[Peace-discuss] A NYT Op-Ed on Israel

[Morton K. Brussel]

I wonder if this signals any significant change among Jews' support  
of Israel's policies, here and there.

--mkb

December 1, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Try Tough Love, Hillary

By ROGER COHEN
Imagine Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, saying this  
to Barack Obama:

“The United States has been wrong to write Israel a blank check every  
year; wrong to turn a blind eye to the settlements in the West Bank;  
wrong not to be more explicit about the need to divide Jerusalem;  
wrong to equip us with weaponry so sophisticated we now believe  
military might is the answer to all our problems; and wrong in not  
helping us reach out to Syria. Your chosen secretary of state,  
Hillary Clinton, said during the campaign that ‘the United States  
stands with Israel, now and forever.’ Well, that’s not good enough.  
You need to stand against us sometimes so we can avoid the curse of  
eternal militarism.”

Perhaps that seems unimaginable. But Olmert has already said  
something close to this. In a frank September interview with the  
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, reprinted this month by The New York  
Review of Books, the Israeli leader chose to exit with a mea culpa  
for his country’s policies.

Those policies have been encouraged by the Bush administration, whose  
war on terror was embraced by the Israeli government as a means to  
frame Israel’s confrontation with the Palestinians as part of the  
same struggle. No matter that Al Qaeda and the Palestinian national  
movement are distinct. The facile conflation got Bush in lock step  
with whatever Israel did.

So, by saying Israel has been wrong, Olmert was also saying the  
United States has been wrong, even if he never mentioned America.

What Olmert, who appears on the verge of indictment for fraud, did  
say in his “soul searching on behalf of the nation of Israel” was  
that he had made “mistakes” as a former right-wing hard-liner and  
that military power will not deliver his 60-year-old country from  
existential anguish.

“We could contend with any of our enemies or against all our enemies  
combined and win,” Olmert said. “The question that I ask myself is,  
what happens when we win? First of all, we’d have to pay a painful  
price. And after we paid the price, what would we say to them? ‘Let’s  
talk.’ ”

Olmert is now convinced of the need to settle with the Palestinians  
and Syria through giving up parts of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.  
The fact such views come from a former Likudnik is a measure of how  
the political ground has shifted in Israel ahead of elections early  
next year.

I think Olmert’s words should be emblazoned on the wall of Hillary  
Clinton’s eighth-floor State Department office: “We must reach an  
agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly  
all, if not all, of the territories. Some percentage of these  
territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the  
Palestinians the same percentage elsewhere — without this, there will  
be no peace.”

Asked if this included a compromise on Jerusalem, Olmert said,  
“Including Jerusalem.”

He also declared, “I’d like to know if there’s a serious person in  
the state of Israel who believe that we can make peace with the  
Syrians without, in the end, giving up the Golan Heights.” Those  
words should go up on Clinton’s wall, too.

For Olmert, “holding this or that hill” is “worthless” and Israeli  
generals are deluded in clinging to them.

These ideas will sit uneasily with the pro-Israel constituency that  
Clinton has dealt with as a Democratic senator for the state of New  
York. Nobody’s been more solidly pro-Israel than she. But to be  
effective, she must become a tough taskmaster in the name of Olmert’s  
compromises. That is in the best long-term interest of Israel.

Clinton noted during the campaign that the United States could  
“obliterate” Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel. Olmert  
chose different language. He noted “a megalomania and a loss of  
proportion in the things said here about Iran.” Once again, his words  
are instructive.

I am fiercely attached to Israel’s security. Everything depends,  
however, on how that security is viewed. Israel can continue  
humiliating the Palestinians, flaunting its power with a bully’s  
braggadocio. It will survive that way — and be desperately corroded  
from within. Neither domination nor demography favors Israel over time.

Its moral authority is already compromised by a 40-year occupation.  
The Diaspora Jew did not go to Zion to build the Jew among nations.

This is the reality behind Olmert’s warning that “we have a window of  
opportunity — a short amount of time.” This is the reality behind his  
appeal to “designate a final and exact borderline between us and the  
Palestinians.”

For that, Palestinians must also compromise, especially on the right  
of return, and they must renounce terrorism. Return must essentially  
mean return to a new and viable Palestinian state.

Getting to such a two-state deal at, or close to, the 1967 borders  
will require concerted U.S. involvement from day one of the Obama  
administration. Its tone should be one of tough love, with the  
emphasis on tough.


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