GOP gains Jewish votes, at whose cost?

Since before Barack Obama was elected, individual Jewish community leaders and organizations have warned Jewish voters that the President wanted to "throw Israel under the bus." To some extent, this strategy has worked. The number of Jews who think their fellow Jews are somehow bad Jews if they support Obama's re-election has probably increased, and perhaps some of those Jewish Democrats even believe they themselves are bad Jews for it.

In the end, the overwhelming majority of Jewish voters will continue thinking for themselves, which happens to be the worst possible indictment of the organized Jewish community -- i.e., irrelevance. For the average Jewish voter, such slogans have no meaning or impact whatsoever. More than hurting Obama or helping Israel, this GOP strategy is also helping to alienate more Jews from their community and from the State of Israel.

Israel faces bigger threats than "Palestine"

I often hear observers lament that one party or other in a dispute is getting all worked up over a "symbol". The sad fact is, many wars have been fought over symbols, because symbols are usually important on both sides of a conflict.

Losing the United Nations vote on recognizing a Palestinian "UDI" (unilateral declaration of independence) is not Israel's biggest challenge right now.

Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Iran...

Israel seems to have fewer friends and fewer stable neighbors -- and more dangerous neighbors -- than it did a year ago.

My 9/11

A beautiful Tuesday morning, so I took my time walking to the office, in the old B'nai B'rith Building on Rhode Island Avenue, barely a ten-minute walk from the White House. As I approached the entrance, a mid-level colleague was rushing out of the building, talking like the world was ending. Planes had hit the World Trade Center, and other wild tales, and she was fleeing back to the Maryland suburbs.

I went upstairs to my office, got online and turned on the TV. Wow. When I saw that TWO planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, I instinctively listened for the sound of fighter jets over Washington, DC, since clearly the nation's capital would be a target. But nothing outside.

I called a few of our partners in Russia and Ukraine, to make sure those Jewish communities were not affected, and to let them know we were still available to them.

After some minutes, the wife of another colleague called looking for him, and she wanted to know why I was still even in the building. She said Jewish buildings were obvious targets. I replied, "I wouldn't worry. The Jewish buildings are the soft targets. They got the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, they may be after the Capitol and the State Department for all I know. And NOW you think they're going to hit the B'nai B'rith Building..?"

Egypt takes a break

Though not entirely surprising, accounts of the operation to rescue Israeli personnel from Israel's Embassy in Cairo are both gripping and sobering. Even if Egypt-Israel relations survive the transition from Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship, it will be a rough road.

Where does this hatred of Israel and Jews originate? Certainly, many Arabs and Muslims have a visceralresentment of the Jewish State along with garden-variety anti-Semitism. But let's not forget that it was Hosni Mubarak's propaganda machine that tolerated or forced the newspapers and TV channels to propagate the most vicious anti-Semitic images and distortions.

While he was promoting Egypt's role as the Arab gateway to Washington and peace with Israel, Mubarak was staving off domestic resistance to his military dictatorship by feeding red meat to his dear subjects. This included repressing all opposition parties except the Muslim Brotherhood, lest Egyptians ever think there was an acceptable alternative to Hosni Mubarak and his cohorts. And it included fanning the flames of anti-Semitism.

Mubarak was one of the military leaders under Anwar Sadat, and not personally implicated in the audacious peace initiative that restored Sinai to Egyptian control. Whoever ends up running Egypt will be in a similar position -- legally and economically bound to honor the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty -- and with much less connection to the assassinated Sadat and his perceived perfidy.

Since Mubarak was both an ally of Washington and a grudging collaborator with Jerusalem, attacking the Israeli Embassy is a perfect way to exact symbolic retribution. Whoever gets elected President of Egypt will be held in check by the same corporate military staff that backed Mubarak all those years, but will find it easier to maintain popular support by appealing to anti-Semitism and finding ways to show defiance to Israel. On the hopeful side, Egypt-Israel relations have survived that precarious balance before. But this time, it may take more than hope.

Mission Accomplished... does Libya count?

I wasn't planning to shout from the rooftops over the success of President Obama's smart-power strategy in Libya, though I had blogged early this year that Libya was an opportunity for him. Not a confounding challenge, like Iraq or Afghanistan, or Egypt or Syria, but nevertheless an opportunity to turn a fresh page, at least back to the limited-engagement days of Clinton and Bush (remember 41?). This may not have been a slam dunk, but let's at least give the President credit for a good rebound shot.

Six months ago, back when I first posted on this, lots of Republicans seemed to be goading the President into invading Libya. The disappointment was palpable when he threw in with our NATO allies and let them do most of the work -- with no ground invasion, and with limited firepower after the first days of giving the rebels a head start. And in the end, it's been estimated that the entire Libya engagement cost Washington less than $1 billion -- no casualties, no PTSD -- and far less than the cost of one day in Iraq after Bush's "Mission Accomplished" stunt.

Later, the Republicans' spent blood lust turned into anger that the imperial imperialist (Obama) needed to invoke the War Powers Act, even though President Bush (43) had invaded Iraq with only a vague contingency resolution from Congress, and in Libya no U.S. ground forces were committed. A few of my Republican friends have suddenly informed me they never even liked Bush's whole "democracy-building" agenda. Oh.

EU and Palestine? It's complicated.

Postscript to my previous post: The European Union nations are considering a compromise United Nations General Assembly resolution that will recognize Israel and Palestine alongside each other and also push for resumption of bilateral negotiations over borders and other remaining issues. [Thanks to Laura Rozen for breaking and analyzing the details of this late development.]

Such a compromise would certainly help restore European unity on this and other issues. Several EU member states have been planning to support or abstain on the maximalist version of a resolution, which will recognize Palestine as a full state without such substantive conditions as calling for further negotiations. It would be great for the EU to demonstrate consensus on a thorny international issue -- and at the UN, no less. All the better if they can simultaneously embrace Palestinian statehood and get credit for promoting Israeli-Palestinian talks.

The EU is also no stranger to compromises that help to avert a battle between competing principles in the UN. The Palestinians must know very well that Europe loves a compromise, and that the ever-elusive EU consensus is at a historic low right now. If the Palestinians reject the compromise and hold out for the straight-up UN resolution recognizing statehood -- the version that Israel and the United States and France and Germany and Italy are all set against -- won't the rest of the world happily pick it up again and leave the EU compromise in the dust? If so, the EU consensus will break down as well, as several EU states would probably jump aboard rather than be seen as opposing the vehicle for Palestinian self-determination.

Israel may finally lose the EU on Palestinian statehood

The Foreign Ministers of the European Union are meeting one more time to try and reach consensus on the Palestinian bid for United Nations recognition as an independent, sovereign state. This gives President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu one last chance to try working together before the United States is forced to cast its veto in the UN Security Council, probably in early October. 

If the UN General Assembly recognizes a sovereign state, that's at once a major breakthrough and headache for the Palestinians and certainly no picnic for the Israelis. It will effectively accord the Palestinians the same sovereign status as the State of Israel. Membership in the UN depends on a vote in the Security Council, however, where the United States is one of five permanent members (P-5) entitled to veto the whole exercise. But the GA resolution will carry massive moral power, open the floodgates for all sorts of substantive and symbolic advantages. The U.S. veto would withhold the ultimate prize, and for that Washington will be scorned. 

The biggest door the Palestinians hope to open with the "UDI" (unilateral declaration of independence) is Europe. Although sympathy for the Palestinians runs high in Europe, there are limitations: No formal Palestinian embassies, no major trade agreements, many of the business and development initiatives are subject to EU consensus and the Mideast Quartet comprised of the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia. If the Europeans register an exception by either not voting or voting against the anticipated UN resolution on Palestine, they won't be as free afterward to accept all the consequences of that statehood.