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| Israel's Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter |
The Trump administration has been much friendlier to the government in Jerusalem than its predecessor, supporting the Israeli war effort in Gaza with no limitations on arms shipments. Yet, the broader political atmosphere is more hostile to Israel than it has been in decades.
The turn away from Israel was reflected in a recent Senate vote in which a majority of Democrats supported blocking some arms sales to Israel, as well as in the growth of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, the rise of influential media figures who peddle antisemitism, and public opinion about Israel in decline.
There is no question that the “isolationist wing” of the
Republican Party—whose most vocal critic in Congress is Marjorie Taylor
Greene—is an old-line antisemite who hates the Jewish people. She would never
admit that publicly, but her comments about Israel speak volumes.
When a Conservative Republican starts sounding like a
progressive Democrat on issues pertaining to Israel, there can be no other
conclusion. One of Taylor Greene’s recently stated policy positions is to
reduce U.S. foreign aid to Israel, claiming that as a nuclear power Israel
doesn’t need our weapons. She suggested that the money Congress allocates to
Israel should instead go to Americans who don’t have jobs or don’t have health
care.
But as Leiter so clearly retorted, the money allocated to
Israel is all spent in the U.S. on weapons manufactured by American workers who
thereby have good health benefits. Reducing that aid to Israel would mean fewer
American jobs and fewer people with health coverage. So it isn’t only the left.
As Leiter further noted:
In addition to “the woke left, which has distanced itself from Israel, because we’re perceived as … the white men that have dominated and written history,” Leiter lamented the “conspiratorial, isolationist” right.
“Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens’ orbit is not America First, it’s Israel and Jews last,” he said. “America First is fine. We don’t have an issue with that. We put Israel first, America puts America first … I think it’s obvious and elemental. With the isolationist and conspiratorial right, Israel is always wrong and the Jews are always behind everything that’s wrong.”
One might recall that the last line is exactly the way
Hitler felt about the Jews. It is fair to say that the views of Taylor Greene,
Carlson, and Owens are not that far from those of Adolf Hitler. He would surely
have welcomed them into his club.
Thankfully, Leiter said he has not found those anti-Israel
views in the halls of the White House, State Department, or Pentagon. That is
very reassuring.
What is not reassuring is the fact that the wide support
Israel had enjoyed from Democrats in Congress before October 7th was
not very deep. The minute they found a way to rely on the old canard about Jews
being behind everything that’s wrong, they latched onto it faster than a
toddler running to the ice cream truck. Without bothering to give Israel’s
version of the truth any credence at all. Not so most Republicans (and a few
standout Democrats) who continue their broad and deep support of Israel.
But the biggest issue facing Israel now is the war in Gaza.
Many questions abound: Did Israel accomplish anything in its nearly two years of
war considering what it has lost in world support because of it? And what were those
accomplishments, if any? Should the war continue? To what end? Is the end
envisioned by the prime minister - the complete eradication of Hamas - even
possible? Is the price of additional world condemnation and further reduction
of support in Congress worth it even if it is? And finally, is the U.S.
relationship with Israel really worth all that much to the U.S. in the first place?
Leiter does a magnificent job answering those questions.
First, lessening the U.S. relationship with Israel would be a devastating blow
to U.S. intelligence:
(Leiter) quoted Gen. George Keegan, who once told journalist Wolf Blitzer that the value of Israeli intelligence is worth five CIAs.
“You know how much that would cost [to replace]? The level of cooperation we have at this point between our intelligence communities is very, very, very deep and wide. We provide a tremendous service to the United States’ interests in the Middle East,” he said.
What about continuing an increasingly unpopular war? Here is
what he said about that:
“There’s no public in the world that wants to end the war more than we [Israelis] do. No one has suffered as much as we do. Since the day Israel was founded, we haven’t experienced one day of peace. Not a day. We want to end this war and we can’t do it unless we have defeated this enemy. … The ultimate goal is going to be a complete demilitarization of Gaza.”
What about accusations against Israel of deliberately
killing Palestinians for purposes of genocide? That one is the most
outrageously antisemitic accusation of all, for the many reasons I have spelled
out in the past. But Leiter points out the following as well:
Israel has facilitated the exit of 40,000 people from Gaza who had visas to receive medical care in other countries, and they left through Israel—not Egypt, which would have charged them tens of thousands of dollars to transit through their country.
“Why wouldn’t Egypt just open the border and let people go through?” he asked.
Good question. If facilitating the exit of 40,000
Palestinians needing medical care is genocide, the world could use a lot more ‘genocidal’
countries like that.
Has the war accomplished anything substantial so far? You’d
have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to recognize that it has. Israel’s war
with Hamas has precipitated an unprecedented level of change in the region that
no one would have ever predicted. Says Leiter:
“We’ve seen all of the (Iranian) proxies degraded. We’re about to completely destroy Hamas. Hezbollah is dramatically degraded to the point where the Lebanese government is actually moving towards disarming them. We have the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Nobody could have imagined that would have happened. And the Houthis are being degraded … There’s a new Middle East out there,” he added.
And finally, there is the issue of a Palestinian state. Leaders of major European countries have declared their intention to recognize such a state at the annual meeting in the UN next month. Even though it doesn’t exist in any shape, manner, or form. Here is what Leiter had to say about that:
(Very) few Israelis still support the proposition.
“Even the left-of-center realize that the bandwidth for another state west of the Jordan River is untenable and unacceptable. Since Oct. 7, that bandwidth has narrowed further, and it’s about a hair’s breadth now… Everybody’s got to get used to that and stop talking about this two-state solution,”
There are other more realistic ways to give Palestinians the
peace and control of their lives they want as an independent
people, which Leiter outlines.
As Leiter argues, European leaders’ recognition of
Palestinian statehood is more about their concern for getting the votes of
their growing Muslim populations. He adds that they couldn’t care less about
Palestinians. Because if they did, they’d issue visas. France, for example,
could issue 150,000 visas and give Gaza refugees a new lease on life. But
that’s the last thing they want to do. And Israel is paying the price.
Leiter further argues that recognizing a Palestinian state is “prolonging the war … in essence declaring Oct. 7 Palestine Independence Day. What they are really doing is rewarding Hamas for slaughter and massacre.
Says Leiter:
“It’s an outrage. It’s immoral. And we have to stay the course. We are ultimately going to be vindicated,”
I think he has a point.
