WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Are there actions by both Democrat and Republican American presidents so fundamental to Israel’s sovereignty and security that all American Jews should speak out in protest or praise? I think, yes. Here are four recent instances. Come see.
This Week: Should Jews’ Liberal Views Trump Appreciation of Trump’s Israel Moves?
A JNS article by Jonathan Tobin Friday, “Trump Shouldn’t Expect Any Gratitude from American Jewry,” addressed President Trump’s reported disappointment that more American Jews have not expressed greater appreciation of his pro-Israel actions, which include moving the embassy and cutting funding to UNRWA.
Tobin’s position is that while Republican Jews withhold support from GOP presidents seen as imbalanced against Israel (he cites George H.W. Bush getting only 11 percent of the Jewish vote in his re-election campaign in 1992), Democrat Jews’ party loyalty takes in stride Democratic presidents’ anti-Israel imbalance: “Barack Obama was the least popular president among Israelis because of his criticisms of their government and willingness to appease Iran. But the overwhelming majority of American Jews never wavered in their support for him ….”
DISCLAIMER: I am not going to argue below that those of you (customarily) Gentle Readers who are Democrats should switch to the Republicans or vote for them, not least Donald Trump. On the contrary, I agree completely with the liberal Prof. Dershowitz that both Israel and American Jews need bipartisan U.S. support for our Jewish homeland of Israel. What I do say is that all of us American Jews need to recognize and respond to occasional U.S. presidential actions deeply affecting fundamental standing and security of our Jewish homeland of Israel.
I’ll cite two such fundamental-Israel-standing-and-security actions each by Presidents Obama and Trump.
President Obama’s 2011 Borders Statement: On May 20, 2011, during his first term, President Obama made a statement at the U.S. State Department which the Associated Press recognized as “a significant shift in the U.S. approach.” President Obama:
“I believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both sides.”
I ranted and raved in that week’s media watch (#542) that my hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, had misleadingly headlined: “Obama Maps a Peace Path: In a major speech, he said a starting point for Israeli-Palestinian talks should be the borders [emphasis added, Obama had said ‘lines’] set before the 1967 war. Netanyahu criticized the idea.”
There is an international law world of difference between “borders” and military ceasefire lines (the infamous “green line” being expressly the latter), but what all American supporters of Israel should have vociferously stood up against at that time was President Obama’s abandonment of the key principle of UNSC #242 that Israel did not need to withdraw all the way back to the old, perilous 1949 [Eban: “Auschwitz”] lines, but only partially back to “secure and recognized” boundaries, an expression that Obama’s statement [I believe, mockingly] misused.
U.S. Abstention to UNSC #2334: In the [post-U.S. election] waning days of President Obama’s second term, the United Nations Security Council adopted 14-0, with the U.S. abstaining, a resolution in which the Security Council
“1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace ….
“3. Underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”
What ought to have shocked us American Jews, Democrats and Republicans, and driven us all to vociferous outcry, is that Christian western democracies, Britain and France, voted for this sell-out of the heart of Jerusalem as “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967,” as well as the U.S. abstention, reaffirming and underlining (to borrow a couple of terms from the U.N.) “significant shift,” as the AP put it, in America’s original interpretation of UNSC 242.
I said above that we need to be united in being outspoken on U.S. presidential actions fundamental to the Jewish homeland’s standing and security. The Jewish claims to historic Jerusalem and to the homeland’s hill country heartland and Jordan Valley, beyond the 9-miles-wide in the middle coastal plain, are fundamental to Israel’s meaning and security, if anything are.
Moving the Embassy: In Fox News’ Harris Faulkner’s sterling interview of Netanyahu on the Hamas riot-upstaged occasion of the embassy move, Bibi likened the significance of President Trump’s action to President Truman’s instant de facto recognition of the Jewish State. Many American Jews are, by me, inexplicably ambivalent about this, but the world did not come to an end, and our united appreciation will help solidify the interpretation that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, not just, in the literal wording of the President’ action, “Israel’s capital is in Jerusalem.”
Defunding UNRWA: In the real world, every international institution or action that singles out Israel as different from all other nations on earth diminishes its sovereign standing. UNRWA, which differentiates “Palestinian refugees” from all other refugees on earth, perpetuating generations of their descendants as open sores from what the media miscalls “the war that followed Israel’s creation,” is the quintessential exemplification of such an international institution. Whether the U.S. ceasing to fund it will lead to UNRWA’s ending or only to the E.U. nations’ U.N. representatives colliding with each other rushing to the podium to augment their pledges, is uncertain, but a U.S. president calling into question the legitimacy of this “Palestinians”-only, Israel-singling-out institution is worthy of expression of appreciation by all American Jews.
So ask yourself whether these American presidential actions – reversal of original U.S. interpretation of 242 as not requiring Israeli withdrawal back to the perilous ceasefire lines of 1949, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and questioning the legitimacy of U.N. singling out of generations of “Palestinian” refugees’ descendants, with their claimed “right of return,” from all other refugees and their descendants in the world – fundamentally relate to the Jewish homeland’s sovereign standing and security. And, if so, whether all of us are obligated to speak out in unity on them.