With anxiety over the White House’s Middle East policy mounting in some pro-Israel circles, several Jewish organizational leaders have found themselves in a discomfiting position: criticizing the Obama administration in public while stridently defending the president in private against the most extreme attacks.
It’s an upside-down version of what pro-Israel groups usually do: lavishing praise on the U.S. government of the day for sustaining the “unbreakable bond” while making their criticisms known quietly, behind closed doors.
The criticism has come in the form of mostly polite statements and newspaper ads questioning Obama administration pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly regarding building in eastern Jerusalem.
For example, in a full-page ad titled “For Jerusalem” published April 16 in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize–winning author Elie Wiesel wrote: “For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran.”
Wiesel’s ad came a day after Ronald Lauder, head of the World Jewish Congress, ran an ad in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal calling on the Obama administration to reverse the “dramatic deterioration” in relations with Israel. “Why does the thrust of this administration’s Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks? After all, it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate,” he said.
Such criticisms also are voiced in private meetings with administration officials.
While there are also many examples of the president being defended — in dealings with irate donors and constituents, in phone calls, e-mails, addresses to small Jewish groups, shul talk — the theme of the complaints is consistent, and shocking, said multiple leaders, who all spoke off the record. The criticisms, they say, reflect the subterranean rumblings about the president heard during the campaign: His sympathy lies with the Muslims, he doesn’t care about Israel, he’s an anti-Semite.
Concerned about the phenomenon, the Jewish Federations of North America have convened a “fly-in” of Jewish organizational leaders to Washington for an as-yet unannounced date next month. The leaders will meet with White House, State Department and congressional officials, in part to “to convey concerns about U.S.-Israel relations”—but also, insiders say, to allay those concerns.
One recent flood of anxious queries followed the Obama administration’s announcement this month of its long-awaited nuclear policy. The policy made clear that nations maintaining a threatening nuclear posture would still face the prospect of a U.S. nuclear response should they attack the United States or its allies.
Obama named Iran as such a nation.
Yet instead of being reassured, donors and members of national Jewish groups flooded Jewish leaders with anxious queries about the policy’s posture: that the U.S. will not threaten with nuclear weapons those nations that provably disavow their nuclear weapons capability. They interpreted that as being aimed at embracing a nuclear Iran and forcing Israel to abandon its own reported nuclear capability.
Another persistent — and unfounded — rumor has it that Obama removed the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem” from the White House seder in March.
“Where the [expletive] are they getting this?” asked a senior official at an organization that has been publicly critical of Obama since last summer.
Angst was stoked, too, when Obama spoke last week of peacemaking throughout the world necessitated by the cost of “American blood and treasure” through involvement in conflicts. It didn’t help that a New York Times analysis suggested the president had said that the lack of Israeli-Palestinian peace threatened U.S. troops in other parts of the globe — even though the transcript of Obama’s remarks did not bear out any such linkage and other Obama administration officials flatly denied one existed.
Jewish officials said a share of the blame lay with the Obama administration, partly for not adequately reaching out to Jews and to Israel, and partly because of the emergence of what appear to be internal policy wars.
“The real story of the New York Times [analysis] is not that he’s changing Israel policy,” said another leader of an organization that has not been shy about criticizing the Obama administration. “The real story is, why are officials leaking” misrepresentations of his policy “to the New York Times?”
On the other side, one leader blamed the Netanyahu government for sending mixed signals on how to handle the tensions between Israel and the United States over settlement policy.
“Some are saying quiet is the best answer and others are saying loud noise is the best answer,” the Jewish organizational official said.
Despite mounting criticism by some Jewish leaders, polls show that Obama’s support among Jews in general remains strong. His backing has dropped from astronomical highs after he was elected, but remains about 10 points stronger than in the general population. Moreover, to the degree that it has eroded, the dissatisfaction with Obama appears to have more to do with unhappiness over his handling of health care and the economy than it does Israel.
Those who are expressing their concerns, however, are among the most active members of the pro-Israel community and help set the tone for the trilateral U.S.-Israel-Jewish leadership ties. Some are acquiring their information from anti-Obama e-mail blasts and consistently partisan critics of Obama.
Richard Baehr, writing in the conservative online magazine the American Thinker, cited the New York Times’ misreading of Obama’s remarks in arguing that “this president is the greatest threat to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and Israel since the founding of the modern Jewish state in 1948.”
McLaughlin and Associates, a GOP polling firm, pointed to signs last week that Jewish support for Obama was eroding, but the survey questions were premised on shaky assertions. One question posited that Obama would support a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence, although U.S. officials have consistently said they would oppose such a move. Another suggested that Obama was ready to force Israel to give up the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, although there has been no such pressure.
Administration defenders cite signs suggesting that beyond the settlement rhetoric, the relationship is improving: Obama has increased defense cooperation, for instance, and strategic consultations between officials of both nations are more frequent than they have been in a decade.
“Our bond with Israel is unshakable and unbreakable both as it relates to security, as it relates to a common set of values and also as a common strategic vision because the threats to Israel are similar to some of the threats the United States faces,” Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, said April 19 on the Charlie Rose show on Bloomberg TV.
(Also on that show, Emanuel addressed the recent chatter about an Obama peace plan, saying it’s best to leave a plan to the parties. “The time is not ripe for a U.S.-promoted Middle East peace plan,” he said. “[The] time now is to get back to the proximity talks, have those conversations that eventually will lead to direct negotiations, start to make the hard decisions to bring a balance between the aspirations of the Israelis for security and make that blend with the aspirations of the Palestinian people for their sovereignty.”)
Also this week, Emanuel held a behind-closed-doors meeting April 20 with a group of leading Orthodox rabbis.
In the meantime, Jewish leaders are walking a tightrope trying to balance traditional deference to the administration with concerns over the tensions.
Lee Rosenberg, the president of AIPAC, made the Israel-is-our-best-friend case last week at Israel Independence Day celebrations, sharing the stage with Obama’s top political adviser, David Axelrod.
“Israel stood by America in spirit and in action after the tragic events of 9/11,” Rosenberg said. “As both our great nations fight the same scourge of terrorism and Islamic extremism, it is Israel which serves on the front lines as an outpost of American interests in a dangerous part of the world.”
The Wiesel and Lauder letters offered a suggestive contrast over how to handle the tensions.
Wiesel’s critique was oblique, not naming Obama, and deferred to U.S. orthodoxy that a final-status agreement must accommodate Palestinian claims to the city. “What is the solution?” Wiesel asked. “Pressure will not produce a solution. Is there a solution? There must be, there will be.”
Lauder, by contrast, directly addressed Obama and suggested that the president was sacrificing Israel to improve relations with the Muslim world. “The Administration’s desire to improve relations with the Muslim world is well known. But is friction with Israel part of this new strategy? Is it assumed worsening relations with Israel can improve relations with Muslims?”
Abraham Foxman, leader of the Anti-Defamation League, said that Jewish leaders have a responsibility to defend the president “when talking to those who accuse him of being an enemy of Israel or a Muslim.”
He added: “For many years, you had a lot of Jews who didn’t vote for President Bush who would say, ‘I don’t like Bush but I love what he’s doing on Israel.’ Now the paradigm is changing. A lot of Jews are saying, ‘I like Obama, but I don’t like what he is doing on Israel.’ ”