In Ha’aretz the other day they had this article which had me laughing out loud:
“Obama’s people brief their Israeli counterparts in advance much less about security and Middle East policy activities than the Bush administration used to,” the officials said. In addition, when they do brief Israeli officials, they don’t consult with them or coordinate their statements in advance.
This has caused several coordination “malfunctions” between the two states in the past two months, they said. The last incident was the statement of Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The statement had not been coordinated with Israeli officials in charge of the nuclear issue and they heard it first from the media.
This followed other equally problematic incidents. The American policy shift toward Syria and opening direct talks with Damascus followed minimal coordination with Israel. For example, Israel was not briefed about senior American diplomats’ trip to Damascus, which the U.S. had initiated.
Headline news – Obama treats Israel like all other US allies. The horror!!!! I mean seriously wtf? If Obama would co-ordinate as closely with any other ally of the US as the Bushies did with Israel, he would be accussed of treason! All Obama is doing is returning things to normal. The hysterical reaction to this is, in fact, hysterical.
My guess is that the Bush & Cos intimate co-ordination was a result of the ascendancy of the neo-cons in the first Bush administration, along with Bush’s own evangelical beliefs. I can understand why the neo-cons were so close with their Israeli counterparts. Israelis are overly self-confident. They have a way of speaking that make them sound like they know what they are talking about, even when they don’t have a clue. This is particularly true when it comes to intelligence analysis of the Middle East. Everyone in Israel “knows someone” who works for the Mossad (Israel’s CIA) or Shin Bet (internal security which exists only in totalitarian countries) and so has no problem speaing authoritatively about what is “really” going on. It sounds so real and impressive, even if it only has a tenouous connection to reality. The Debka site is a great example of this. It sounds like hard hitting intelligence analysis by “journalists” with deep connections in the Israeli “intelligence community.” It really is just one more right wing rag (this headline from today’s Debka is a typical example – “Obama’s charm offensive for radical rulers abandons Israel to Iranian threat”). Let’s not forget how often Israeli intelligence has been wrong and miscalculated on crucial events (the ’73 war, the Lebanon war, the intifadas one and two). Israeli intelligence is often excellent when it comes to tactical information. But when it comes to strategic information, it is almost always ideology driving analysis – they see what they want to see to prove their own particular perspective. This is almost always a recipe for disaster.
This all sounds so very familiar: doctoring intelligence to push unpopular (disastrous) policies – now where did we hear that before? In the run up to the Iraq war Israel was more than happy to provide the US with intelligence and analysis to egg on that disaster. The Bush & Co heard what they wanted to hear and that brought them closer to their Israeli counterparts. In fact, they brought them all the way on the inside where no foreign government has the right to be. Bush’s evangelical love of Israel broke down any resistance to this from the lower ranks, making Israel more “special” in its relationship to the US government, than any other country in the world.
My belief in a higher power was reinforced by Obama’s election victory. Imagine (only for a moment – don’t want to ruin your day) if McCain had won. He would be eating up the Israeli crap about Iran faster than Bush. We would most likely already be embroiled in a more horrific war with that country. McCain would also give the airbag Netanyahu and the criminal Lieberman a free hand to do as they please. The results would be unberable to watch. So thank God/gods/<your deity here> that Obama was elected and we get to read articles like the above.
One last point: I would love to be a fly on the wall when Rahm Emanuel get’s to meet Bibi and says to him: “ ביבי אנחנו לא פראירים ” – we’re not your suckers anymore. No wonder “Jerusalem is worried.”
Tags: Israeli Politics, Propaganda, US Politics