A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Obama given Zionist history lesson at White House

Posted: 21 May 2011

 
Aluf Benn in Haaretz argues that the Israeli Prime Minister wants to frame himself as a saviour of the Jewish people but in fact he only wants to defend occupying the Palestinians forever:

Benjamin Netanyahu’s whole career as a diplomat and politician prepared him for that moment: the moment he, as the Jewish people’s senior lobbyist, stands before the leader of the world and demands him to stop the approaching holocaust.
This is what happened at the meeting with Barack Obama on Friday. The prime minister came to the White House to lecture the U.S. president on 4,000 years of Jewish history, on persecution, expulsions, pogroms and the murder of millions, and to warn him against a peace based on illusions that could lead to another catastrophe. “History will not give the Jewish people another chance,” said Netanyahu, probably imagining himself as a modern-day Moses or Herzl.
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Obama wants to establish an independent Palestine, in recognized borders and with territorial contiguity. He doesn’t strive to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict or achieve an overall Middle East peace. He buried the Arab peace initiative, which he mentioned in his Cairo speech two years ago but ignored completely on Thursday. By doing so, he took away one of the Israeli left’s most important banners.
The disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu isn’t a personal quarrel. They clearly can’t stand each other, but this is the smaller problem. What matters isn’t the body language, but the values. Obama is a revolutionary who wants to give power to the masses. Netanyahu is a conservative, sticking to the status quo and fearing change.
To Netanyahu, Israel has a right to rule the territories and settle there as much as it likes, and at most it could throw some bones to the Palestinians to satisfy their supporters in the West, who, like Obama, simply don’t understand what it’s all about and blindly support a bunch of inciters and murderers.
To Obama, the Israeli occupation is an ongoing wrong that should be stopped. He’s not ready for a situation in which the settlers in Psagot enjoy every right possible, while their Palestinian neighbors in Ramallah wait at a checkpoint, lacking self-determination. This is what he is fighting for.

John Mearsheimer on why Obama failed to address Palestinian rights

Posted: 21 May 2011

He’s right:

 
Barack Obama gave a major speech on the Middle East on Thursday, May 19, and it is clear from the subsequent commentary that he impressed few people. The main reason for this is that he did not say much new or indicate that there would be any serious changes in US policy in the region. It was essentially more of the same with some tweaking here and there. Nevertheless, he did manage to anger some people. For example, Israel’s hard-line supporters were outraged that he said: “Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” For them, the 1967 borders are “Auschwitz borders” and thus can never serve as a basis for negotiations.
Many Palestinians, on the other hand, did not like Obama’s assertion that it made little sense for them to go to the UN General Assembly this September and win recognition for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. Surely they also noticed that shortly after saying “every state has the right to self-defence, and Israel must be able to defend itself,” the president said that the Palestinians would have to be content with “a sovereign non-militarised state,” which means that they would not be able to defend themselves against Israel – or any other state for that matter. Hypocrisy appears to be wired into the DNA of US foreign policy makers.
Obama’s failure to impress and move US Middle East policy in new directions raises the intriguing question: Did he blow an opportunity to give a truly important speech at what appears to be a plastic moment in history? I think not. The sad fact is that Obama has remarkably little manoeuvre room on the foreign policy front. The most important item on his agenda is settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there he knows what has to be done: Push both sides toward a two-state solution, which is the best outcome for all the parties, including the United States. Indeed, he has been trying to do just that since he took office in January 2009. But the remarkably powerful Israel lobby makes it virtually impossible for him to put meaningful pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is committed to creating a Greater Israel in which the Palestinians are restricted to a handful of disconnected and impoverished enclaves. And Obama is certainly not going to buck the lobby – with the 2012 presidential election looming larger every day.

Netanyahu in denial about his country’s occupying future

Posted: 21 May 2011

 
But what kind of pressure will the US really impose on Israel apart from a few stern words? The Arab world is moving, evolving into something far more inclusive and democratic and yet Israel is going in the opposite direction. The Daily Beast:

Something tells me that this time, the pressure will mount more on Bibi than Barack. His behavior these last 48 hours has verged on, if not been, petulant. A foreign leader (no less one of a state whose existence depends on the United States) isn’t supposed to talk like that to a president. Add to the bargain: Obama’s a stronger president now on foreign affairs than he was in 2009, partly because of the bin Laden coup and partly because the speech was generally well received across the American political spectrum. The criticisms of Obama on the borders statement have been entirely partisan, led byRepublican presidential candidates. That has had the effect of cheapening the criticism of Obama and making it more dismissible: Do Americans, and Israelis and Palestinians, really care what Tim Pawlenty thinks about the situation? The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, never shy about criticizing the administration on these matters, came out Friday toThe Washington Post’s Greg Sargent and judged the speech a defense of Israel: “The speech indicated to me that this administration has come a long way in better understanding and appreciating the difficulties facing both parties, but especially Israel in trying to make peace with the Palestinians.” This may be a sign that the usual cordon won’t hold around Bibi this time. Oh, he’ll receive a thunderous welcome from Congress Tuesday, mostly from Republicans who want to embarrass Obama by backing the prime minister. But the applause will only mask temporarily what everyone knows—that he is in total denial about the future.
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Israel, of course, has legitimate security concerns, especially in light of the recent Fatah-Hamas entente. And there’s nothing, really, to prevent Netanyahu from running out the clock if that’s what he wants to do. But things have changed. Two years ago, politically speaking, time was on his side. Now it’s against him. Having thrown this tantrum, it seems unlikely that he can come back in two weeks, or two months, or a year, and say gee, the ’67 borders with swaps is actually a good idea after all. It seems like the peace process will have to wait for a new prime minister. And he may have hastened that day, too.

America and Israel on real collision course? Hardly

Posted: 21 May 2011

As if:

 
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent most of the afternoon in discussions on Friday, after which Netanyahu told his staff that he felt better about the U.S.-Israeli relationship than when he went in.
“Look, I went into the meeting with concerns and I came out of the meeting encouraged,” Netanyahu said after emerging from the marathon session at the White House, according to one Israeli official who was part of Netanyahu’s briefing.
The meeting went on so long that the working lunch that Obama and Netanyahu had scheduled with their respective staffs was cancelled; the two leaders had food brought in, and the other officials and staffers went to eat on their own. The U.S. officials present included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, NSC Senior Director Dennis Ross, incoming Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, and the State Department’s Acting Middle East Envoy David Hale.
But there was some disagreement between the two leaders. In Obama and Netanyahu’s public remarks following the meeting, the Israeli prime minister declared that Israel “cannot go back to the 1967 lines — because these lines are indefensible.” The Israeli official insisted that Netanyahu was not lecturing Obama in his statement, but simply felt it necessary to publicly state clear Israeli positions on major issues.
“This is not a personal issue,” the Israeli official said. “[H]e wanted to go on record in public and state what Israel’s red lines are, what is imperative for Israel’s security needs.”
Those red lines include that Israel cannot accept a return to negotiations based on the 1967 lines, as Obama said was U.S. policy on Thursday; Israel cannot accept the return of Palestinian refugees; and Israel cannot negotiate with any government that includes the participation of Hamas.
Netanyahu called Clinton on Thursday morning, prior to Obama’s address on U.S. policy toward the Middle East, to try to convince her to take the contentious lines out of his speech. The official described it as a “tough conversation.”
But there was also a lot of agreement inside the Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The two leaders talked about Syria, Iran, and Israel’s defense needs. Obama tried to explain to why he decided to make his policy announcement about the 1967 borders on Thursday, and he clarified the U.S. position on Hamas and the Palestinian right of return, where there is largely bilateral agreement.
On a conference call with Jewish leaders on Thursday, a recording of which was provided to The Cable, National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes also tried to clarify Obama’s remarks.
“The president reiterated our support for core principles and he also stated the U.S. position on issues of territory and security that can be the foundation for future negotiations, specifically a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines with swaps,” he said. “It can provide a basis for negotiations as the parties address security and territory as well as the very emotional issues of Jerusalem and refugees.”

Of course Arabs see that Obama shows too much love for Israel

Posted: 21 May 2011