Obama in Cairo, Part I: A Real Paradigm Shift

If you’re pro-Israel [like I am], and your politics more or less revolve around issues most salient to the Middle East [like mine do], your worst nightmare has now come true.

In 1993, Time Magazine chose Yasser Arafat, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, and Yitzhak Rabin as their “Men of the Year”, under the rubric “The Peacemakers”. This was no mere historical accident. It has long been a progressive truism—albeit a comparatively muted one—that Israel’s democracy was/is of the “herrenvelok” variety is analogous to South Africa’s apartheid regime, in degree is not in kind. [Whether the Israeli leadership was panicked into implementing the Oslo agreement in 1993 when they realized that a rapprochement was imminent in South Africa is an interesting matter of conjecture.]

This notion has had great currency in most of the free world [to say nothing of the “unfree” world], with until now, the exception of the United States. With the exception of the State Department—which still hasn’t gotten over the fact that it was overruled by President Truman in 1948 when he recognized the new independent State of Israel over its vehement objections—the US, at least in public, has for the most part, been Israel’s most steadfast ally, certainly for the last 40 years.

Specifically, the US was committed to the continued existence of Israel as THE Jewish State. President Obama’s speech in Cairo indicated that those days are now over.

While it’s certainly true that the United States’ policy regarding settlements [as evidenced by the American’s continued opposition to their existence, and characterization as such as “impediments to peace”] and Jerusalem [as evidenced by the longstanding refusal to move the American Embassy there], the tone of this speech, in combination with the rather deferential—if not outright servile—attitude toward Islam indicates that the scales have shifted.

One can say that United States policy is “equally accepting” of Jews and Palestinians’ “national rights” to the same piece of real estate. What this means is the United States’ new policy is to pressure Israel to “peacefully” vote itself out of existence as the Jewish State; the “Road Map” leads to a one-state solution.

For mostly obvious political reasons, this cannot be stated publicly. Yet. However, Winston Churchill’s formulation “The Jews are in Palestine [sic] by right, not by sufferance” has been reversed.

There is one hopeful development that has been overlooked. As it becomes increasingly clear to the Israeli populace that the rest of the world expected the Oslo process to lead to the eventual establishment of a “binational” state, the Israeli electorate has finally woken up to the idea that only they can truly look out for their own interests. In 1999, when Prime Minister Netanyahu stood up to American pressure and was turned out of office by the Israeli electorate, the political zeitgeist was different. Ten years later, most of Israel believes that peace has been given more than a chance, and that the Palestinians and their supporters are playing a zero-sum game.

The question of Israel’s existence will be answered ONLY by the Israelis themselves.