Netanyahu in US

Why did he do it?

What possessed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept an invitation from the Republicans in the US Congress to come and attack President Barack Obama’s policy on Iran without letting the White House know?

Netanyahu claims that his was “a fateful, even historic mission” to voice his concern for the fate of Israel and all Jews.

But we already knew about his concerns — and that many Jews, in the US and elsewhere, do not feel that he was speaking for them.

Did Netanyahu crave the applause of his Republican supporters?

Is he gambling on the chance of a Republican presidency in 2016?

If so, he got the applause; but, given the current polls, the latter motive would be quite a gamble.

Or was Netanyahu simply using the US Congress as a venue for his own campaign to keep his job?

Did he wish to impress voters back home with a starring role on a world stage?

This, too, would seem to be a gamble: many Israelis, however, worried they might be about an Iranian nuclear bomb, have been highly critical of Netanyahu’s provocation of Obama, and of many Jewish Democrats.

Two former Mossad directors joined a chorus of Israelis in arguing that he should no longer be prime minister.

Meir Dagan, who resigned as the Israeli intelligence chief in 2011, called Netanyahu’s grandstanding in Washington “destructive to the future and security of Israel”.

Whatever his motives, Netanyahu has achieved what no Israeli leader ever has: not only infuriating the US president (who was already quite angry with him), but also earning the public rebuke of people who would normally have supported any Israeli leader, whatever they might have thought in private.

If an Israeli prime minister cannot even count on the backing of a man like Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, he is in trouble.

By forcing Americans — and not just Jews or Democrats — to choose between their loyalty to Israel and the president of their own country, Netanyahu has punched a large hole in Americans’ normally bipartisan support for Israel.

This is not to say that US politicians have always agreed with Israeli policies. But few have thought it worth their while to express their criticism in public.

The benefits of doing so rarely outweigh the costs: lost campaign contributions, accusations of anti-Semitism, charges of betraying a close ally (“the only democracy in the Middle East”), and so on.

The fact that Israel could always count on US backing, especially on such public occasions as congressional speeches by an Israeli leader, only confirmed the assumption of many people around the world that Israel and the US are joined like Siamese twins.

Some think that Israel is the cat’s paw of the US; others believe it is the other way around.

In the spirit of that notorious 19th century tsarist forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, anti-Semites think “the Jews” run the US government, Wall Street and the media.

Such beliefs, of course, have been around for much longer than the modern state of Israel.

Nineteenth- and 20th-century European nationalists often regarded the US as the natural home for capitalists and “rootless cosmopolitans” without any loyalty to their native soil.

Only money ruled in America, it was thought, so that meant that the Jews ruled.

Though it was Stalin who used the phrase “rootless cosmopolitans” to describe unwanted Jews, anti-Semites believed that Jews were natural Bolsheviks and probably pulled the strings in the Soviet Union, too.

It was widely assumed than Jews, whether capitalist or communist, knew no allegiance except to their own people; after 1948, that increasingly came to mean the state of Israel.

By claiming to be the leader of all Jewish people, wherever they live, Netanyahu has only strengthened that notion.

In fact, the US was not always as pro-Israel as it is today.

The French were Israel’s greatest supporters until President Charles de Gaulle turned away from Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967.

America’s subsequent patronage of Israel had less to do with evangelical passion for the Holy Land, or a spontaneous love for the Jewish people, than with the Cold War.

But over time, especially in conservative political discourse, criticism of Israel increasingly came to be regarded as not just anti-Semitic but also anti-American.

There is some truth to this view.

The old anti-Semitic myth about America being run by Jews has not completely disappeared — especially (but by no means only) in the Middle East.

But the almost automatic identification in Washington of US interests with Israel’s has made it difficult to criticise either country without criticising the other.

Now, by openly seeking to undermine the US president, Netanyahu is breaking that link.

He has made it easier for American Jews, even those who feel a deep devotion to Israel, to be critical of its leaders. This will also make it less costly for American politicians to oppose Israeli policies with which they disagree.

Some might see this as a defeat for Israel.

In fact, the opposite may be true. Netanyahu’s ill-considered trip to Washington might be the best thing that could have happen to Israel.

It is in neither country’s interest to be seen as the other’s pawn. And a tougher US stance towards its ally might force the Israelis to try harder to come to terms with the Palestinians.

This is not what Netanyahu intended. But it might end up being his greatest achievement.

The writer is professor of democracy, human rights, and journalism at Bard College, and the author of “Year Zero: A History of 1945”. ©Project Syndicate, 2015. www.project-syndicate.org