A recent annual Herzliya conference on the various challenges facing Israel included a session on U.S.-Israeli relations, as it does every year. One of the topics, in a free translation, was “Is Israel Possible Without the U.S.?”
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with political realities would unhesitantly answer in the negative, or at least acknowledge that this relationship is extremely important. They might also qualify the questions not only from the Israeli side, but also from the United States, which is expected to increase in the wake of the recent presidential debates and the political turmoil that followed. The United States also has important strategic and other interests in Israel, but to keep things in balance, the vectors are not equal.
This does not mean that relations between the two countries will always be harmonious. Differences have always been and will always arise due to the simple fact that countries have their own interests, which do not always coincide with those of their closest allies. The rules of Israeli diplomacy established by the late Moshe Dayan still apply: risk confrontation only on issues that are absolutely essential.
The unresolved dispute over the supply of vital arms and ammunition to Israel, which is facing a war on multiple fronts, regardless of merit, is a case in point. If the US administration was looking for an excuse to cancel a planned strategic meeting with Israel on Iran, the above dispute would have been a good one to exploit.
However, it would be shortsighted for Israel to ignore the current political, social, and cultural changes taking place in the United States that are already affecting, and may continue to affect, America’s position in the world and its foreign relations, including with Israel.
In this regard, several questions arise: Has America abandoned its role as the world’s leading superpower and leader of the free world? Have American values, which have played a key role in international relations, especially with Israel, become hollow? What about the American justice system, which both the left and the right denounce as biased and corrupt? How do demographic changes in American society affect Israel and American Jews? And what about the growing anti-Semitism on both the right and the left? While right-wing anti-Semitism is not new, is often violent, and haphazard, far-left anti-Semitism is well organized, such as protests on college campuses, using official political institutions, including the U.S. Congress, and exploiting the freedoms granted by the U.S. Constitution for their own ends.
As always, the two extremes eventually collide, and by some assessments the anti-Israel, and broadly anti-Semitic, contingent is shrinking, but its true value will only be tested in November.
Finally, what will the shape and character of America be, for better or worse, four months from now after the November election? Whatever the outcome, the rifts and divisions in American society and politics are likely to only deepen.
There are isolationist tendencies in both major parties and among American voters in general, with growing concerns on the Republican side about aid to Ukraine and foreign aid in general, and among Democratic “progressives” putting security-related aid to Israel at the top of their blacklist, fueling opposition to President Biden’s policies regarding Israel in general and the Gaza war in particular.
Differing opinions in the United States
This is not just a theoretical issue: some reports suggest that there have been actual instances in which senior officials in the State Department and other agencies have covertly or overtly sabotaged the administration’s Middle East policies because they were contrary to fundamental American interests, as Ben Rhodes, a former senior Obama administration official who now serves as the oracle of U.S. foreign policy, wrote a detailed policy paper on the subject in Foreign Affairs magazine this month.
While Rhodes is not a close aide to Biden, his views could influence Democrats’ views in the future, whether they stay in power, leave the White House over the next four years or lose control of both houses of Congress.
In his essay, Rose calls for establishing a foreign policy towards the world “as it is,” i.e., not as “falsely imagined.” Previously, some of his views on what he considers to be the need for political realism would have been called “appeasement.” In his opinion, America must accept the fact that the world no longer recognizes its uniqueness and superiority, and therefore abandon “its inexplicable political phenomena.” This clearly refers to the harmful political influences on foreign policy in his view.
While Rose recognizes that Russia and China are trying to reshape global norms in their own image, he calls for America to abandon traditional positions and instead “build bridges to the future, not the past,” without mentioning specifics, and highlights America’s continuing failure to mobilize large swaths of the planet’s population, particularly the South. Rose, who was part of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal negotiating team, barely touches on the growing Iranian threat and speaks only in general terms about the issue.
Predictably, the bulk of Rose’s criticism (like that of others who, because they are Jewish, criticize not only Israeli but also pro-Israel US policies) is directed at Israel and the current war. “To much of the world, the lives of Palestinian children seem less important to Washington than the lives of Israelis,” he writes. “Unconditional military aid to Israel while ignoring Palestinian death tolls, opposition to Security Council resolutions calling for a cessation of hostilities, and US criticism of Israeli war crimes investigations make the US appear cynical and one-sided.”
As is usual in these circles and among the Israeli left, Rose expresses the hope that “Gaza will shock Washington away from the ‘muscle memory’ that has guided much of its actions.” Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rose repeats the usual mantra of “developing new Palestinian leadership and working to recognize a Palestinian state.”
While not going so far as to completely oppose military aid to Israel as Senators Sanders, Warren and others on the Israeli left do, Biden has not addressed the real causes of the conflict: “Peace will come when the Arab nations want it too,” said the late Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, and Biden himself added last year that “Peace will come when Israel’s neighbors recognize the right of the Jewish state.” Both were right.
A former member of parliament, the author served as ambassador to the United States from 1990 to 1993 and from 1998 to 2000.
