Victor Davis Hanson is very very worried about Obama’s Israel policy. According to Hanson, Obama’s administration “seems as angry at the building of Jewish settlements in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel’s mortal enemies.” This is a huge huge problem, Hanson asserts, with potentially immensely destabilizing results. He writes:
Yet if we are seen as neutral, just watch the rest of the world get the message and start piling on. Anti-Jewish terrorism will gear up again. Frontline entities like Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran will ready their missiles without worry of American anger. Iran will assume we are resigned to its acquisition of the bomb. And the U.N. will again begin providing cover by issuing its pro forma denunciations of Israel, counting on a newly diffident United States to vote “present.”
This argument hinges on the condition, ” if we are seen as neutral.” Does Hilary Clinton’s love-note video count for nothing? (h/t to the FPA Israel blog) What about this statement from Biden (from the same speech in Israel in which he criticized the settlement announcement):
Our nations’ unbreakable bond borne of common values, interwoven cultures, and mutual interests has spanned the entirety of Israel’s history. And it’s — it’s impervious to any shifts in either country and either country’s partisan politics. No matter what challenges we face, this bond will endure.
These things seem to mean much to the Palestinians, 78% of whom believe the U.S.-Israeli dispute is “not serious,” which pretty much undermines Hanson’s entire point.
There’s another strange contradiction in Hanson’s argument. He suggests that the Obama administration’s Israel criticism stems from the fact that “it is fashionable to see pro-American, democratic, and capitalist Israel as a symbol of a pernicious Western culture of imperialism.” Hanson asks:
But why, until now, has America always bucked the tide?
And finds as his answer:
The reason was not the so-called “Jewish lobby” here in the U.S., but the fact that a clear majority of non-Jews supported Israel.
So U.S. leaders have thus far been responding to public opinion and supporting Israel. It seems strange, then, that Hanson doesn’t grapple much with the fact that Obama’s position on Israeli settlements is… yes… in line with U.S. public opinion. A 49% plurality of American voters believes Israel should stop settlements as part of a peace deal. Last year when the Obama administration called for a full settlement freeze, a 48% plurality of Americans thought Obama’s policy was “about right.”
Hanson ignores these polling numbers, instead painting anti-Israelism as liberal elitism. He claims that “anti-Israeli sentiment is de rigueur in European elite society” and asserts that support for Israel “now polls only 48 percent among Democratic voters (versus 85 percent among Republicans).” As for the European thing, a poll from a few years ago shows that 60% of Europeans believe that Israel is the greatest threat to world peace. So… 60% of Europeans are “elite”? We really have to stretch the definition of the word “elite” to make this assertion make sense. As for the Democrat-Republican thing, I don’t know where Hanson got these numbers. But here’s what I got from Rasmussen as of last month:
Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats and a plurality (48%) of voters not affiliated with either party favor an end to the Israeli settlements as part of a deal. Republicans are almost evenly divided on the question.
So as far as I can see, Hanson is merely slaying imaginary monsters.
