Joe Biden Touches The Israeli Third Rail

Laura Rozen in Politico reports on a story appearing today in Israel.

It is about the effect that Prime Minister Netanyahu's announcement of new West Bank settlements — during Vice President Biden's visit — could do to the United States. It is written by a top Israeli journalist, Shimon Shiffer, in the conservative Yedioth Achronoth, the largest circulation newspaper in Israel..

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

Yesterday's announcement of 1600 new settler units was the tip of the iceberg. Today Israel announced another 50,000 settler units in Jerusalem. What a way to treat Joe Biden, who has been so close to Israel for 30 years that he's practically a kibbutznik.

via MJ Rosenberg: Biden to Israelis: You Are Endangering Our Troops.

Our Progress Report over at Think Progress today deals with Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East (specifically his trip to Israel). We note that as the Vice President arrived in Israel in good faith, the Israelis announced huge new settlement expansions in the West Bank — a direct slap in the face to the peace process and an act of bad faith towards U.S. diplomats seeking a peaceful two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Israeli government’s decision to not seriously rein in settlements, and especially the timing of the announcements of new settlements right as Biden arrived in Israel, has been a diplomatic nightmare. As the U.S. struggles to get Israel to make serious commitments to peace, portions of the Israeli right seem to be more intent than ever to make a two-state solution impossible.

What made this diplomatic crisis particularly interesting was Biden’s response to the Israeli government. Israel’s largest circulation newspaper reported that Biden told Israeli officials that Israeli intransigence is “starting to get dangerous” for the United States, implying that it’s leading to increased radicalization among Muslims in countries where U.S. troops are stationed.

Not long after this report was published, the usual suspects on the right started attacking the Vice President. The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman warned that Biden’s words “unnecessarily [call] into question Israel’s role as an ally and the impact on American interests.” Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who’s in the race for the Governor’s mansion over in Illinois, went even further, saying that the Obama administration was spending too much time “worrying about zoning issues in Jerusalem” (odd words to describe the mass displacement of Palestinians).

I expect that in the coming days, we’ll see even more right-wing figures and other advocates for the status quo in American-Israeli policy to continue to attack the Vice President, warning that he’s overstepping his mandate and threatening the US-Israeli relationship.

The reason we’re going to see these attacks is because Joe Biden touched on a taboo. See, the ties between the United States and Israel are always referred to as a “special relationship.” The relationship is based on strategic interests, values, and a somewhat similar culture. It’s supposed to be unshakeable, and a sizable political movement in the United States is dedicated to making sure that it never changes.

The problem with this relationship is that it’s utterly impractical when it comes to U.S. interests. We of course do benefit from having strong ties to the nation of Israel. But we also benefit from having strong ties to Canada, or New Zealand, or Morocco. Yet we don’t refer to our ties to those countries as a “special relationship” because we freely criticize them and compete with them when it’s in our interests.

What Biden signaled to his Israeli counterparts is that our “special relationship” cannot depend on us simply writing blank checks to subsidize the activities an Israeli government that has not taken serious steps to advance the peace process. In doing this, Biden has broken a gigantic taboo in U.S. politics, and I’m sure there will be a harsh backlash against the Obama administration. The mantra of American politics with respect to Israel is that we should support the Israelis no matter what they do, even if it’s against our interests (or the long-term interests of Israelis, which should be a just peace). Former presidential candidate Howard Dean was even bitterly attacked by dozens of high-ranking members of his own party for once saying that we should have a more “balanced” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But what makes Biden’s words extremely strong is the second half of what was reported. He noted that Israeli behavior is starting to “endanger our troops” in the rest of the Middle East, implying that it’s leading Muslims to become more radicalized and hateful towards a country which is the chief economic, military, and political ally of Israel. Indeed, there exists a huge amount of evidence that unflinching U.S. support of Israel does turn the Muslim world against us.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks, the Wall Street Journal did a widespread survey and investigation of global Muslim public opinion. It found that the chief radicalizing element and grievance of Muslims was the U.S. support for Israel. This is a fact that we can’t afford to gloss over.

This isn’t to say terrorism against the U.S. is justified, because it’s not. It is important, however, that we identify the grievances that radicals are using to recruit other Muslims to their cause and do our best to try to eliminate them. If a festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a major recruiting tool for terrorists, there’s no reason to not try our best to resolve the conflict. And if the behavior of the Netanyahu government in Israel is preventing a just resolution to that conflict, then yes, Israeli behavior is very much endangering American troops.

It may be a third rail in our politics, but we had to have this discussion — the link between our foreign policy and radicalization abroad — sooner or later, and the Vice President should be applauded for bringing it up right in the face of Israeli officials.