Obama & the Mideast

President Obama is beginning his much-anticipated Mideast trip today in Saudi Arabia that includes a heavily promoted address to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt tomorrow. This trip coincides with President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, making news criticizing Israel's settlment policy in the occuppied territories. With respect to the criticism, Israel's settlement policy is both illegal and immoral.

Obama's willingness to criticize Israel for it is certainly a change in rhetoric from standard American practice in recent years. The real test however will come as the Netenyahu government continues to defy the world and build within existing settlements. Will there be any consequences? I doubt it.

At this point there is no organized counterweight to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee ("APAC"). As a Jewish American who cares about Israel, I once again express my regret that an effective counterweight to APAC does not exist. Without one, Israel will continue down a dark and perilious path and eventually reap a catastrophic whirlwind. In the meantime, blood is being shed.

I suspect Obama's Israeli criticism is partly calculated to enhance his credibility prior to engaging the leadership of the Muslim world. Translation: "I'm being honest with Israel and not coddling them. So I'm going to be honest with you too and say, Israel has legitimate security concerns that need to be addressed." That won't be enough.

In fairness to Obama, I don't see how any president can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Netanyahu, even if he wanted too, can't deliver diplomatic breakthroughs without fracturing his fragile coalition or provoking civil war with Israeli settlers. The Palestinian leadership under Abbas is even less capable of coming through with what is known in the world of diplomacy as "deliverables." With Hamas shut out, the Palestinian Authority has no credibility with its own people as it struggles to survive.

Both Israeli and Palestinian societies are dysfunctional. After forty years of a brutal occupation, the Palestinians don't have the institutions or an established civil culture to govern itself as a peaceful neighbor. That won't change unless Palestinian society can have a transition period without the heavy yoke of occupation. The Palestinian young have known nothing but struggle, hardship and violence. They are jaded and easy prey to do the terrorist bidding of demagogues.

Meanwhile, Israeli society has been morally corrupted as an occupier and the extremist settler movement further ties their government’s hands. Even worse, there is no effective political left in Israel serving as an opposition. The onetime proud Labor Party is serving in Netanyahu's coalition and the opposition Kadima Party is not much better than Netanyahu's Likud government. Curiously, the Israeli press is far more critical of the occupation than the American press. Nonetheless, no viable center-left opposition party capable of challenging Israel’s posture towards the Palestinians exists.

It's heartbreaking but the cycle of violence appears unbreakable.

Going Blind In Gaza

I feel obliged to at least comment about Israel's military activity in Gaza. As a Jew, both Israel's existence as well as their national character matter to me. Hence, my outrage at Israel's immoral brutality and anger at their strategic stupidity. Israel never seems to learn that as the Prussian General Clausewitz once said,

"Politics is war by other means."

Invading Lebanon did not enhance their security in 1982. Instead, Israel only succeeded in radicalizing the Lebanese population against them as occupying the country became a strategic liability. Israel was also weakened by their disproportionate response to the kidnapping of their soldiers by Lebanon's Hezbollah in 2006.

With respect to what is happening in Gaza today, Israel is playing into Hamas's hands. The truce was for Hamas to exploit a strategic pause and mobilize against Israeli ground forces. They want this fight. Just as Hezbollah gained prestige in 2006, Hamas will also be strengthened politically as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza intensifies. Meanwhile, Abbas and his Fatah movement will be further weakened while Hamas presents itself as the Palestinians only legitimate government standing up to Israeli aggression. And the rockets being fired against Israel won't stop and will never stop until a peace settlement is reached. A just peace settlement is infinitely more difficult to achieve when much of the civilized world is opposed to your actions.

Hamas of course also merits condemnation as they prefer shedding blood over coexisting with a Jewish state. They would rather provoke a humanitarian crisis among their own people then acknowledge Israel's right to exist and negotiate a settlement. From Hamas's point of view the deaths of their own people represents acceptable collateral damage that will gain sympathy and enhance their prestige. These people are thugs and Israel took their bait.

As Booman writes at Booman Tribune,

"I doubt that Israel can stop the rocket attacks without further worsening their reputation in the world, which is now about as low as it has ever been. Israel outsmarted itself with its settler policy and they're never going to have security again, ever, until they concede that the settlers are the gravest danger to their Nation's security and do something about it.

You'd think a country that was defending itself from rocket attacks would get some leeway. You'd be wrong."

I agree with Booman's observation and would only add that the Israeli government is afraid taking on their settlers will result in a civil war. These fundamentalist nut jobs believe they answer to a higher authority then any civilian law and are more than willing to wage terrorism against their own government in opposition. The only hope Israel has is for their body politic to express itself and give new leadership a mandate to not back down against the settlers.

But Israel's body politic will never elect the right caliber of leadership until the the United States is perceived as an "honest broker." The nascent Obama Administration won't have the political cover to become an honest broker as long as The American Israel Public Affairs Committee ('AIPAC") is perceived as the most representative voice in Washington of American Jewish opinion. Israel's worst friend in America is AIPAC because they're encouraging behavior that is both immoral as well as self-destructive.

American Jewish opinion however is far from monolithic. And Jewish Americans like me need to mobilize and present a counterweight to voices such as AIPAC's. Israel's security as well America's are at stake as well as the lives of Israelis and Palestinians on both sides.

American liberal Jews like me often feel beleaguered. Many on the left truly are Anti-Semitic and regard the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a pretext to justify their hatred of Jewish people. I've seen it on the blogosphere where even liberal Jews opposed to the occupation are vilified and accused of being right wing apologists. To them the Palestinians bear no responsibility and any Israeli deaths are morally acceptable. Meanwhile, we have family and friends that believe Israel can do no wrong and we're selling them out. Yet express ourselves we must or the cycle will never end.

As Mahatma Gandhi once said,

"An eye for an eye, and soon the world is blind."

Sixty years after Israel was founded both sides of the conflict continue to go blind.

To Die In Jerusalem

When I was seven years old my brother and I were fighting in the back seat of my grandmother’s car. This particular skirmish had a back-story of recriminations and mutual dirty deeds. We were both angry. Each of us felt justified. As the fight escalated everyone in the car and others on the highway were endangered. So my grandmother turned sharply and simply said, “Stop it!” We both protested about who started what and when. My grandmother wasn’t having any of it and forcefully declared, “I don’t’ care who started it. It stops now.” We stopped. Grandma had spoken.

I recalled that incident from my childhood while watching a “screener” for the documentary, To Die in Jerusalem which premiers on HBO this Thursday at 9:00 P.M. EST.

To Die in Jerusalem recounts the tragic story about two teenaged girls – one a 17-year-old Israeli student named Rachel Levy, the other an 18-year-old Palestinian student/suicide bomber named Ayat al-Akhras – brutally entwined by fate in March 2002. They died together in a Jerusalem market when Ayat chose the path of martyrdom. Both girls made the cover of Newsweek as a result.

This documentary focuses on Rachel’s mother, Abigail Levy, efforts to coordinate a one-on-one meeting with her counterpart, Um Samir. Both mothers are in pain and victims of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On camera, Um Samir claims she would have stopped her daughter “by force” if she had known what Ayat planned to do. At the same time she blames the state of Israel for an occupation that has compelled Palestinians to resist by any means necessary. Naturally, Abigail Levy believes the act to be senseless murder making peace even more unattainable.

The mothers finally speak via satellite hookup. In fleeting moments there seems to be the potential for common ground. Um Samir proclaims they are both victims and observes that presidents and prime ministers who make decisions of war and peace were far above mothers like them. But as the conversation continued it was clear they were both culturally and ideologically locked and incapable of processing the other’s point of view.

Abigail Levy simply couldn’t accept that Israel’s occupation bore any responsibility for nurturing an environment of hate among the Palestinians. Um Samir seemed incapable of accepting that terrorism was only digging the Palestinians into a deeper hole of despair and therefore her daughter as well as other suicide bombers had sacrificed their lives for nothing.

The documentary ends with both giving up on trying to persuade the other because neither is truly listening to the other. When it ended my heart felt as if it were impaled on a dull blade. Um Samir had declared that presidents and prime ministers were above mothers like them. In reality the leadership of both societies largely reflect both of these mothers. Consequently, it’s doubtful we’ll see peace between both peoples in my lifetime.