Soccer Dad

Gasp, secretary clinton might a hawk pro-israel

The Washington Post is all atwitter because the Arab world - whose world view is marked by seriousness and rationality that Hillary is a "hawk!":

There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the woman to whom he appears likely to give the job sometime after Thanksgiving.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Clinton said the United States could "obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel. She said the United States should not negotiate with Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, unless it renounced terrorism. "The United States stands with Israel, now and forever," Clinton told AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, at its conference in June.

Yet Clinton is also the former first lady who famously broke with her husband's administration in 1998 and said Palestinians should have a state of their own. Ten years later, the comment seems unexceptional, but at the time it prompted the White House to make clear she was speaking only for herself.

Those are the contradictions of Senator Clinton. My suspicion is that she's changed, if, for no other reason, she found being pro-Israel was helpful to her politically. That's still something. It's one thing to say and vote all the right things. It's another to introduce someone like Itamar Marcus to the Senate. Her view of Hamas shouldn't be viewed as pro-Israel, but as the rational response to a terrorist organization.

I think Shmuel Rosner is on to something about the reticence the Arab world is starting to show towards the incoming administration.

However, it is also a sign that the post-election period is, indeed, also a period of reeducation. As shown here before the election, the "world" wanted Obama to win the election. This enthusiasm about Obama initially included the Arab world. However, the closer we got to Election Day, the warier the Arab world became. Part of it was an automatic reaction to pro-Israel statements Obama was making, but the other part was more rational. Suddenly, Arabs realized that Obama, all differences aside, would be an American president-with all the baggage such job carries with it.

The United States, as a country, is pro-Israel and the President and his policies will likely reflect that to some degree. Certainly, whatever hesitations I have about President-elect Obama and his policies towards Israel, they still will be found wanting by the Arab world.

Still there's another side that I find less than encouraging as Rosner notes:

And if Israelis get cocky about Clinton's friendliness, they'll learn their lesson, too: his name is Jim Jones).

Even now Gen. Jones is pushing to pressure Israel to make more concessions whether or not the Palestinian Authority shows that it is capable of governing and acting in good faith.

Crossposted on Yourish.