are permitted, yellow roads where no Palestinian shops are allowed to open and red roads where no Palestinians are even allowed to walk.”

He added, “I watched an old man, a bag of cement on his shoulder, ascend a steep bypass staircase because his feet were forbidden from going any farther along the road. Those unlucky enough to live on a red road have had their front doors sealed: They have to leave their own houses by a back door and climb out via a ladder. All this has made life so impossible that an estimated 42 percent of the families who once lived in this central part of town have now moved out.” Israelis walk on streets full of vile anti-Arab graffiti and shuttered Arab stores daubed with Stars of David. “To see that cherished symbol used to spit in the eye of a population hounded out of their homes is chilling,” Freedland writes. This is happening behind the wall-barrier-fence. It is the result of an untenable status quo involving the corrosive dominion of one people over another.

Here’s a suggestion for an ad campaign that might fly: A smiling Netanyahu shaking hands with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, beside the slogan: Come home to peace.

Forgive me for dreaming.

And Jonathan Guyer writes:

The Israeli government has come under criticism from both the Obama administration and American Jewish communities over the past week – the latter focused on a bizarre advertisement campaign aimed at the US diaspora. The current Israeli government's insensitivity toward American Jews has gotten their attention, but whether forthcoming Knesset bills that are an affront to democratic values will cause similar alarm is yet to be seen.

Hillary Clinton, America's top diplomat, said at this past weekend's Saban Forum in Washington that she is "concerned over Israeli democracy", according to reports. Earlier in the week, prominent US communal organisations condemned a series of public-service announcements produced by the Israel's Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, which insinuated that Israeli citizens should not marry American Jews.

In one of the ads, a family split between the US and Israel shares a holiday rendezvous via Skype; when the Israeli grandparents ask their American granddaughter what holiday it is, she says that it's Christmas. "They will remain Israelis; their children won't," the ad's narrator advises. The campaign has since been withdrawn, but it is just one example of bad taste.

More troubling is a forthcoming Knesset bill which would give the Israeli government new powers to regulate – or, more accurately, police – Israeli NGOs that receive foreign funding. The draft law would "revoke the right to income tax exemption" on such non-profits, and place a 45% tax rate on contributions from "a foreign state entity", to Israeli organisations, among other parameters scarcely seen in liberal democracies. Secretary of State Clinton was said to have criticised this piece of legislation as a threat to Israel's democratic institutions at last weekend's closed forum. She also drew attention to restrictions on women singing in public, according to Israeli news outlets. As for gender segregation on Jerusalem buses, Clinton called it "reminiscent of Rosa Parks".

One Israeli headline described US Defense Secretary Panetta's remarks at the same forum as "a slap on the face" to Netanyahu. Panetta warned against Israel's military option with regards to the Iranian nuclear program and advised Tel Aviv to "mend fences" with Egypt and Turkey. Panetta said that taking risks for peace with the Palestinians is "Israel's long-term security interest", despite the fact that talks between the two parties remain mired.

It is little surprise, perhaps, that a senior US official would be so forthcoming on security issues with Israel and the need to "get to the damn table", as Panetta put it. "The [Obama] administration has been making an ongoing strategic argument that Israel faces real, serious challenges," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of J Street, a group which has advocated that Washington take a bolder role in Middle East diplomacy.

Panetta's remarks do not indicate any sort of break; rather, they mesh with what former national security adviser Jim Jones and former Centcom commander General David Petraeus have said. That Clinton rebuked Israel's sequence of "anti-democratic" legislation, though, signals that Washington is taking note of the shrinking space for dissent in Israel. The past year has witnessed a variety of oppressive Knesset legislation, including laws targeting Israel's Palestinian-Arab minority and banning organised boycotts against the state.

Last week, an egregious Defamation Prohibition Law was passed, which "raise[s] the amount of punitive compensation for libel, without proof of actual damage", according to the Association for Civil Rights (ACRI) in Israel. If the NGO bill goes forward in Israel's parliament, watchdog groups like ACRI would be taxed at a punitive rate. In fact, a wide range of NGOs, today fully compliant with Israeli law, would suddenly come under an Orwellian regime.

"By focusing on individual flare-ups like the fuss over a minor ad campaign, the Israeli government is missing the bigger picture strategically," Ben-Ami told me. "American Jewish support for and connection to Israel will continue to erode over time if Israel isn't fully committed to the core values that bind the Jewish people together."