When People Say Israel, They Get Stupid
Read Matt Yglesias and Dylan Matthews on Obama’s shameful jettisoning of Robert Malley. The story is that Malley, who was an informal Obama foreign policy adviser, works with the International Crisis Group. As part of his ICG work – the ICG perhaps being the most respected conflict resolution NGO – met with leaders of Hamas so as to better know what was going in Gaza and help, yes, resolve the conflict. Sure, Hamas is a horribly sundry group, all of whom would be happy to see me dead, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re the democratically elected representatives and government of the Gaza Strip. And so, if you want some sort of resolution to the conflict there, one is going to have to talk to the leadership of a major portion of the Palestinian population.
Unfortunately, Obama has totally sworn off speaking with Hamas, but that’s something I can understand. But this sacrificial offering to the most reactionary forces in the Israel-Palestine debate for something that isn’t a big deal is really worrying. Although I’m excited with the prospect of Obama beating back the Jewish Establishment, I’m also worried that because of the widespread perception that Obama has a Jewish/Israel problem, he will now be tempted to make gestures to prove that he’s acceptable to pro-Israel types. First it was a priori refusing to talk to Hamas, now it’s jettisoning Malley. I hope he doesn’t go much farther and start talking about Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel and crap like that. I think that he’s OK if he makes the basic, sensible committment – that he views Israel as a legitimate, Jewish state that is the best American ally in the Middle East. And because he cares so much about Israel’s security, he will leverage US influence to try to force both sides to come to a workable solution that ends in two secure, legitimate, internally recognized states. If he can say this, over and over, I don’t see why he’d have to throw much more red meat at the AIPAC crowd.
