Judging Israel
By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
BATH, England:
For all of the optimistic predictions about the "End of History" and the universal triumph of liberal democracy, much of the world still does not enjoy democratic government as the West understands it. Yet in the West itself there is another problem: the "democratic deficit," or the way the political class fails to reflect the wishes of the electorate.
In Europe this has long been seen in the gulf between rulers and ruled over the integration of the European Union. Again and again the political classes have planned another stage of federal integration, and again and again these have been rejected by voters.
Now there is another case, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What makes it more striking is that this gulf is increasingly visible on both sides of the Atlantic.
Leaving aside the latest dismal exhibition of European division, indecision and impotence, political leaders in Western Europe have habitually tended much more toward the Israeli side than have their voters.
When the German chancellor Angela Merkel says that responsibility for the latest violence in Gaza "clearly and exclusively" lies with Hamas, polls show that she is quite out of step with German public opinion.
For obvious reasons, Germany is not happily placed to take sides over Israel, but much the same is true in other countries, including my own. Gordon Brown limply called for an end to violence, but his government has not demanded a legally binding cease-fire, or more generally followed a British public dismayed by Israeli actions. And this was the very issue which effectively ended Tony Blair's prime ministership.
By 2006, much of the country - not least Blair's own MPs, restlessly waited for him to depart - and then came the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon that summer. Then as now, British opinion was strongly critical of Israel - in one poll only 22 percent of voters thought the Israeli response in Lebanon was justified - and in favor of an immediate cease-fire. As always, but for the last time, Blair wouldn't deviate from his absolute loyalty to Washington, and thereby Israel. For his party, that was the last straw.
Since the only Western country that really counts in the Middle East is the United States, any change there is of much greater significance. And for what Keynes called "the history of opinion," a change is increasingly evident, or rather a reversal of a previous change. In the 1950s it was the Europeans who supported Israel, notably when the London and Paris governments conspired with Tel Aviv in the ill-fated Suez adventure.
It was Washington that pulled the rug from under the conspirators. The American administration was then well-nigh hostile toward Israel, which President Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, his secretary of state, saw as an impediment to their Cold War strategy. A shift began in 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy, who turned sharply toward Israel, and public opinion followed with the 1967 war, when Americans overwhelmingly supported Israel.
For decades now, successive administrations have offered staunch support to Israel, which has plainly been a critical factor guiding Israeli policy. And the U.S. Congress has been even more fervent than the White House. In July 2006, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of total support for Israel by 410 votes to 8, And the newly elected Senate has just reaffirmed "unwavering commitment" to Israel, with the House following suit.
Until recently it could be argued that Capitol Hill was speaking for the American people, but evidence suggests that this no longer so, and that another democratic deficit is opening.
In fact, a potential change of mood has been palpable for some time to any astute observer, such as the late and greatly missed Michael Kelly, a Washington Post columnist and editor of successive magazines, latterly the Atlantic Monthly, before he was killed covering the invasion of Iraq.
Not long before his death, we lunched in Boston, where the Atlantic was then still published, and talked about the Middle East. A smart, funny, bare-knuckled right-winger, Mike Kelly followed what might be called the conservative party line in support of Israel, and he said that middle-aged Middle America was still reliable in this respect. But, he added ruefully, he had found an entirely different story when visiting college campuses - which is confirmed by Tony Judt.
That brilliant historian and shrewd commentator has described an incident some years ago. He was trying to explain to his class at New York University, where he's a professor, the emotional resonance of the Spanish Civil War, and why Spain under Franco had long remained "a land of shame that people boycotted for its crimes and repression," saying that he couldn't think of a contemporary equivalent of any country so disliked and despised.
"What about Israel?" one young woman asked. A onetime schoolboy Zionist, who is now a severe critic of Israel, even Judt was greatly surprised when "most of the class (including many of the sizeable Jewish contingent) nodded their approval. The times they are indeed a-changing."
Those college kids were the next generation of adult American citizens, and we can now see the times a-changing in polls.
A majority of Americans still endorse the Israeli action in Gaza, over those who don't and think Israel should have pursued a diplomatic path - but only by 44 to 41 percent, a much slimmer margin of support than Israel enjoyed quite recently.
More to the point, Democratic voters oppose the Israeli attack by a margin of 22 percent, and a Democrat is, after all, about to be inaugurated as president. The outgoing president has continued to offer Israel total support, and Barack Obama has prudently said nothing at all about Gaza. But he'll have to say as well as do something after he takes office, and before long Washington politicians, on Capitol Hill as well as in the White House, will have to take account of the American people and their changing view of the conflict.
For more than 60 years Israel has shown that it can win every battle by military might. But there is also what the Declaration of Independence calls "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind," and the battle for opinion cannot be won by brute force alone.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include "The Controversy of Zion: Jewish Nationalism, the Jewish State, and the Unresolved Jewish Dilemma."
