Jan Schakowsky, a member of the US House of Representatives from Illinois, has announced that she will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday.
What makes this significant is that Schakowsky has been one of Israel’s strongest supporters on Capitol Hill since her election to Congress in 1998.
She wrote:
As a Jew, support for Israel is in my DNA. Throughout my nine terms in the U.S. House, I have advocated that Congress and the Administration stand with Israel in a bi-partisan way to protect Israel’s security and very right to exist. I strongly agree with both the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of the United States that Iran can never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon.
That is why I feel particularly anguished that the ill-advised invitation from Republican House Speaker John Boehner has managed to threaten, in my view, both the security of Israel and the historic bi-partisan support in the Congress.
…This is not the first time that the Republicans have tried to divide the Democrats and paint themselves as the only true supporters of Israel. The reality is that, when it comes to tangible deliverables, the Obama Administration has been unfailing in its cooperation with Israel — more so than most, if not all, Administrations over the last 40 years.
As columnist Doug Bloomfield notes:
“· Obama has never embargoed arms to Israel as Reagan did to punish it for bombing Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor. Reagan even joined with Iraqi diplomats in writing and passing a UN resolution condemning the Israeli attack.
· Obama never sought to delay or cut aid to Israel approved by Congress as both the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations did.
· President Ford ordered a ‘reassessment’ of relations with Israel in 1975 because of what the administration called Israeli ‘intransigence’ in negotiations with Egypt and Syria.”
As an eight year member of the House Intelligence Committee, I know for a fact that our security and intelligence agencies have never worked more closely, making it all the harder to swallow the Prime Minister coming to lobby our Congress, in the most public and heretofore prestigious settings, to reject U.S. efforts to peacefully eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons in Iran. As Meir Dagan, former head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, said: “Netanyahu’s position will not change the West’s position on the Iranian issue, but his actions bring our relationship with the Americans to an extreme point and this might extract an unbearable price from us in the future.” In talking to my Democratic colleagues, I believe this is not an idle concern.
In fact a look at the record of President Reagan (now virtually canonized by Republican opponents of President Obama) in regard to Israel and American Jews is most instructive.
Chemi Shalev made the unexceptionable point that if Obama had treated Israel as Reagan did, the Republican howls for his impeachment would be even louder than they are now.
Remember Israel’s 1981 attack that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor? Here is part of the text of UN Security Council Resolution 487 condemning the attack and adopted with the support of the Reagan administration:
The Security Council,
Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that in accordance with that Treaty Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the Agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date,
Noting furthermore that Israel has not adhered to the non-proliferation Treaty,
Deeply concerned about the danger to international peace and security created by the premeditated Israeli air attack on Iraqi nuclear installations on 7 June 1981, which could at any time explode the situation in the area, with grave consequences for the vital interests of all States,
…..
1. Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct;2. Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof;
3. Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the non-proliferation Treaty;
4. Fully recognizes the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq, and all other States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation;
5. Calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards;
6. Considers that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel;
7. Requests the Secretary-General to keep the Security Council regularly informed of the implementation of this resolution.
Reagan went on to temporarily suspend delivery and embargo the sale of F-16 fighter planes to Israel and to approve the sale of both F-15 fighters and AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia over the strong objections of Israel and its supporters in the US (worth remembering when people talk about the all-powerful “Zionist lobby”). Also worth noting is that when the Senate voted narrowly to approve the AWACS sale, the majority of Democrats voted “no” and the majority of Republicans voted “yes.”
And let’s not forget the utter insensitivity of Reagan’s infamous 1985 visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in Germany, which contained the graves of 49 members of the Waffen-SS (immortalized by the Ramones).
At a press conference on April 18, Reagan made matters worse by appearing to equate dead German soldiers with the victims of the Holocaust. “They were victims,” he said of the soldiers buried at Bitburg, “just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” Reagan’s comments drew angry responses from American Jewish leaders. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, described Reagan’s remarks as a “distortion of history, a perversion of language, and a callous offense to the Jewish community.”
A long-scheduled ceremony in the White House on April 19, awarding, the Congressional Medal of Achievement, provided the charismatic [Elie] Wiesel with an unprecedented opportunity to publicly confront the White House on national television. Despite fierce pressure to mute the confrontation with Reagan, whose strong support of Israel was valued, Wiesel implored him not to go to Bitburg. “That place,” he told the president during a nationally televised White House ceremony, “is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.” Other Jewish leaders similarly called on Reagan to reconsider, as did 53 U.S. senators on April 15, and 101 members of the U.S. House of Representatives on April 19 in bipartisan letters to the president.
Immediately after the public castigation by Elie Wiesel, the White House announced that Bergen-Belsen had been added to the president’s German itinerary. Two days later, Menachem Rosensaft, addressing thousands of Holocaust survivors gathered in Philadelphia, called on survivors, children of survivors, and American war veterans to confront Reagan at the gates of Bergen-Belsen. If the president insisted “on going to Bitburg,” Rosensaft said, “we do not need him and we do not want him in Bergen-Belsen.”
And Obama is the one who hates Israel and disrespects Jews?
It’s worth noting that Michael Oren, Netanyahu’s former ambassador to Washington, called on him to cancel the the speech to Congress. It’s telling that Oren is now a candidate for Knesset for a party other than Netanyahu’s Likud and has spoken critically of Netanyahu’s approach to Israeli-US relations.
“I understand how critical our relationship with the United States is” said Oren. “It has enormous, almost existential, significance for us and we cannot lose that. There is no replacement for the U.S. as Israel’s most important ally. The U.S. is not just the source of aid for our security,such as Iron Dome, the U.S. is our partner when it comes to democratic principles and the willingness to protect our freedom. Today, more than ever, it is clear to everyone that Israel-U.S. relations are the foundation of any economic, security and diplomatic approach. It is our responsibility to strengthen those ties immediately.”
Read Jeffrey Goldberg’s take on Netanyahu’s speech– the timing of which, as Goldberg notes, is clearly aimed more at Israeli voters than at American legislators.
Netanyahu is engaging in behavior that is without precedent: He is apparently so desperate to stay in office that he has let the Republicans weaponize his country in their struggle against a Democratic president they despise. Boehner seeks to do damage to Obama, and he has turned Netanyahu into an ally in this cause. It’s not entirely clear here who is being played.
For decades, it has been a cardinal principle of Israeli security and foreign-policy doctrine that its leaders must cultivate bipartisan support in the United States, and therefore avoid even the appearance of favoritism. This is the official position of the leading pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, AIPAC, as well, which is why its leaders are privately fuming about Netanyahu’s end-run around the White House. Even though AIPAC’s leadership leans right, the organization knows that support for Israel in America must be bipartisan in order for it to be stable. “[Israeli ambassador Ron] Dermer and Netanyahu don’t believe that Democrats are capable of being pro-Israel, which is crazy for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that most Jews are Democrats,” one veteran AIPAC leader told me.
Almost laughably, Netanyahu turned down an invitation to meet with the Senate Democratic caucus while in Washington because, he piously explained, it would be seen as overly partisan.
Bibi getting involved in partisan US politics? Perish the thought!
And finally, a reminder: despite all the reports of an impending sell-out to the Iranians, there still is no nuclear agreement with Iran. And if the Supreme Leader, who has the final say, continues to insist that sanctions be lifted all at once, instead of gradually as Iran is seen to be meeting its obligations (as the US insists), there may well not be one.
US keeps saying that no deal is better than a bad deal; we agree. No deal is better than a deal that’s against our nation’s interests.
#Iran
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) February 8, 2015
US is blatantly saying that even if #Iran backs down on #nuclear issue, sanctions won’t be lifted at once. Can such an #enemy be trusted?
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) January 7, 2015
