Netanyahu's Statement of Principles

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address a joint meeting of Congress today. On the one hand, he claims the speech will surprise the world. On the other, I can't imagine him going much beyond the principles he already articulated in an address to the Knesset last week. Let's take a closer look at those principles and see what he might elaborate on:

1. Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people: This demand is clear, and American politicians, including President Obama, have already embraced it. I think it is an unnecessary demand, since we don't need the Palestinians' approval for being the Jewish state. We just need them to agree that Palestine cannot interfere in the internal affairs of Israel, including by attempting in any way to end its Jewish character.

2. A non-militarized Palestine with Israeli control of the Jordan River bank: I agree with the first part, I don't agree with the second. I don't trust the Palestinians with a military, especially considering the fact that a poll from November showed 60% of Palestinians support the two-state solution just as a step toward a one state solution (a poll I'd mention to Congress if I were Netanyahu).

As for the border with Jordan, while I do trust King Abdullah to secure it, if his regime would fall, the river would become a serious threat to Israel's security. I wouldn't want IDF troops there, though. If they'd stay on a narrow strip along the border, they'd be isolated and endangered. Instead, there should be an international force there. Not an inept UN force, but a NATO force which would also include IDF representation. The same force should also patrol the Gaza-Egypt border.

Netanyahu will probably elaborate on what he meant when he said there would be troops along the Jordan River. Is he giving up the Jordan Valley and its settlements, as he should? If he addresses his vision of the new borders, more details about this area will definitely be included.

3. The refugees will not return to Israel: Indeed, no Israeli leader in his right mind would be willing to recognize the right of return. I would, however, like him to propose an alternative solution to the refugee problem, including a declaration of willingness to pay reparations without accepting responsibility for the Nakba or stating an exact amount the refugees would receive.


4. The settlement blocs will remain a part of Israel: Here Netanyahu may elaborate more on what his definition of the blocs is and whether or not he is open to the idea of swaps, even if they aren't by a ratio of 1:1. This is where he would really define the border between Israel and Palestine, though I'm sure he wouldn't present a map of the exact border. I have a bad feeling his definition of the settlement blocs is much more expansive than my own, and if he is open to swaps, it means he's going to sacrifice more of pre-1967 Israel - a sacrifice I'd rather keep to a minimum.

5. A united Jerursalem shall remain Israel's capital: With this position, we can say goodbye to peace. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, perhaps minus the Jewish quarter of the Old City. Netanyahu won't give an inch of the old city, but maybe he'll surprise the world by declaring today that he doesn't see the Arab villages that were annexed to Jerusalem in 1967 as a real part of the city and that he's willing to give them up. I doubt that's going to happen, though.

6. Palestine will only be established as part of an agreement: Netanyahu should attack a possible UN vote as a vote for violence, saying that recognition of Palestine without an agreement with Israel would encourage a third Intifada. He should point out that a state had already been offered to the Palestinians several times, most recently by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, yet they rejected the proposal without even negotiating its terms. The world should not award such behavior, and must make it clear to the Palestinians that a peace deal is the only way to independence.

7. The peace treaty would constitute an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an end to all claims: Netanyahu should emphasize this principle, which actually overlaps with all the others. Once we reach an agreement establishing a Palestinian State, they can no longer try to alter the Jewish character of Israel, demand more territory, call for a right of return for the Palestinian diaspora, etc. Of course, this goes both ways. Israel will not be able to claim territories in Palestine as its own, claim a right for Jews to return to the West Bank and Gaza, etc.

An agreement that leaves any issues unresolved is a blueprint for disaster. If the Palestinians have a state and a legitimacy to make more demands, they will also feel more confident that they may use force to achieve what they seek.

Sarah Palin, Republican Candidates and Israel

Potential Republican presidential candidate and supplier-in-chief of late-night comedians' material Sarah Palin is arriving in Israel today for a short visit. Is she trying to gain more of the Jewish vote by coming here? I doubt it. I don't think she's very popular among Jews, even the Republican ones. This trip is probably more about being able to say that not only does she understand Eastern Europe because she can see Russia from her house, she can understand the Middle East because she spent two days in Israel.

Palin will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday evening for dinner. I bet she won't pressure him on construction in the settlements - a policy she'd continue as president. Of course, there's absolutely no chance in hell she'd actually ever become president.

It is more important to look into the Middle East policies of Republicans with better chances of winning the nomination. I don't think anybody has done that yet - and it is way too early for me to start doing candidate-by-candidate profiles. I can say this: It seems like there are roughly two categories of Republicans who both support Israel strongly (Ron Paul being the exception to the rule), but members of one group would, as president, continue supporting whatever Israel's right wing government does, and the others would seem to be more willing to pressure Israel after the election. I'd put Palin, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich in the first category and Mitt Romney in the second. There are a bunch of other Republicans whose Middle East policy is unknown to me, but I'm sure it will become clearer as time goes by.

I must say I prefer the latter, "friendly but nudging towards negotiations and peace" policy over the hawkish one.

Pollard Isn't Going Anywhere

Benjamin Netanyahu recently promised Jonathan Pollard's wife that he will write an official letter to President Obama asking for the spy's release. I doubt the prime minister will hurry to write the letter, and when it is finally sent, it will probably be the only action he takes. There's nothing to gain from Pollard's release. Nothing to gain for anybody, except for Pollard himself and his family.

I don't think most Israelis really care about Jonathan Pollard. They wouldn't oppose his release, but they wouldn't be dancing in the streets. We'll be elated if Gilad Shalit is released. With Pollard, most would only say "oh, that's nice", and move on. The Pollard issue has no electoral power. Nobody will decide to vote for Netanyahu because he got our American spy out of prison. Neither will anyone decide not to vote for him because he failed to do so.

Jonathan Pollard's release isn't in Barack Obama's best interest, either. Even the staunchest American friends of Israel don't want to see the guy released, and freeing him would be seen as pandering to Israel, especially at a time when its government hasn't done anything deserving of rewards. Obama actually might lose votes over Pollard, with a release probably costing him more than it would benefit him.

Maybe this analysis is skewed by the fact that I don't want Jonathan Pollard released. He's a traitor to his country who may have spied for cash rather than ideology. I'm fine with him spending the rest of his life in prison.

The Obama-Netanyahu $3 Billion Deal

What the hell is President Barack Obama thinking? Yes, it is very important that Israel freeze construction in West Bank settlements, but Obama's way of getting this done is just foolish. His administration offered Israel a package worth $3 billion, which includes 20 state of the art fighter jets in exchange for an additional 3-month freeze. Why just three months? Because during this time, according to Obama's expectations, Israel and the Palestinians will reach an agreement about final borders, which would mean that it would be clear where Israel can build and where it can't.

Has Obama not seen how negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have gone over the last decade or two? Has he not seen that Netanyahu (and Abbas, to some extent) isn't very serious about moving forward? It will be a surprise if, at the end of three months, any progress will be made at all, let alone an agreement on borders. So, if the situation won't be as rose-colored as Obama expects, when settlement construction resumes a new crisis will arise. More accurately, the current crisis will be resumed after some postponement.

My main problem here isn't just the fact that the freeze is too short, but that the price the United States is paying for it is too high, especially at a time of a recession and when the US is dealing with a huge federal deficit. Sure, $3B is tiny compared to the deficit's hundreds of trillions of dollars, but still, spending such an amount just for a temporary solution that probably isn't going to bring results?

In effect, Obama is rewarding Netanyahu for being stubborn, instead of actually rewarding him for achieving real milestones. It's kind of like his own Nobel Prize in 2009 - awarded for nothing but false hope. This is moronic and sophmoric, and is just one little part of President Obama's horrible foreign policy.

Settlements and the American Tax Code

The New York Times has an interesting and troubling article about American tax-exempt charities used to strengthen settlement building in the West Bank. These right-wingers successfully circumvent both Israeli and American law: Israel-based charities are not allowed to finance activity in settlements that are illegal under Israeli law; donations to foreign charities aren't tax-exempt in the United States; and US-based charities aren't allowed to serve as front groups for foreign charities. Yet, even though these organizations seem to be violating all these things, they are free to operate and not pay a dime to the United States Treasury.

If the United States Congress really cares about Israel, it should change the tax code so that groups would not be allowed to promote illegal settlement building, or at the very least will have to pay taxes, thereby reducing their available money. These outposts are an obstacle to peace, and are not only unjust to Palestinians, but their existence is also against Israel's interests.

Unfortunately, I don't see Congress acting, especially not before the mid-term elections.

The Role of the Anti-Defamation League

Following Peter Beinart's article in the New York Review of Books about the American Jewish establishment's blind support for Israeli governments (which I previously blogged about here), the NYRB has published an exchange between Beinart and Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. I have to say that most of it isn't very interesting, because Foxman repeats the same thing we've heard time and time again, and Beinart repeats what he wrote in his article, what he said in his Bloggingheads debate with Eli Lake and his answers in today's Haaretz Q&A feature (which, for some reason, I could only find in Hebrew).

However, I did find the last two paragraphs of Beinart's response to Foxman noteworthy:

The ADL was founded “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” What I have always admired about that statement is its suggestion that to truly defend Jewish dignity, one must also defend the dignity of other vulnerable groups. At home, the ADL still honors that mission, working valiantly, for instance, against racial profiling in Arizona. But how can an organization that is so vigilant in opposing bigotry in the US be so complacent about a government shaped by men like Lieberman, Effi Eitam, and Ovadia Yosef? How can it not take its rightful place in the struggle on behalf of Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah?

When it comes to Israel, the ADL too often ignores the interconnectedness of Jewish and non-Jewish dignity. After all, the same sort of settler fanatics who burn Palestinian olive groves also assassinated an Israeli prime minister. The same ultra-Orthodox hooligans who burn Christian holy books also attack Jewish women trying to pray at the Western Wall. And the same Israeli government that demonizes Israeli Arabs also demonizes Israeli human rights groups. To be for ourselves, we must also be for others. I hope the ADL will live that ethic again.

Of all the organizations in the so-called "Israel Lobby", the ADL is probably the most problematic, in my opinion. As Beinart points out, its official purpose is "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” However, it also acts as a pro-Israel organization. Now, both roles are not only legitimate, but important. Fighting anti-Semitism is a worthy cause that can never end as long as anti-Jewish racism exists. Advocating for Israel, the state and its people rather than the government, is also important. The problem is that those two missions should not be undertaken by the same organization, because that would suggest that being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, or even sometimes just an opponent of the current Israeli government, is equal to being anti-Semitic, and that isn't the case.

You might say that I'm unfairly singling out the ADL, since other Jewish organizations also blend fighting anti-Semitism with being pro-Israel. I'd say there's a big difference. The ADL's main purpose is defending Jews from discrimination and anti-Semitism. Other organizations, on the other hand, focus more on the internal workings of the Jewish community, rather than anti-Semitism. That makes them less problematic than the Anti-Defamation League, but of course it doesn't make Beinart's criticism of them any less relevant.

American Zionism and Israeli Democracy

There's an interesting Bloggingheads debate between Peter Beinart and Eli Lake, in which they debate a few aspects of Israel-U.S. relations. I found two parts of it particularly compelling. First, they discuss the growing gulf between American Jews, especially young ones, and Israel. Beinart recently wrote an excellent article on the subject in the New York Review of Books, where he explains that young liberal Jewish Americans don't see Israel as a liberal country and so don't identify with it, while most of the young people in the States who still feel a strong connection with the Jewish State are illiberal Orthodox Jews. He says that part of the problem is that the major Jewish organizations support anything Israel does, and so young Jews don't see that they can be both liberal and Zionist at the same time. I think his analysis of the situation is spot on.

The other part I found interesting was the question of whether Israel is becoming more and more illiberal and undemocratic. Here, again, I think Beinart is right that there are alarming signs, but I also believe Israeli democracy is still strong.

Eli Lake keeps saying to Beinart that he (Beinart) just isn't capable of reading Israeli politics. First of all, it is kind of rude to dismiss these arguments by basically saying "you're an idiot". Secondly, I'm an Israeli, meaning I'm probably better at understanding Israeli politics than Lake himself, and I agree with most of what Beinart says. Lake seems like such a douchebag (I love that word).

On a related note, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy agrees with me about our democracy. He thinks our main problem is "small politicians".

The May 2010 War and Peace Index

There are some very interesting results in the latest War and Peace Index poll (Hebrew/English). Israelis see the crisis between Israel and the United States as over, and blame Barack Obama for it ever happening more than they blame Benjamin Netanyahu. Oddly, 56% of those polled said Netanyahu was handling relations with the US well or very well. So what if he hasn't shown any signs of budging on the Palestinian issue, which is at the center of US-Israel relations right now? My fellow Israelis still think he's doing swell.

Israelis aren't crazy about Obama, but don't hate him either. 43% think he's neutral towards Israel, which is similar to a previous poll. By comparison, a majority of Israelis found George W. Bush and Bill Clinton favorable towards Israel. Also in today's poll, 55% said Obama is favorable or very favorable toward the Arab world. I'd say that to many Israelis, if not most of them, being favorable toward the Arabs is not a very positive thing.

Also of interest is the fact that 73% of Israelis think Israel will continue to be criticized no matter what it does. The poll says a majority among all of Israel's parties says so, with the lowest percentage coming from Meretz, 55%. Does this mean that voters for Chadash (the Arab-Jewish Communist party) and other Arab parties have an even higher percentage than 55% thinking that Israel will always be criticized, or were the pollsters only referring to the Jewish parties?

Anyway, this vast majority isn't surprising. I, too, think that Israel will be criticized even when it does the right thing. Even when the two-state solution will be implemented, we'll still be criticized, but a lot less.

A Question About Ambassador Oren

Here's an issue I've been thinking about for quite a while but never blogged about. Ever since Michael B. Oren's appointment as Israel's ambassodor to the United States was announced last year I've been thinking that this is a problematic choice. I have nothing against Oren himself. He's a right-winger, but not a nut, and has proved himself to be quite a capable diplomat, even though he was an academic before he was chosen for the post. What bothers me about him is what some might see as a technicality, and others will see as a major problem.

Michael Oren was born in the United States, and from the time he immigrated to Israel and until his appointment as ambassador he was a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. The United States does not allow its own citizens to serve as a foreign county's representatives in the States, and so, Oren had to renounce his American citizenship to be accepted by the United States as Israel's ambassador.

People in Prime Minister Netanyahu's office said that the fact that Oren is American makes him understand American politics and diplomacy better, and so he's better equipped to serve Israel's interests in America. That might be true. But wouldn't such an appointment also offend many Americans priding themselves as patriots, who would see the new ambassador's renunciation of his American citizenship, and thus his American identity, in favor of serving a foreign government, as an act of treason on his part?

Ambassador Oren has been in office since the summer of 2009. I haven't heard of any American officials expressing their discomfort with his status as a former American. Still, the question remains whether there are people whose support Israel needs who are quietly offended by this.

Obama and Israelis: The Myth of Hostility

Long before Barack Obama was elected president, this notion arose out of nowhere that Israelis didn't like the guy. Maybe people expected Israelis to dislike anybody with "Hussein" in his name, even though King Hussein of Jordan was quite popular here. Yes, Israelis preferred Hillary Clinton, whose husband Bill is still probably the most popular former American president in Israel, and John McCain. But time and again we see that Israelis aren't as hostile towards Obama as people think. In the Democratic primary in 2008, Americans in Israel gave Obama 45% of their votes.

The recent crisis between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government is an excellent opportunity to check the pulse of Israelis' attitudes towards Obama. According to a poll published by Haaretz yesterday, Obama may not be as popular as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, but Israelis don't show hostility towards him either.

When asked how Obama relates to Israel, 51% said he is fair, 18% said friendly, and 21% said hostile. With the two previous presidents, the vast majority would have said they're friendly. But according to the hostility myth, you'd expect to see at least 80% of respondents saying Obama is hostile. That just isn't the case.

One thing Obama should be worried about if he cares about Israeli public opinion is the question of anti-Semitism. While the majority, 56%, don't think he's anti-Semitic, more than a quarter (27%) said that he is. That's a much higher number than previous presidents would get, and it is also ridiculous, considering the fact that his most trusted advisors are Jewish.

For furthur analysis of the Haaretz poll and other weekend polls, here's Daneil Levy's take in Foreign Policy.

Obama vs. Netanyahu

I usually don't like it when my two countries' relations with each other get strained. Now, though, I'm just elated about the mini-crisis we're in following the East Jerusalem construction announcement that came out while Vice President Joe Biden was here. Biden publicly censured the Israeli government, and voiced his disapproval in private meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a 40-minute phone conversation with Netanyahu in which she reprimanded him. The PM has apologized, saying the timing was off and that he plans to make sure such announcements are never made without his say-so. He doesn't seem to understand that the timing is the minor issue here. The problem is the construction itself, which isn't just a slap in the Americans' and Palestinians' faces but also against Israel's interests. Even more worrying is the fact that even some Labor Party ministers don't understand what the big deal is.

So, why am I happy about this controversy? Netanyahu deserves a good whooping. The opposition is too fragmented to forcefully and effectively speak out against the current government's policies. The Labor Party, which claimed to join the coalition in order to be a moderating force, is being dragged rightward rather than dragging Netanyahu leftward. The electorate may not be crazy about Netanyahu, but according to polls, if the elections were held today the Likud would have an even larger delegation in the Knesset. Nothing much is really threatening Netanyahu into action. Perhaps some kind of ultimatum from Obama is the only way to convince Bibi to prove that he really does support the two state solution.

I'm against an imposed solution, but some prodding in the right direction can be helpful.

Israelis Don't Hate Obama

According to popular wisdom, Israelis are very hostile towards Barack Obama. I have to admit that I bought into that notion myself. Most of my friends have a positive attitude towards Obama, or mixed feelings, but I had a feeling that the social circle I belong to isn't very representative of Israeli society. And indeed, whenever I talked to other people, let's call them non-academic types, they tended to hate Obama, or at the very least, they were suspicious of him. This seemed to be supported by a now discredited poll that claimed only 4% of Israelis support Obama.

A new poll shows I was wrong. Obama's approval ratings in Israel are quite similar to his approval ratings at home. When compared to Rasmussen's Dec. 11 poll, Obama's approval rating in Israel is just six percentage points lower than his approval rating in the States, but even more interesting is the fact that a higher percentage of Americans disapprove of his performance than Israelis: 51% compared to just 37%.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has a higher approval rating among Israelis than is widely believed, undercutting arguments he has lost Israeli public support for new peace efforts, a poll said on Thursday.

The poll by the Washington-based New America Foundation found that 41 percent of Israelis had a favorable rating of Obama against 37 percent who rated him unfavorably.

Despite this, 55 percent of Israelis polled said they thought Obama did not support Israel against 42 percent who said he did -- a reflection of the "complexity of views" about the U.S. leader as he presses both Israel and the Palestinians to resume stalled peace talks.

"They genuinely admire and like him ... but at the same time they also want to feel that he is in their corner, and they have concerns over this," pollster Jim Gerstein said in an email message.

Gerstein said that, in contrast to widespread media reports of low Israeli public support for Obama, the poll of 1,000 Israelis showed more support and solid backing for a possible future U.S.-brokered peace deal with the Palestinians.

"Israelis believe peace is necessary, but they currently do not feel a sense of urgency to reach a final status agreement with the Palestinians," Gerstein said in his report, adding that Obama had a chance now to persuade Israelis it was time to reach an agreement.

"There are real opportunities for the president and his team to speak directly and convincingly to the Israeli people," the report said.

Bibi and Self-Hating Jews

Rahm Emanuel can't get a break. Palestinians and their supporters see him as a Zionist mole inside the White House. The Israeli right-wing, on the other hand, sees him as a traitor. More on how Netanyahu sees Emanuel and fellow Obama advisor David Axelrod in this excellent op-ed from today's Ha'aretz:

What Netanyahu wants from Obama's 'self-hating Jews'
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz [English, Hebrew]

Who is to blame for the latest dispute with the United States over the new neighborhood going up in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah area? Mayor Nir Barkat? Certainly not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood behind him? Ridiculous. Any child knows that everything is the fault of other Jews: Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two American administration officials who are inciting President Barack Obama against their own people.

This is not the first time that "self-hating Jews" have given us trouble. In negotiations over the separation of forces agreement in the 1970s, U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the scion of a family of Jewish refugees who had escaped from Nazi Germany, earned the anti-Semitic epithet "Jewboy" in Israel. At the end of the 1980s, when president George H.W. Bush dared to argue that the peace process does not jibe with settlement expansion, the Shamir government instigated a campaign against "the 'Jewboy' trio": Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller and Dan Kurtzer. Now it is the turn of Obama's Jewish confidantes to be the scapegoats.

It is easy to imagine what an uproar there would be in Jerusalem if an Arab leader or newspaper dared to claim that an American president was favorable to Israel because of the influence of a Jewish adviser. Netanyahu, who spent many years in the United States, knows very well the extent to which Jewish administration officials in key positions are sensitive to the slightest hint of dual loyalty - to their birthplace and their historic homeland. It turns out that for him, politics bends the iron-clad rule that "all Jews are responsible for one another."

To satisfy the settlers, he permits himself to hurt people whose only sin is that they are trying to promote the goals enshrined in the platform of his senior coalition partner - the Labor Party.

We want our Jews in the administration to be blind to the settlements and deaf to the complaints of the Arabs. Take Elliott Abrams, for example, who was in charge of Middle East affairs in the Bush administration. Abrams, who is identified with the neo-conservative right, made an important contribution to legitimizing a good many dubious Israeli acts. He was an excellent salesman for the "no partner" theory, and the guiding spirit behind the indulgent policy toward the flourishing of settlements. He recently publicly criticized the two-state vision of the president who had hired him, among other things, to promote that vision.

Back during his election campaign Obama made it clear that he did not have to join Likud to be a friend of Israel. Opinion polls in the United States revealed that the views of most Jews are closer to the attitudes of organizations like the Reform movement, American Friends of Peace Now and J Street, which support a two-state solution and eschew Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's doctrine - and above all, largely object to the settlements.

The conversation Obama held with representatives of the Jewish community last week confirms that Netanyahu is drafting them for the wrong war. Even his oldest supporters did not attack the president's position on the settlements, and made do with a complaint about the high profile given to disputes over the issue of natural growth in the settlements. One of the guests at that meeting said that history showed that exposing the differences between the U.S. and Israel does not help to advance peace.

"This was not my reading of the lessons of the last eight years," Obama responded without flinching. Moreover, he said he would not shy away from a willingness to pressure all parties, including Israel, if that is in the best interests of the United States and Israel. Obama did not hesitate to tell his Jewish interlocutors that beyond the special commitment to Israel's security, his policy would be completely even-handed. If it became necessary, Obama said, he would speak to Israelis, as he had done to the Arab and Muslim world, to help them to achieve some kind of self-reflection.

Obama has internalized what his predecessors refused to understand: the traditional supporters of the Israeli right are growing old, or losing their relevance. They are giving way to younger, liberal forces who identify with Obama's values. In the "best" case, Netanyahu's incitement against the "self-hating Jews" will do to them what his whispered comment in the ear of Rabbi Kaduri "those leftists are not Jews" did to Israelis a decade ago - it turned them against him.

Peres and Olmert Love Bush

President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George W. Bush spoke at an event commemorating sixty years of Israeli-American relations. President Bush was happy to hear, and moved by, the praise his Israeli hosts lavished upon him. I, on the other hand, found it embarrassing. They should have stuck to praising the American policy of friendship and support for Israel over the decades and given Dubya himself no more than a few token words. But no, they had to call him a great leader, a man with a vision, a champion of freedom and democracy, a man who history will treat kindly, blah blah blah.

Sure, they can't say how horrible a leader he really is. They can't say "Thank you, President Bush, for making Israel less safe by attacking a country that, as it turns out, was never really a threat to us and instead made it a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda and Shi'ite terrorism. We really appreciate the fact that now that you have failed in Iraq, the United States can't afford to face what seems to be a greater threat than Saddam Hussein ever was". And the list of bad things goes on... They can't say all those things, but they shouldn't say what is at best a bunch of lies about how great he is (at best, since the worst case scenario is that they actually believe what they are saying, which means our leaders have horrible judgment).

The event tonight was part of a conference about the future of Israel, organized by President Peres. Channel 1, the public channel that is owned by the government but supposedly independent from it, showed the whole US-Israel event, including the video clips about the history of the two countries' ties with each other. I felt like I was watching North Korean or Cuban TV. The clips weren't mini-documentaries but rather straight out of the PR department. It was absolutely ridiculous.

J Street Lobby: Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace

Finally, a new organisation has been founded that will show Washington, DC that AIPAC's hawkishness isn't the only form of pro-Israel or pro-Zionist activism. J Street, which has two arms - a lobby and a political action committee, will endorse congressional candidates who support a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Good luck, J Street!

Barack Obama's Israeli Blog

Senator Barack Obama apparently believes Israel is the 51st state of the Union and it hasn't had its primary yet, or perhaps that the outcomes of American elections are decided in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. Why else would he open a blog on an Israeli website, intended for an Israeli audience (and apparently not just for American citizens in Israel) in both Hebrew and English?

As a dual citizen of Israel and the United States I'm supposed to be flattered by this move, but I'm not. Obama is trying to show he isn't anti-Semitic or anti-Israel in the wrong way. For one thing, as a candidate for president of the United States of America he shouldn't be courting foreign nationals. Second of all, if he decides to court foreigners anyway, he should try courting different countries. Does he have a French blog? A Mexican blog (and not just for Mexican Americans)? Does he have blogs in Kenya, his father's birthplace, or in Indonesia, where he spent some of his childhood? Does he have a blogs in Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, German, Swahili, etc.?

The fact that Obama's only foreign blog is in Israel is troubling. It seems he attributes too much power to Israel. Does he think that if Israelis don't like him American Jews won't vote for him? The Jews of the Land of Milk and Honey don't have that kind of influence and veto power over the Jews of the Land of Opportunities.

USraelis Pick Hillary

The term USrael is usually used as a derogatory term to describe an alleged colonial imperialist conspiracy spearheaded by Little Satan and Big Satan to meddle in the affairs of the Middle East and the rest of the world. I, of course, will not use it that way. Instead, it's how I'll call dual citizens of the United States and Israel.

Last month Democrats Abroad conducted a global primary for American citizens living outside of the US who identify themselves as Democrats. Obama won a big victory, winning two thirds of the votes and all but three countries. Democrats in Israel, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic (USraelis, USlippinos and USominicans, I guess) chose Hillary Clinton. In Israel, she won 54 to 45 - not such a huge margin. It was so close that among those who voted on-line the vote split evenly between Obama and Clinton, with 124 votes for each contender. The vote in the Tel-Aviv voting center made the difference, with 59 votes for Clinton and 31 for Obama (Clinton also won the mail-in/fax vote 7 to 4). In the Palestinian territories only one person cast a vote, and it was for Obama. A country by country breakdown is available here.

I expected Clinton to win by a landslide here in Israel. I'm surprised it was as close as it was. Bill Clinton was, and still is, the most popular American president among Israelis. Indeed, Israel's Channel 10 news conducted a poll among Israelis (not USraelis this time, but the general population) that asked how they would vote if they were American citizens. In a Clinton-Obama match, Clinton wins 62% to 16%. In a Clinton-McCain race, she wins 58 to 12. In a McCain-Obama race McCain wins 42 to 30. When asked which of the three is best for Israel 53% said Clinton, 16% said McCain and 9.5% said Obama.