With Israel’s most prominent left-wing political leaders shifting to the right on Iran and the Palestinian issue, these must be trying times for American Jewish doves.
Let’s start with Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister and defense minister, who told a biographer last week that he’d been involved in planning three separate attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
For years, Barak has been the darling of the U.S. Jewish left because he reportedly offered wide-ranging concessions to Yasir Arafat in 2000. In fact, one of J Street’s founders, Daniel Levy, served as an adviser to Barak when he was prime minister.
J Streeters love citing Barak to prove their own “security credentials.”
A May 2010 letter drafted by J Street to President Obama urging creation of a Palestinian state (signed by 61 congressmen) quoted an ‘anti-occupation’ statement by Barak, and hailed him as “Israel’s most decorated military leader.”
And when Barak endorsed Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog in the recent Israeli election (no surprise), J Street issued a celebratory proclamation, with a huge photo of Barak looking through the gunsights of an enormous shoulder-fired missile that appeared poised to fire. See? Mr. Security endorsed Herzog!
Meanwhile, the U.S. Labor Zionists, known as Ameinu, have been prominently featuring a quote from Barak on their website. In a section called “Israeli Security Experts Say,” Ameinu cites Barak as having said that “the most important thing we need to do right now is restore working relations with the White House.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Iran agreement, but hey, if Barak can be used to advance the agenda, then he’s our guy!
Or is he?
J Street and Ameinu should have a problem now that it turns out that “Israel’s most decorated military leader” pushed for an Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.
Israelis will argue about whether Barak did something wrong by speaking openly now about his lobbying for bombing. Whatever the merits of the arguments on either side of that question, let’s not lose sight of the significance of the revelation that this hero of the Israeli left wants to bomb Iran – while his erstwhile admirers on the American Jewish left are lobbying for surrender to Iran. Oops!
And Barak is not alone. Labor leader Herzog calls the Iran agreement “a horrible deal, one that will go down as the tragedy of the ages.”
Herzog says that “There are clear risks to Israel’s security in this deal…it will unleash a lion from the cage, it will have a direct influence over the balance of power in our region, it’s going to affect our borders, and it will affect the safety of my children.”
Herzog is calling Iran “an empire of evil and hate that spreads terror across the region.”
Herzog has warned that the deal will enable Iran “to become a nuclear-threshold state in a decade or so.” Moreover, Herzog has said Iran will take the funds it obtains after sanctions are lifted and use them to resupply Hizbullah and Hamas, and “generally increase the worst type of activities that they’ve been doing.”
Herzog’s partner in the opposition leadership, former foreign minister and justice minister Tzipi Livni, has likewise condemned this “bad deal.”
What a conundrum for the U.S. Labor Zionists to be lobbying for the Iran deal while their Israeli leaders lobby against it. And now Barak has compounded their headache with revelations of his support for an attack on Iran.
And that’s not all. Speaking to reporters after meeting with Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas on August 18, Herzog called for “an uncompromising war against terrorism, and on this issue I am more extreme than Netanyahu.”
Recall that during the recent election campaign, Herzog and Livni visited the Golan Heights and said Israel should keep that region. They also visited Sderot, near Gaza, and declared that Israel should take stronger steps against the terrorists in Gaza. That’s exactly the opposite of what J Street and its comrades support.
The moderate Israeli left has shifted to the right. On Iran, terrorism, and the Golan Heights, there is no longer any meaningful difference between the Israeli left and the Israeli right. There is a broad, wall-to-wall political consensus in Israel on these existential issues. Only the American Jewish left continues to lag behind.