Finding a common line on Israel

As a rule, Israel blogging isn’t really on my beat, but Barack Obama spoke with about 100 members of Cleveland’s Jewish Community yesterday morning, and offered an interesting perspective on U.S.-Israeli affairs.

“I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress. “And frankly some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward. And that I think is something we have to have an honest dialogue about.”

In context, I think Obama was responding to concerns about Zbigniew Brzezinski supporting his campaign, but the senator explained, “There’s never been any of my advisors who questioned the need for us to provide Israel with security, with military aid, with economic aid. That there has to be a two state solution, that Israel has to remain a Jewish state.”

Now, what struck me as interesting about Obama’s comments, most specifically his argument that one can be pro-Israel without being “unwaveringly pro-Likud” — a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with — is that his remarks sound like the kind that might be perceived as inherently divisive.

But that may not entirely be the case.



Matt Yglesias, for example, sounded quite pleased.

[T]his is considerably more forward-leaning than I’d heard previously from Obama…. This is music to my ears and, frankly, very much the attitude that’s Israel’s long-term future requires. Still, in some quarters the man may as well have just festooned himself with swastikas.

And, of all people, TNR’s Marty Peretz also sounded pleased.

I have written here and elsewhere that Barack Obama’s views on Israel and the possibilties of peace between it and the Palestinians are both tough-minded and deeply comprehending. I don’t at all think that I’d be disappointed with an Obama presidency, and certainly not with his attitude towards the Jewish State. He is also not massaging Jewish audiences when he observes — correctly — that Israelis are, in general, far more various in their views on the security situation than American Jews or American Jewish organizations. But one of the reasons for that is many of those who are prone to criticize Israel in the U.S. are also deluded in their conviction that Jewish sovereignty itself is the essence of what prevents peace with the Palestinians. So, instead of asserting the justice of Jewish peoplehood, they really want to abandon it, and, with that, the state itself. Well, in Israel, no Jew would countenace giving up sovereignty. In America, there are a lot of self-righteous and cavalier Jews who would give up the sovereignty of other Jews, half the Jews in the world, so that they themselves might feel morally untouched by nationalism. Just like many deluded Jews in pre-war France, England and Germany. In any case, here are Obama’s opinions and sharp insights, as expressed in Cleveland yesterday, on Israel and the Palestinians. They are not mine exactly. But they are enough like mine to let me sleep calmly.

As Jonathan Chait put it, “Maybe [Obama] really can bring America together.”