for his veiled attack, only to have the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, pick up Bush’s lead in response.
The problem was magnified by the fact that even after it had become clear that she couldn’t secure the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton kept reminding people about the demographics where she had polled far better than her opponent, including within the Jewish community. Thus, Obama had his work cut out for him when he addressed the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential pro-Israel organization in the United States. Predictably, he went through the same motions as so many candidates before him, indicating that he was firmly committed to maintaining the special relationship between the United States and Israel, and would use military action to do so when necessary.
The speech was by most accounts very well received, despite the earlier skepticism circulating in the audience. But that didn’t prevent formerly Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman—according to some accounts John McCain’s first pick for a running mate—from trying to steer anxious Jewish voters in the direction of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The point of contention was Obama’s forceful assertion that Bush administration policy in the Middle East had actually weakened Israel’s security:
I don’t think any of us can be satisfied that America’s recent foreign policy has made Israel more secure. Hamas now controls Gaza. Hezbollah has tightened its grip on southern Lebanon and is flexing its muscles in Beirut. Because of the war in Iraq, Iran—which always posed a greater threat to Israel than Iraq—is emboldened, and poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States and Israel in the Middle East in a generation.
Rather than explore the possibility that Obama was sincerely articulating a new way for the United States to support Israel, Lieberman was content to echo the charge of appeasement that Bush had made to the Knesset. “Iran is a terrorist, expansionist state,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency quoted Lieberman as saying, confirming that the political shorthand of the Republican Party line was still in sync with its Israeli counterpart. Interestingly, although the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s story gave Lieberman’s point of view, it also provided enough content to refute it:
“This is a new approach,” said Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic consultant whose communications firm also does work for many Jewish organizations. “Two years ago many thought it would be difficult to persuade people that George W. Bush had not been good for Israel, even dangerous to try it. It’s not only a case that can be made now, it’s also true.”
In retrospect, Rabinowitz’s confidence seems to have been justified, given Obama’s performance among Jewish voters. Despite the constraints he was operating under, it appeared that Obama wanted to make it clear that he would not simply pick up where the Bush administration had left off with regard to American-Israeli relations. During the process of selecting his cabinet and formulating policy objectives, he consulted with liberal Jewish peace advocacy organizations such as Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, J Street, and the Israel Policy Forum. That he also talked with the conservative groups that have historically served as the “voice” of the Jewish community, such as AIPAC and the arch-rightist Zionist Organization of America, however, indicated the caution with which he had to proceed. While those groups had suggested to varying degrees that Obama would be no friend to Israel, he lacked the standing to leave them out in the cold. Still, the fact that the Obama team was listening to anyone beyond the usual mouthpieces was of note, even though many liberals in the U.S. remained skeptical that his selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state would lead to any fundamental changes in American foreign policy.
While it makes sense that Israelis of all political preferences would prepare for the possibility of a shift in American policy, the positive attention given to the idea of a “new approach” suggested a willingness in both Washington and Jerusalem to rethink the rituals of the special relationship. Besides, even the pro-Israel bias displayed by the Clinton administration was, at its worst, more engaged in the effort to create some kind of solution than the Bush administration. As a left-wing Israeli peace activist once told me, “For all of the horrible problems with Clinton’s approach, in retrospect, it may have been better for Arafat to have accepted it all, and stage another intifada later, because at least he would have been working with more than the Palestinians will start with when the next round of peace negotiations inevitably are forced upon them.”
THE POLITICS OF BOREDOM
The day before President Bush addressed the Knesset back in May 2008, he spoke at Israeli President Shimon Peres’s first annual Facing Tomorrow Conference. Three quarters of the way through his talk, Bush’s mouth seized up, as though he were about to say something important that he just couldn’t figure out how to put into words. I waited and waited, but the expression remained on his face. My computer had frozen.
This is Bush’s moment of truth, I chuckled to myself, the momentthat he realizes his failure to say anything new. It was hardly the first time I’d had a laugh at the president’s expense. Although progressives around the world were reduced to a meager diet of hope in the seemingly interminable years of his leadership, we were also able to sustain our spirits on empty calories of irony. It wasn’t satisfying fare, to be sure, but still preferable to the grim alternative of submitting to the status quo. Even with a speech in hand, Bush seemed to be rendered functionally speechless by his administration’s failure to make any concrete progress in the Middle East. His now-notorious landing on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in May 2003 to declare “Mission accomplished” had come to stand for his entire presidency.
Unlike the Anwar Sadat of my imagination, Bush had declared war, not peace, in Israel’s chief legislative body—and not on Israelis, but on the leading contender for his successor, Barack Obama. Bush acted that day as though Israel’s parliament was American territory, implicitly comparing Obama to appeasers like Neville Chamberlain, the late British prime minister who had attempted to pacify Hitler by allowing him to invade Czechoslovakia. Despite the drama, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exemplified the overwhelming sense of tedium during Bush’s address by nearly dozing off, while Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai shifted around in his seat like a bored and impatient school kid. Although the speech provided comfort to Jews, both in Israel and the United States, it was the sort of comfort that accompanies sleep, not action.
When my father shouted, “But he’s a brownshirt!” back on November 20, 1977, he was expressing amazement that Menachem Begin—a fiery religious nationalist who advocated the concept of a “Greater Israel” stretching from British Mandate–era Palestine to the Occupied Territories and what is today Jordan—could break with precedent. The hope his exclamation conveyed in the process—that change can be brought about by the peaceful initiatives of individuals rather than the collective sacrifices of war—was largely abandoned in the waning years of the second Bush administration. Yet that hope shows signs of returning in the willingness of Barack Obama and other Democratic Party leaders to push for a new approach to the problems of the Middle East, despite facing significant political risk in doing so.
* During the 1920s and ’30s, the Sturmabteilung (Nazi paramilitary force) wore brown shirts. For many years, the term “brownshirt” was used as a synonym for fascists.
They’ve lost control of the debate,” historian Tony Judt told the Observer’s Gaby Wood in February 2007, discussing the Jewish American organizations that had worked to marginalize
