Soccer Dad

The media's anti-bibi brigades

One aspect of reporting on ties between Israel and the United States is to look for exaggerations in the extent of the rift between the two countries. We will see a lot of this in the coming years as journalists do all they can to fan the flames of discontent with Israel. It won't matter if there are more serious crises going on, there will be journalistic push to magnify the divisions between the two allies.

AFP reports, Israel's Barak visits US in bid to heal rift

Barak's visit comes just two weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held his first meeting with Obama in Washington, revealing deep divisions over ways to move forwards towards Middle East peace.

How does Minister of Defense, Barak's trip so soon after Netanyahu's show "deep division?" I suspect that if Barak hadn't followed up so quickly after Netanyahu's visit, no doubt that also would have been reported as a sign of a "deep division."

The hawkish premier sparked international criticism over his repeated refusal to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, a bedrock principle of international peacemaking efforts over the past two decades.

And if Netanyahu did, or did not, so what? Mahmoud Abbas has refused to acknowledge a few things too.

Consider for a moment that two of Abbas's three no's - his refusal to amend the Arab peace plan and vocal opposition to Israel's Jewish character - can be collapsed into one: an insistence on Palestinians' "right of return" to Israel proper. This is a stipulation that no Israeli government would ever accept, while Obama rejected the "right of return" explicitly as "not an option" during his presidential campaign.

Why Netanyahu's failure to adhere to the peace processors playbook is any more inimical than Abbas's is unclear. I would point out that even by the peace processors reckoning Netanyahu has done more to support the peace process than Abbas.

Helene Cooper of the New York Times - whose idea of an expert is Chas Freeman or Ali Abunimah weighs in today with U.S. Weighs Tactics on Israeli Settlement:

Still, talk of even symbolic actions that would publicly show the United States' ire with Israel, its longtime ally, would be a sharp departure from the previous administration, which limited its distaste with Israel's settlement expansions to carefully worded diplomatic statements that called them "unhelpful."

Mr. Obama is to give a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world from Egypt on Thursday. "There are things that could get the attention of the Israeli public," a senior administration official said, touching on the widespread belief within the administration that any Israeli prime minister risks political peril if the Israeli electorate views him as endangering the country's relationship with the United States.

But, the official added, "Israel is a critical United States ally, and no one in this administration expects that not to continue." He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Understand what's going on here. Any sort of rebuke of Israel, is something that Cooper is rooting for. I believe that her anonymous official who feeds her the quote that she seeks, is misreading Israel's electorate. This isn't a right wing government by any stretch of the imagination. (I don't believe that Netanyahu's government from 1996 - 1999 was far to the right either, but this one is even less so.) My guess is that the Israeli electorate feels that the Obama administration is unfairly pressuring Israel while more serious crises are brewing, that the electorate will support the government. Additionally, the peace process is not new anymore,. Israelis know that the peace process has netted them Hamastan in Gaza, a mostly ineffective and corrupt Fatah government in the cities of Judea and Samaria and a strengthened Hezbollah. Assuming as Abbas apparently does, that the Palestinians need not deal with Netanyahu because his conflict with the Obama administration will lead to his defeat in a future election seems wishful thinking. Yet it seems that that is exactly what Cooper is wishing for.

I'm not going to argue that the Obama-Netanyahu relationship will be as close as the Bush-Sharon relationship. I'm not going to argue that the U.S. Israel relationship will be as strong during President Obama's term in office, because it won't. (Even if Livni were PM, this would be true.) However I'm not convinced that the conflict will be as severe as Netanyahu's many critics in the media want it to be.

Crossposted on Yourish.