by Zack Beauchamp
An excellent piece by Yair Rosenberg over at Tablet debunks a pair of big ones. First, Obama has been significantly less harsh on Israel than…his GOP predecessors:
Reagan was not the only president willing to put daylight between the United States and Israel. His successor, George H.W. Bush, made waves at a 1990 news conference when he said, “My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.” It was a statement that could just as easily have been made by President Obama. But unlike Obama, Bush took this controversial position a step further, conditioning $10 billion of loan guarantees to Israel on a total cessation of settlement building. He later compromised and allowed the loans to go forward, but with deductions commensurate with Israel’s construction in the occupied territories.
Second, Netanyahu is significantly less right-wing Israeli than his Likud predecessors:
Despite pressure and eventually threats from President George H. W. Bush, [Yitzhak] Shamir doggedly continued settlement expansion and insisted that the United States finance such building with loan guarantees. Under Shamir, the Chicago Tribune noted, “The number of housing units under construction in the occupied territories reportedly more than quadrupled to 12,985 last year from 2,880 in 1990.” And for his perceived intransigence on peace initiatives, Shamir famously earned himself the nickname “Mr. No.”
It is hard see how the Netanyahu government could possibly be more extreme than these predecessors, none of which officially acknowledged the need for a Palestinian state, and all of which spurred far greater settlement growth. Netanyahu, by contrast, spearheaded a partial settlement freeze for 10 months, something Begin and Shamir categorically refused to do.
I don't agree with everything Rosenberg writes, but his piece is essential context.
The Dish 