by Zack Beauchamp
Jennifer Rubin, who can be reliably counted on to misinform about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has an item defending the standard Republican line on Obama's Israel policy:
The usually decisive Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler finds it impossible, however, to score the validity of some rather commonplace criticisms of President Obama by pro-Israel critics of the president. (Mitt Romney, for example: “He’s treating Israel the same way so many European countries have: with suspicion, distrust and an assumption that Israel is at fault.”)
Perhaps if we recalled that this president “condemned” settlement-building in Jerusalem, refused to confirm the 2004 Bush-Sharon letters and told American Jews to go “self-reflect” on their attitudes toward the Jewish state, it might be easier simply to come out and say: They’ve got a point.
Leaving aside Romney's somewhat bizarre claim to be able to camp out inside the President's head and report on his psychological state vis-a-vis Israel, this is ridiculous. The Clinton administration didn't play nice with Israel about settlements, even in Jerusalem. What happened in 2004 between Bush and Sharon isn't clear even according to former Bush officials, and regardless, never affected the continuous American policy since 1968 calling for an end to settlements, even under the Bush road map. And Obama was telling American Jews that Israelis needed to engage in self-reflection about the peace process, which, if somewhat patronizing, hardly seems the words of an strident opponent of Israel (is it so horrible to ask Israelis to reevaluate whether their current government's policies are contributing to a two-state solution?). The rest of Rubin's post is along these lines.
But instead of going through the remaining howlers (and they are legion), I'm going to try to engage with Romney's claim that saying Israel is "at fault" is always a bad thing. Us American Jews often react negatively to attempts to blame Israel for its problems with the Palestinians, preferring to point to problems in Palestinian society or Arab hostility as drivers of the conflict. And there's a lot to these sorts of arguments – they are useful correctives to the spew of anti-Israel fanatics who blame the Jewish state for everything that's gone wrong since 1948, and see the occupation as the root cause for everything ranging from the lack of democracy in Arab states to the Iraq War to 9/11. These claims are pernicious and counterproductive to the cause of peace, and it's right to push back against them.
But it's also quite wrong to assume that anyone who says Israel is "at fault" for anything is obviously a foaming-at-the-mouth Israel hater. While Israel is a thriving multi-party democracy that ought to be an example for other Middle East states (though the recent ban on boycotts is a giant step backwards), it also maintains an unnecessary occupation that denies the Palestinians fundamental political rights and had a President who committed multiple rapes while a cabinet member and sexually harrassed more while President. Israel's current foreign minister is a bit of a racist, and its religious right is as or more repellant than ours. And can anyone, defend the settlement policy with a straight face? Israel is in many ways a great country, but Israelis are people. People are flawed, and make mistakes. So what possible reason do we have to believe that Israel, among all the nations, is the only one incapable of ever making a mistake?
And isn't it odd that this needs to be pointed out to a self-described conservative?