The mistaken partisanship of seeing Israel in the context of American politics, not Middle Eastern reality - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Reaction to Trump’s latest decision once again proves that liberal Jewish groups see Israel in the context of American politics, not Middle Eastern reality.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
19 November '19..

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week that the United States no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be in violation of international law, most Israelis were clearly pleased. But a good portion of American Jews weren’t. This tells us more about American Jewish priorities and indifference to what Israelis think than it does about what’s good for the Jewish state or arguments about international law.

As was the case with the Trump administration’s moves on Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Iran nuclear deal and accountability for the Palestinian Authority’s support of terrorism, all the major Israeli political parties greeted the announcement with support. Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his leading rival, Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz, agreed that America was right to scrap its old insistence that Jews had no right to live outside the 1949 armistice lines.

That latter point is crucial to understanding a basic fact about Israeli political reality. Gantz, who remains locked in a standoff with Netanyahu and his allies over the composition of the next Israeli government, actually received a heads up about Pompeo’s impending statement before it was issued.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman called Gantz and informed him of the decision. Had Gantz expressed opposition or had he asked that the Americans delay their announcement, a State Department source told the press that the administration would have complied with the request. To the contrary, after Pompeo spoke, Gantz approved of his move, saying explicitly that the fate of the “settlements and the residents of Judea and Samaria should be determined by agreements that meet security requirements and that can promote a peace that will serve both sides while reflecting the reality on the ground.”

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Liberal Jews, their institutions and that inconvenient Israeli consensus - by Jonathan Tobin

...There are some voices on the left saying Lapid and Gabbay are just posturing to gain support from centrist voters and would, in fact, pursue very different policies involving withdrawal from the territories if they were elected. They may be right about that. But if so, that merely shows both men understand how most Israelis still see more withdrawals unaccompanied by genuine change among Palestinians as not so much misguided as insane.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
20 October '17..

Jewish institutions are under siege these days, and their principal critics aren’t neo-Nazis. Despite the clear leftward tilt of most organized Jewish life, liberal critics are constantly telling us that mainstream groups like AIPAC and federations are toadies of an Israeli government that is pursuing policies that American Jews abhor. The ferment on the left runs from tame—and largely irrelevant—liberal Zionist groups like J Street to more extreme opponents like IfNotNow and the virulently anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, which also dabbles in anti-Semitic libels as well as support for boycotts of Israel.

The critics and the naysayers have the ear of many Jews. The reason for this has more to do with the demographic collapse and decline of a sense of Jewish peoplehood among the non-Orthodox denominations that make up about 90 percent of American Jews, than it does with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s shortcomings. But it’s also true that the majority of the non-Orthodox Jewish community has little sympathy with the Israeli government’s positions on the peace process.

The notion promoted by President Barack Obama that Israel needs to be saved from itself still resonates among the majority of Jews who voted for him. This view holds that Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank is the prime obstacle to peace as well as the future of the Jewish state. But while this liberal consensus deems Netanyahu a problem, its proponents rarely stop to ask why he was elected prime minister four times, including winning the last three elections in a row.

The answer is simple. There exists a broad consensus within Israeli society that contradicts the assumptions held by most American Jews. The majority of Netanyahu’s compatriots see his policies as the only possible response to a Palestinian political culture that still refuses to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn. Moreover, that Israeli consensus isn’t merely upheld by Netanyahu and his allies; his rivals on the center and the left also embrace it.

The latest example of this fact came this week from new Zionist Union party leader Avi Gabbay.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The Consensus on Jerusalem and Obama

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
09 November '12..

Leftists in both Israel and the United States would like President Obama to try and impose a peace plan on Israel in his second term. But the main plank of any American or international diktat is something that the vast majority of Israelis will not accept: division of Jerusalem. Earlier today, Evelyn Gordon wrote about how the woman leading the Labor Party back to political relevance has similar positions to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the peace process. But Shelly Yacimovich isn’t the only rising star of Israeli politics that wants no part of any Obama diktat. Haaretz reports today that Yair Lapid, the head of the new centrist party Yesh Atid, went even further than Yacimovich.

Lapid said yesterday that he explicitly opposes the division of Jerusalem and that retention of the united city by Israel is not an obstacle to the signing of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. This is significant not just because it shows that Israeli centrists are competing with Netanyahu for votes by taking allegedly right-wing stands on peace process issues, but also because it runs completely contrary to one of the firmest positions articulated by the Obama administration in the last four years.

If there has been one point of contention with Israel on which the president has pushed the envelope farther than any of his predecessors it is Jerusalem. While all American governments have refused to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city, let alone over those parts of it that were occupied by Jordan from 1949 to 1967 commonly known as East Jerusalem, Obama has gone further than that. Previous administrations had tacitly accepted the Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, most of which are 40 or more years old, as de facto parts of Israel. By contrast, Obama has treated these neighborhoods as being the equivalent of the most remote hilltop settlement in the West Bank.

Greenfield - Israel's War of Words

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
23 July '12..



(While not agreeing 100% on all the points raised, there is not likely to be a better analysis of the varied interests and trends within Israel concerning mandatory national service, a complex topic, an excellent summation. Y.)

If you read the headlines, the biggest issue in Israel isn't Iran's nuclear program or Syria's chemical weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood; it's how to draft Haredim, widely referred to as Ultra-Orthodox Jews, into the army.

Until recently, the Israeli left was feverishly complaining about the surplus of Religious Nationalist Jews in the army and the threat of religious fanaticism. Now it's back to complaining that there aren't enough Ultra-Orthodox religious fanatics in the army, after spending last year complaining that the ones in the army were too fanatical and the ones on buses were even worse.

Religious Nationalists in the army are a problem, because many of them are patriots and not too enthusiastic about giving up land to terrorists. The Ultra-Orthodox don't care about the country or how much land it has, which makes them ideal recruits from the left's point of view. Unfortunately, they don't actually want to join the army.

The left's ideal recruit doesn't care about the country and mechanically follows orders to ethnically cleanse Jewish towns and villages. But, unfortunately, that ideal recruit would rather be playing guitar in Tel Aviv or studying the Talmud in Jerusalem than patrolling the frontier and fighting terrorists. The leftist sons and daughters of the idle rich want to protest at checkpoints in between parties, not serve at them, and, while Haredim will mechanically follow orders, those orders won't come from the military, its political generals or an activist Supreme Court.

Whither American Jewry?

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
20 November 09

During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai's comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power.

Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack Obama's hostility towards Israel. Far more newsworthy than her criticism of Netanyahu was her public rebuke of Obama this week for his attempt to strong-arm Israel into barring Jewish construction in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood.

On Wednesday Livni said, "Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus... and it is important to understand this for all discussions of borders in any future agreement."

Indeed. There is an Israeli consensus. The Israeli consensus regarding Jerusalem is based among other things on the understanding that no nation can give up its capital city and survive.

Livni wants to be prime minister one day. For that to happen, Israel must survive until she wins an election. And Israel will not long survive if it surrenders its right to its capital.

One might have thought that American Jews could be counted on to stand by Israel on this issue. But then, one would be wrong.

FOR THE past six years, Republican Senator Sam Brownback has repeatedly submitted a bill to the US Senate that, if passed into law, would revoke the presidential waiver that has allowed successive presidents to refuse to implement the 1995 law requiring the State Department to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. This year Brownback co-sponsored his bill with Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman. As luck would have it, the Brownback-Lieberman bill was submitted two weeks before Obama launched his latest campaign against Jewish building in Jerusalem.
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