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Jewish World Review March 3, 2008 / 26 Adar I 5768 Obama's Spurned Supporters By Jonathan Tobin
Debate over candidate shows that being mainstream means being pro-Israel
Rather than allow the debate be defined by urban legends spread via
e-mail about his Muslim ties or the identity of his foreign-policy
advisers, Obama was wise to get people to stop talking about Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Robert Malley, and to start parsing his own words.
Obama's question-and-answer session with members of the Jewish
community in Cleveland was fascinating and remarkably candid. It also
should go a long ways toward reassuring voters that an Obama
administration would not rupture the U.S.-Israel alliance.
He told them that he supports Israel's existence unconditionally and
views its security as non-negotiable. He wants to eliminate the threat
to Israel from the radical regime in Iran which has vowed to destroy
it. Though he favors diplomacy to back off Tehran, he says that he
won't negotiate with Hamas so long as it refuses to recognize Israel's
right to exist. He also says all the people that he listens to on
Middle East policy are stalwart friends of Israel.
As for the fact that the pastor of his church has lauded Louis
Farrakhan, Obama says he disagrees with him and rejects any expression
of anti-Semitism.
CARD-CARRYING LOBBYIST
Saying all this earned Obama his pro-Israel merit badge. Yet that
doesn't mean we shouldn't ask him to clarify his positions in the
coming months.
In his Cleveland statement, he made the mistake of saying that he
favors a Palestinian state that will be "contiguous."
Supporting such a state is not controversial anymore. It's the
Palestinians and the Arabs who don't appear to not want one, preferring
to hold on to their hopes of destroying Israel. But even if the
Palestinians do accept it one day — given the realities of the map —
making it "contiguous" is impossible.
Obama also said that being "pro-Israel" doesn't mean being "pro-Likud,"
and that being for peace doesn't mean that someone's against Israel.
He's right about that. But he's also drawing on the old paradigm of
American Jews being split along pro-Labor and pro-Likud lines in their
affection for Israel. That may have once been true, but it's an
outdated way of looking at things.
In the wake of the collapse of the Oslo process, most Israelis and
American Jews realize that such a division is meaningless. Both the
left and the right in Israel have failed — and almost everyone knows
it. Israelis want peace and are willing to make sacrifices for it, yet
they no longer blindly trust in the peaceful intentions of their
antagonists.
Obama needs to drop this line, especially since, if he's elected
president, the odds are that he may have to work with a Likud prime
minister of Israel named Benjamin Netanyahu some time during his term
of office.
That said, like anyone who makes such unequivocal statements, Obama
must now be considered a card-carrying member of the pro-Israel "lobby"
conspiracy, as defined by authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
All of which has to be highly disappointing to a number of people who
would otherwise be the senator's natural allies.
Obama's rhetoric of inclusion and natural charisma has created a
groundswell of support from a wide spectrum of opinion, including some
people who are chagrined at his proclaimed fealty to a pro-Israel
platform.
One such supporter is Tikkun magazine editor Michael Lerner, a pillar
of the hard left, who is deeply critical of both Israeli measures of
self-defense against Palestinian terror and American supporters of
Israel. He sees Obama as a kindred spirit. But he wrote last month to
lament the fact that Obama had apparently sold his soul to AIPAC.
According to Lerner, "Obama's problem is that his spiritual progressive
worldview is in conflict with the demands of the older generation of
Jews who control the Jewish institutions and define what it is to be
pro-Jewish, while his base consists of many young Jews who support him
precisely because he is willing to publicly stand for the values that
they hold."
More disappointed was Palestinian-American extremist Ali Abunimah, who
said to Public Broadcasting's "Democracy Now" program that when Obama
was his state senator in Illinois he was an opponent of Israel, but now
laments "how far he has moved to try to appease AIPAC and pro-Israel
movements."
This point was underlined by gadfly and perennial
presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who fulminated on "Meet the Press"
that Obama used to be "pro-Palestinian," but now backs the
"destruction" of Gaza.
Abunimah and Nader have given up on Obama, but Lerner is holding on to
some hope that he will revert to his "spiritual progressive" identity.
The odds of that happening are pretty slim since, no matter what his
foreign-policy positions might have been when he was in the Illinois
State Senate, Obama knows the vast majority of Americans whose votes he
needs to win in November when he hopes to face off against Republican
Sen. John McCain will not support a man who repudiates the bond between
Israel and the United States.
The moral of the story is that the citizens of the people's republic of
Berkeley, Calif., like Lerner, as well as the radical anti-Israel/Jimmy
Carter wing of the Democratic Party, have irrevocably lost Barack Obama
(if indeed, they ever had him) because a person who does not embrace
Israel cannot represent himself as part of the political mainstream.
CONSENSUS, NOT A CABAL
But what it demonstrates is that, far from being a cabal, the
pro-Israel position cuts across most demographic and political lines to
form what is truly a bipartisan consensus. Defying it requires not an
act of courage, but of political suicide.
Given all this, does this mean that we should cease, as some partisans
urge, probing candidates to spell out their positions on Israel and the
Middle East?
The answer here is no.
Though some fear that even to debate the putative superiority of one
candidate over another on Israel is unhelpful, the process by which the
would-be presidents are forced to spell out their positions is
instructive.
Though many of Obama's supporters felt questions raised about him on
Israel were unfair, the end result helped anchor him even more closely
to the pro-Israel consensus.
The moment the Jewish community ever stops trying to hold candidates
accountable in this way is the moment they can no longer count on them.
That's a lesson that Obamaites, as well as backers of John McCain,
should never forget.
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JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
Let him know what you think by clicking here.
© 2007, Jonathan Tobin
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