The Turn Against Israel

JOHN PODHORETZ
July/August 2009

Barack Obama began the first week of June with a series of interviews on the eve of his journey to Cairo to deliver his address to the “Muslim world.” In all of them, he spoke of the Israeli-Palestinian situation and the central importance of resolving it as part of his aim of beginning anew with the Arab and Muslim nations that have grown so disenchanted with the United States. To National Public Radio, the President made a point of invoking the ties that bind America to Israel and the “special relationship” between the two nations before asserting that

part of being a good friend is being honest. And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative, not only for Israeli interests but also U.S. interests. And that’s part of a new dialogue that I’d like to see encouraged in the region.

The President is, of course, entirely right about how “profoundly negative” the “current direction, the current trajectory, in the region” is for American and Israeli interests. A theocratic regime committed in word and spirit to Israel’s destruction is relentlessly marching ahead with the development of nuclear weaponry. The conclusion of its march poses not only a threat to Israel’s existence but portends a Persian Gulf arms race with implications that ought to terrify everyone. This is precisely the kind of “new dialogue” Israel and the United States should be pursuing in the Middle East—honesty about the trajectory of Iran.

But, of course, honest discourse about Iran was not the fearless truth Barack Obama wished to bestow upon Israel or the Muslim world.

Rather, his honesty solely concerned the trajectory of the “settlements”— which is to say, those acres between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea on which Jewish people now live that have not been declared part of the state of Israel by the international community.

The President’s honesty compelled him to inform his friend that these acres of earth have been improperly and illegally built upon, and that their existence imperils the creation of the Palestinian state he believes is a political and moral necessity.

Obama’s notion that presidents before him have not been “as honest as we should be” about the settlements is a peculiar one. Every occupant of the Oval Office since Richard Nixon has spoken unfavorably about them. Indeed, when it comes to policy specifics, it is hard to see exactly how Obama has ushered in a new era of “honesty” in the U.S.-Israel relationship.

And yet there is no question that we have entered a new era, one that I expect will be characterized by tensions and unpleasantnesses of a kind unseen since the days when George H. W. Bush was president, James A. Baker III was secretary of state, and the hostility toward Israel oozed from both men like sweat from an intrepid colonial traveler’s brow as he journeyed across the Rub-al-Khali.

One tiny detail gives the game away: Obama’s very use of the word “honest.” It was carefully chosen, and is pregnant with meaning.

In the matter of relations between nations, the adjective “honest” is often deployed to denote animosity. When, for example, a State Department official describes a discussion between diplomats as “open and honest,” that description is presumed to mean that the proceedings were heated and confrontational.

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