Why Benjamin Netanyahu Is Wrong To Cite ‘American Values’ in Jerusalem Feud
Premier's Not Being Racist — Just Blind to the World
Old Married Couple: Bibi and Obama see the settlements differently.
Getty Images
By J.J. Goldberg
Published October 10, 2014, issue of October 17, 2014.
Benjamin
Netanyahu has drawn a goodly measure of criticism for his latest verbal
tussle with the White House, culminating in his charge that the Obama
administration violated “American values.”
Frankly,
most of the criticism is undeserved. There’s a lot to be said about the
exchange and the bilateral tensions it reflects, but the prime
minister’s finger-wagging about “American values” isn’t the problem.
Not, at least, the way the critics make it out to be.
In
case you missed it, Netanyahu and President Obama were blindsided hours
before their October 1 Oval Office meeting by an announcement of new
construction in East Jerusalem. Final approval had been given for 2,610
housing units at Givat Matos, across the old pre-1967 border on the road
to Bethlehem. These announcements crop up regularly at delicate moments
in U.S.-Israel relations. It’s almost a ritual.
It
didn’t mar the leaders’ two-hour chat, which was described afterwards
in cordial terms. An hour after Bibi departed, however, the
administration unleashed not one but two angry attacks on the
construction plan. The first came from White House spokesman Josh
Earnest, who told reporters the move was “contrary to Israel’s stated
goal of negotiating a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians.”
Next
was a blast from State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. She said the
construction would “distance Israel from even its closest friends,”
which sounds rather like a threat. She said it would “poison the
atmosphere not only with the Palestinians but also with the very Arab
governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build
relations. It also would call into question Israel’s ultimate commitment
to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.” That’s
harsh.
The
prime minister responded as he’s always responded to these incidents:
by asserting that East Jerusalem, captured in 1967, is an integral part
of Israel’s unified capital. Accordingly, Israeli neighborhoods built
there aren’t “settlements.”
“These
are neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” he told NBC News. “We have Arab
neighborhoods and we have Jewish neighborhoods.” Before criticizing, he
snapped, the administration “should be acquainted with the facts first.”
The next day he took a softer tack. Sitting for a taped interview with CBS News, for broadcast the following Sunday on “Face the Nation,” he called the administration’s criticism “baffling.”
“It’s
against the American values,” he said. “And it doesn’t bode well for
peace. The idea that we’d have this ethnic purification as a condition
for peace, I think it’s anti-peace.”
The
White House chose to misunderstand the “American values” comment as an
echo of the Republican right’s attacks on Obama as an alien interloper,
not a real American. Officially, spokesman Earnest countered the next
day with a heartfelt litany of ways U.S. support for Israel embodies
American values. Journalists, briefed unofficially, accused Netanyahu of
labeling Obama “un-American.”
In
reality, the comment was something completely different. It was a line
straight from the playbook of the settler movement’s secular-literate
wing: Barring Jews from living somewhere because of their religion is a
civil rights violation, no different from American neighborhoods barring
blacks. A variant often heard is that Palestinians, in opposing Israeli
West Bank settlements, aim to make Palestine “Judenrein.”
This
wasn’t Bibi being a faux-Republican Obama-basher, a role he’s been
known to play now and then. This was Bibi trying to sound liberal, to
ingratiate himself with the president by invoking values Obama
cherishes. Elsewhere in the interview the Israeli leader described his
relationship with the president almost affectionately as “like an old
married couple.”
No,
the flaw in the prime minister’s comment wasn’t that it contained some
subliminal racist message. The flaw was that it stretched the meaning of
civil rights beyond recognition. It presumed a legitimacy to Israeli
rule in East Jerusalem that no other country in the world concedes. It
showed how profoundly Netanyahu — and Israelis in general —
underestimate the depth of international rejection of Israel’s claims to
the holy city’s eastern sector. And it showed how seriously Netanyahu
misjudges international impatience with Israel’s continuing settlement
policies.
Israel
passed laws in 1967 and 1980 unifying Jerusalem as the undivided
capital of Israel. In the 47 years since, despite nonstop Israeli
insistence, not one nation has recognized the Israeli claim.
Israelis
often presume that international rejection of Israel’s claims in East
Jerusalem reflects doubts about Israel’s legitimacy as a sovereign
nation. Not so. In the same half-century that impatience with
settlements has grown, acceptance of Israel’s sovereignty within the
pre-1967 lines has skyrocketed. Of 192 United Nations member-states, 157
maintain full diplomatic relations with Israel, up from fewer than 100
in 1967. Of the 35 holdouts, about half recognize Israel but withhold
formal ties for various reasons.
But
precisely because the rest of the world unanimously rejects Israel’s
territorial claims in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israeli
arguments about civil rights for Jewish homebuyers fall flat. Consider
Netanyahu’s “American values.” Black Americans today have a right to
live anywhere that any other American may live. But that doesn’t include
a right to build themselves a community in Mexico on Washington’s
say-so. Mexican land isn’t Washington’s to dispose of, nor do American
citizens enjoy civil rights there.
Most
Israelis and their closest allies around the world dismiss such
arguments on grounds that the West Bank isn’t a foreign country but
disputed land. Israel is as entitled as anyone to claim a piece.
Unfortunately, no other country in the world buys that. Not one. That
doesn’t make the argument illegitimate.
But
after 47 years, it’s time to stop being surprised at the pushback.
Israel’s defiance of what every other country considers settled
international law, leaving 3 million Palestinians in stateless limbo,
has a corrosive effect on attitudes toward Israel. Israelis call it
delegitimization. They try to silence the critics. That just makes
things worse.
It’s
worth noting that when Bibi and his allies invoke American values of
civil rights for Jews, they don’t entirely mean it. Saying Jews have a
right to live anywhere in the Land of Israel doesn’t necessarily imply
that non-Jews do too. There are various differences. Most important,
fully 13% of Israel’s territory, 1,050 square miles in all, is
off-limits to non-Jews because it’s owned by the Jewish National Fund,
whose by-laws forbid leasing land to non-Jews. Ironically, that’s 13% of
the sovereign territory of the State of Israel, which is defined in
Israeli law as — wait for it! — the territory bounded by the old
pre-1967 border. Yup — the border Israeli spokesmen insist isn’t there.
Contact J.J. Goldberg at goldberg@forward.com
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