Over the last week or so, I have been asked numerous times what I thought about President Obama’s speech regarding the middle east and I am reminded, in many ways, of the best advice I have ever heard about aging parents, that in order to be best prepared stay two steps ahead of the events and not just one. When we look at the middle east, it is very clear that events, predictable and unpredictable, have radically changed the landscape and, when given our complicated world where economics are unsettled and where numerous countries are trying to muscle into the mix, each country will have to continue to adapt, continue to react to these very complicated positions – and this issue certainly engulfs, and even overwhelms, the Israeli position. It isn’t just the moral high ground but, rather, how can Israel control its destiny as opposed to being forced to untenable compromises.
I’ve been to Israel twelve times in the last six years and, if nothing else, I am quite sure that I do not understand the political dynamics, the pressure on Israel, the tension of living in a region where hatred is your neighbor’s primary emotion. I told someone recently, in fact, he with a misguided intellectual bent, he who had never been to Israel, that his positions regarding Israel are, incorrect, harmful, and naïve. He was very critical of AIPAC, quite incorrect in his analysis, failing to give any regard to the Israeli view of AIPAC, that liberals and conservatives in Israel are appreciative that Americans, Jewish and otherwise, lobby congress on behalf of Israel. This is, of course, a perfect example of loving the garden without loving the gardening and his intellectual (in his mind) opinions are truly harmful.
That said, Israel is clearly stuck in an awkward and potentially negative paradigm and in many ways needs to determine what peace it wants, whether the peace it can obtain today is better than one it can achieve in years to come. This decision is all the more complicated as many of Israel’s best and brightest leave the country, resulting in a serious intellectual drain from a country that already clearly questions its ability to educate its population.
When I was in Israel earlier this year, I repeatedly asked who were the next Israeli leaders, who would govern after Prime Minister Netanyahu? The answer was a pretty resounding “I don’t know”, a situation that quite clearly helps keep the current Israeli government in control, however, the only way to stay in control is to mollify both the left and the right, a situation which makes change all the more complicated.
Absent the emergence of a bold Israeli leader, it is possible that President Obama was trying to accomplish more than stating his opinion, perhaps he was trying to move the process by giving creating enough space between the stated Israeli position and that of the United States to allow for compromise, to allow (actually force) the Israeli government to move toward President Obama’s position, and perhaps then the United States (and others) could move back toward Israeli’s position.
With each trip to Israel, I learn how dangerous it is for me to assume that I know any of the answers, however, I do know that the sand is flowing through the hour glass. Global politics have changed and, while traditional foreign policies could be characterized as good versus evil or even politics based on oil reserves and economics, today’s politics are formed more and more on religion (and cultures) and, to some extent, a characterization of the west (and it values) as evil. If it were simply good against bad, the world surely would clean up Syria but none of the major players, certainly including Russia or China, have any interest in being demonized by intervention. Israel lives in this less than perfect neighborhood, in this fulcrum of hostility. It is likely that Israel will have to make harsh and painful compromises and Israel will have to determine how active it will be in a process that will impact its history.
By Abe Schear exclusively for AtlantaJewishNews.com
