Democrats Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Criticize Israel in 2016
In a click-baitingly titled Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday, Michael Oren—the former historian and Israeli ambassador to the U.S., currently a member of the Israeli Knesset—accused President Obama of abandoning key tenets of the U.S.-Israel relationship. “While neither [President Obama nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] monopolized mistakes,” wrote Oren, “only one leader made them deliberately.” Guess which one?
The piece quickly generated a number of strong responses—see Peter Beinart, Jeremy Ben Ami, and J.J. Goldberg for three of the best—calling out its factual inaccuracies regarding longstanding U.S. policies, disingenuous rendering of the Obama-Netanyahu relationship, and overall tendentiousness. But the op-ed, and presumably the memoir from which it’s drawn, should also be understood as part of a broader attempt by conservative forces in Israel, and their allies in the United States, to enforce a hard line against U.S. criticisms of Israeli policies, and to tamp down any discussion of the way that those policies undermine American interests and violate American values.
During his tenure as ambassador, Oren spent a great deal of time and effort playing up Israel’s strategic value to the United States, while also avoiding acknowledgement of, let along engagement with, arguments from top U.S. security officials that Israel’s ongoing occupation, and the illegal settlement enterprise that it sustains, creates security costs for its patron.
In his op-ed, Oren (now a member in the most right-wing Israeli government in history) takes this a step further: Not only should Israel be hailed as America’s greatest ally, but any public criticisms by American leaders should be seen as a betrayal of that alliance. This should be understood for what it is: not analysis, but an ideological argument. The goal here is to define Obama’s presidency essentially as an anomaly, and his criticisms of Israeli policy as outside the boundaries both of normal diplomatic practice and of the U.S. political consensus on Israel.
Source: www.newrepublic.com