Newt Gingrich's Burning Desire To Start Two New Wars

Good thing Newt Gingrich isn't fanning flames of discord between the United States and Israel or anything.

Former US House speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state, ahead of his address that day to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference.

"They are systematically setting up the most decisive confrontation that we've ever seen," the leading Republican politician told The Jerusalem Post, referring to news reports about the administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"There's almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world," he said.

He called US President Barack Obama's program of engagement on Iran a "fantasy," and his Middle East policies "very dangerous for Israel." He summed up Obama's approach as "the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter."

That's just incredibly irresponsible talk, and Gingrich followed it up by comparing talking to Iran with talking to Hitler, as well as calling for two more wars in Iran and North Korea.

He comes from the serious, big-thinker wing of the Republican Party.

These are the views that did nothing but push Iran and North Korea further toward a nuclear weapons program under Bush and Cheney. They are both bad for American security and Israeli security. And they come on a day when, oddly enough, Middle East hopes were raised by Hamas' insistence that they have stopped rocket attacks, and their claim that they seek only a Palestinian state under 1967 borders (which intimates that they accept the existence of the Israeli state). Peace in the Middle East would harm Republican fortunes electorally, so they would rather sow belligerence, discord and terror.

I signed this J Street petition supporting the Obama Administration's agenda in the Middle East instead of failed policies that make us less safe. You should too.

Israeli Pressure Points

I'm just dubious about Rahm Emanuel saying this.

Yedioth Achronoth, the largest circulation daily in Israel, reports today that President Obama intends to see the two-state solution signed, sealed and delivered during his first term.

Rahm Emanuel told an (unnamed) Jewish leader; "In the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister."

He also said that the United States will exert pressure to see that deal is put into place. "Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory," the paper reports Emanuel as saying. In other words, US sympathy for Israel's position vis a vis Iran depends on Israel's willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there, in Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

Clearly, the US would have to find some point of leverage to get this hardline Israeli government to agree to a two-state solution. Netanyahu and Lieberman are macho neocons who rebuff any talk of a Palestinian state. But would Emanuel really hold up Iranian negotiations as an attempt to force Israel to the bargaining table? That seems like a dangerous game to me. I believe that the US would push Israel away from bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, but not hold up multilateral agreements.

Anyway, there's a very clear point of leverage for the Israelis - billions of dollars in American aid. That Emanuel didn't go there speaks to the power of the Israel lobby - although J Street is catching up fast. And considering that most American Jews support a two-state solution, clearly they would also support bringing some American pressure to bear. But you just cannot touch Israeli money - or offer Palestinian aid, apparently.

Meanwhile, Israel is really isolating themselves from the world community by refusing to cooperate with a UN inquiry into human rights violations during the Gaza war. Maybe this is another pressure point?

The Demonization Principle

I don't want to paint too broad a brush, but talking to a defender of Israel's "right to self-defense" by creating more terrorists inevitably comes down to the proposition that Arabs are animals.

Whether the Gaza Palestinians can ever have a truly civil society is another question, the answer to which — given the Arab societies that surround them — is probably ‘no.’

Again, this isn't a blanket statement. The narrowness of opinion in the United States on the topic of Israel certainly accounts for a lot of misconceptions. Thankfully this is starting to thaw, and people are much more open to a variety of opinion on the subject, even if their political leaders aren't. The conservative, AIPAC-led lock on Israel policy has been diminshed by the emergence of J Street.

Eventually, however, the hardcore rightists (like "liberal" magazine editor Marty Peretz, responsible for the above quote) have to come up with a framework to justify their behavior. And when marginalization through calling the other side "terrorists" isn't enough - a a common tactic designed by those in power to determine what is legal and illegal for those out of power - they have to widen and deepen the marginalization. And so you get the depiction of the other as animals.

Not only is this execrable, it has a real negative impact on the security of the Israeli people. By considering Palestinians subhuman and incapable of civilization, Israel's defenders inflame the Arab world and give Hamas and the Palestinian people no reason to do anything but continue to lob rockets.

I guess there's a "truce" that may be offered, to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza (not the boat the Israelis attacked yesterday, I guess) and give Hamas a "chance" to stop the rocket attacks. Given this rhetoric, if you were a Palestinian, why would you believe the Israelis?

Music To My Ears

This is long overdue. The debate over Israeli politics in this country has been completely hijacked by the right, and it's high time for some balance.

Some of the country's most prominent Jewish liberals are forming a political action committee and lobbying group aimed at dislodging what they consider the excessive hold of neoconservatives and evangelical Christians on U.S. policy toward Israel.

The group is planning to channel political contributions to favored candidates in perhaps a half-dozen campaigns this fall, the first time an organization focused on Israel has tried to play such a direct role in the political process, according to its organizers.

Organizers said they hope those efforts, coupled with a separate lobbying group that will focus on promoting an Arab-Israeli peace settlement, will fill a void left by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and other Jewish groups that they contend have tilted to the right in recent years.

When the only public figures discussing Israel in America are John Bolton and Newt Gingrich, there's a problem. J Street will hopefully change this for the better. The climate for a two-state solution inside Israel is substantially greater and the debate substantially broader, and they're actually kind of closer to the situation than a bunch of neocons who call their critics anti-Semites, so any opportunity to recalibrate things here at home is welcome. I signed up for J Street and if you're interested in a new perspective in the Arab-Israeli conflict, you should too. The other good thing is that J Street appears to be following a more decentralized MoveOn model than a classic lobbying shop, which could give them more flexibility than an AIPAC, and the ability to influence the debate without the enormous dollars that AIPAC has.