What the president gets wrong about Israelis, Palestinians,
and Iranians, according to a
former Israeli intelligence official
After I
posted an interview with President Obama late last month,
I received any number of interesting responses (and also many non-interesting
responses, and also some profane non-interesting responses), but few were as
comprehensive as that of Yossi Kuperwasser, a former Israeli general and
intelligence expert who served until recently as director general of the
Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Kuperwasser asked me if I would post some of his
critique, and I said yes, happily, though I agree with only 46 percent of it.
I’ll get to my disagreements another time. I just think that his viewpoint,
which is more-or-less a mainstream Israeli viewpoint, deserves airing. Here it
is:
As an Israeli familiar
with U.S.-Israeli relations, I would like to set the record straight on
President Obama’s recent comments in The Atlantic and at the Adas Israel synagogue. First, let me stress
the shared values that anchor the U.S.-Israel relationship, as well as the
gratitude I and every Israeli feel for the president’s unwavering support for
our country. I also want to make clear that I have no issue with the
president’s public criticism of our policies, even if it reveals differences
between our two countries. We’ve gotten used to the criticism, and our
relationship is strong enough to endure it. With that said, though, there are a
few things I need to get off my chest.
During
the recent Israeli elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements regarding
the possibility of a Palestinian state and Arab Israeli voters triggered a
global uproar, leading the prime minister to quickly issue the necessary
clarifications. Nevertheless, the president accused the prime minister of
betraying Israel’s core values, which he attributed to the likes of the
kibbutzim and Moshe Dayan. The president’s statements betray a lack of
understanding of both the past and present. Moshe Dayan and Netanyahu, for one,
were not that different. Both were eager for peace, but at the same time
realistic about the need for security due to the Palestinian refusal to accept
the Jewish state. Dayan opposed a retreat to the 1967 borders, and in his
famous eulogy for Roi Rotberg, he warned against making dangerous concessions.
Obama also referenced Golda Meir, who famously denied the existence of the
Palestinian people.
President
Obama’s anger toward Netanyahu is misplaced, especially given his extraordinary
lack of criticism of Palestinians for far more egregious behavior. The
Palestinians, after all, are the ones who refused to accept the president’s
formula for extending the peace negotiations. It is Mahmoud Abbas and the
Palestinian Authority (PA) who have called for “popular resistance,” which has
led in recent years to stabbings, stonings, and attacks with cars and Molotov
cocktails against Israelis. Since the PA ended the peace negotiations, there
has been a sharp increase in attacks and casualties in Israel. Hamas, for its
part, openly calls for the extermination of Israelis and sacrifices a
generation of children towards that goal.
In
response to these threats, all the president had to say at Adas Israel was that
“the Palestinians are not the easiest of partners.” Rather than recognizing how
fundamentally different Palestinian political culture is, the president offered
slogans about how Palestinian youth are just like any other in the world. This
is a classic example of the mirror-imaging—the projection of his own values
onto another culture—that has plagued most of his foreign policy.
This
excerpt from the president’s speech in Jerusalem in 2013 is
emblematic of his mirror-imaging, and the problems with that perspective:
“…
I met with a group of young Palestinians from the age of 15 to 22. And talking
to them, they weren’t that different from my daughters. They weren’t that
different from your daughters or sons. I honestly believe that if any Israeli
parent sat down with those kids, they’d say, I want these kids to succeed; I
want them to prosper. I want them to have opportunities just like my kids do. …
Four years ago, I stood in Cairo in front of an audience of young
people—politically, religiously, I believe that they must seem a world away.
But the things they want, they’re not so different from what the young people
here want. They want the ability to make their own decisions and to get an
education, get a good job; to worship God in their own way; to get married; to
raise a family. The same is true of those young Palestinians that I met with
this morning. The same is true for young Palestinians who yearn for a better
life in Gaza.”
Yes,
we want a prosperous life for our neighbors, but unlike the president’s
daughters, there are some Palestinian children who are educated to have a
completely different set of priorities. Our core values are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness in this world, but
Hamas proclaims “We love death more than you love life.” Happiness will be
reached in the next world, according to the Hamas ideology.
So
why does Obama pick on Netanyahu and not on Abbas? The most likely reason is
directly related to a conflict in the West between two schools of thought, both
dedicated to defending democratic and Judeo-Christian values: Optimism and
realism. Obama is a remarkable proponent for the optimist approach—he
fundamentally believes in human decency, and therefore in dialogue and
engagement as the best way to overcome conflict. He is also motivated by guilt
over the West’s collective sins, which led, he believes, to the current
impoverishment of Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular. He
believes that humility and concessions can salve the wound, and Islamists can
be convinced to accept a global civil society. “If we’re nice to them, they’ll
be nice to us,” Obama thinks.
Netanyahu,
on the other hand, is a realist. Due in part to Israel’s tumultuous
neighborhood, he has a much more skeptical attitude of Islamists, such as the
Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian President Rouhani’s government. Netanyahu does
not see these groups as potential moderates, willing to play by the
international community’s rules; instead, he acknowledges their radicalism, and
their intent to undermine a world order they consider a humiliating insult to
Islam. The major difference between the Islamists and the extremists, according
to Netanyahu, is one of timing. The Islamists are willing to wait until the
time is ripe to overthrow the existing world order.
Western
realists worry that optimists are actively aiding Islamists in the naïve hope
that they will block out the extremists. The realists believe that a resolute
stance, with the use of military force as an option, is the best way to achieve
agreed-upon Western goals. Obama both prefers the optimist approach and
believes that his hopeful dialogues will achieve the best possible outcome.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, whose nation would feel the most immediate
consequences from Western concessions, does not have the luxury of optimism.
This
helps explain why Obama targets Netanyahu for criticism. The prime minister’s
insistence on the dangers of the optimist approach threatens to expose the
inherent weakness of Obama’s worldview and challenge the president’s assumption
that his policy necessarily leads to the best possible solutions. For Netanyahu
and almost everybody in Israel, as well as pragmatic Arabs, the president’s readiness to assume responsibility for Iran’s
future nuclear weapons, as he told Jeffrey Goldberg, is no comfort. The
realists are not playing a blame game; they are trying to save their lives and
their civilization. To those who face an existential threat, Obama’s
argument sounds appalling.
Let’s
return to the disagreement over the Palestinian issue. Netanyahu has not
altered his basic attitude towards the vision of “two states for two peoples,
with mutual recognition.” The prime minister remains committed to his Bar-Ilan address,
and is interested in directly negotiating with the Palestinians in order to make
this vision a reality.
Yet,
is it reasonable to expect the realization of this vision any time soon? Abbas
rejected Obama’s formula for continued negotiations because it required
recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people; he formed a
unity government with Hamas; and he promoted Palestinian interests unilaterally
in the international arena by joining the International Criminal Court, among
other organizations, thereby breaching the Oslo Agreements.
Does
it make sense for Israel—in the face of an aggressive Iran, the rise of Islamic
terror organizations across the Middle East, and the fragmentation of Arab
states—to deliver strategic areas to the fragile and corrupt PA, just to see
them fall to extremists?
Should
Israel at this moment aid in the creation of a Palestinian state, half of which
is already controlled by extremists who last summer rained down thousands of
rockets on Israel, while its leaders urge their people to reject Israel as the
sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people? Should it aid a movement that
follows these five pillars: 1) There is no such thing as the Jewish people; 2)
The Jews have no history of sovereignty in the land of Israel, so the Jewish
state’s demise is inevitable and justified; 3) The struggle against Israel by all means is legitimate,
and the means should be based simply on cost-benefit analysis; 4) The Jews in
general, and Zionists in particular, are the worst creatures ever created; And
5) because the Palestinians are victims, they should not be held responsible or
accountable for any obstacles they may throw up to peace?
In short, even though
Israel, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, remains committed to the formula of
“two states for two peoples, with mutual recognition,” the implementation of
this idea at this point is irrelevant. The PA’s poor governance and the general
turmoil in the Middle East render any establishment of a Palestinian state
right now unviable. President Obama admitted as much, reluctantly, but
continued to criticize Netanyahu instead of betraying his optimist paradigm.
Netanyahu’s realism would stray too far from the path Obama, and other Western
leaders, have set in front of them. But while Obama and the optimists offer
their critiques, Netanyahu and the realists will be on the ground, living with
the consequences the optimists have wrought.
