The Obama-Netanyahu administration narrative, at least as refracted through the U.S. partisan divide, has looked like this:
Republicans: Obama disses Israel through pressures on settlement building/1967 lines/no snacks at the White House! He’s turned his back on Israel! Thrown it under the bus!
Democrats: Defense and intelligence cooperation is closer than ever! Defense assistance actually increased during a budget crisis! Why are you worried about White House snacks?
Notice how each side ignores the other’s salient points: The right glides over the real and quantifiable improvement in defense cooperation, the left glides over real and substantive differences in diplomacy.
When each side is cornered into addressing the other’s strong point, they get into obfuscations.
The right will highlight Israel defense asks that Obama has not yet granted (say, additional combat aircraft) while ignoring the fact that Obama’s GOP predecessors, including George W. Bush, denied much more. The same goes for GOP critiques of Obama’s Iran posture — however inadequate they think it may be, Obama has done more to isolate the Islamic Republic than his predecessors. Senate Republicans, for instance, rolled over fast when the Bush administration defanged proposed enhanced sanctions in 2006.
The left ignores issues of tone, although in diplomacy, tone equals substance. It may be true that Obama’s predecessors were as tough as he is on settlement expansion, but it matters that Obama made his unhappiness emphatically public. And there is a difference between "we have to agree on permanent changes to the 1967 lines" and "we have to start from the 1967 lines."
The truth is, the White House hasn’t given Democrats a lot to use except for defense and intelligence assistance. It’s a huge "except" — if we think of strategies as a three-legged stool, defense assistance is a single leg, but it is a huge, central leg that keeps the stool stable.
But it’s still only one leg. Now, comes a second leg: Today, Esther Brimmer, the assistant secretary of state for international organizations, outlined what she said is the close U.S.-Israel cooperation at multilateral bodies.
My news takeaway, in this brief, is that the Obama administration is saying that should the United States withdraw from such organizations, it would harm Israel’s interests.
Here’s her whole address — and of course, it’s significant that Brimmer delivered the message to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank.
What’s interesting about this approach, vs. the "defense cooperation" approach, is that there is (virtual) bipartisan unanimity on defense cooperation with Israel. In a sense, the Obama administration is playing defense on defense — everyone agrees that it’s a bottom line of being pro-Israel, and Obama is saying "I earned this badge."
There is not unanimity, however, on multilateral diplomacy. Republicans and conservatives are not big fans of what they see as excessive consulting with other nations. An emerging meme among the GOP presidential candidates is that Obama "leads from behind," that he does not believe in American exceptionalism.
In that sense, Brimmer’s argument is a sign that Obama is playing offense when it comes to diplomatic cooperation with Israel. Instead of saying, "Hey, we all agree here, why are you saying we don’t?" the Obama administration is saying, "You know what, we have fundamental disagreements with Republicans — but our beliefs work better for Israel."
(I’ve seen similar claims, that Israel and the U.S. cooperate at the U.N., come out of the Obama administration, but piecemal; an example is the U.S. pushback against the Goldstone report. But this is the first comprehensive outline of "multilateralism equals pro-Israelism" I can recall seeing.)
Here’s Brimmer:
Israel wants to play a larger role globally, multilaterally and at the UN. It does not want to be viewed solely through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis understand that they not only have rights within the international system; they also have responsibilities, and they want to meet them. To that end, the United States is working with Israel to advance its positive multilateral engagement agenda, and move beyond the focus on contentious political and security issues, with the aim of addressing the issue of delegitimization and Israel’s treatment at the United Nations.
It’s true — at least in my experience — that Israel is at least conflicted about multilaterals. On the one hand, Nov. 29 1947 — U.N. recognition of Israel — is an iconic validation in Israel’s mythology. On the other hand, Benjamin Netanyahu has all but said the U.N. General Assembly is a write-off.
It’ll be interesting if this approach takes.
