The lovefest celebrated in Washington for all to see when Barack Obama welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu recently was markedly different from their contentious, behind-closed-doors meeting in April. But judging from the early assessments, it is not certain that their relationship will bear fruit in the near future.
For one, the American and Israeli leaders are both hoping that their get-together will serve their political ambitions at home. Obama, whose approval rating has lately dropped markedly, will in the next four months face crucial midterm elections, when Americans elect a new House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, now controlled by his Democratic Party. He apparently fears that his stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may affect the voting; it certainly is giving the Republican Party and its Jewish supporters ammunition to try and cripple Obama.
Netanyahu is also hopeful that mending his relationship with the American leader will improve his standing at home, following the international condemnation of Israel's bloody attack on the recent Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla. More importantly, many Israelis fear that the Israeli prime minister's heretofore poor relationship with Washington may affect upcoming Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations.
The Obama-Netanyahu meeting occurred as two Arab-American journalists of American, if not international, renown received a shameless and vicious lashing from some of their colleagues and the discredited pro-Israel lobby. Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, and Octavia Nasr, Middle East senior editor at CNN, were castigated by the Israeli lobby and their supporters within the media for their supposedly "inappropriate" comments, which were, respectively, critical of Israeli colonists and approving of a revered Muslim cleric aligned to Hezbollah.
What Thomas said offhandedly was that the Israelis in the Occupied Territories should go back to wherever they had come from. In answering a follow-up question, she suggested they could go back to Europe, America and elsewhere. Nasr, a Lebanese Christian, tweeted that she admired Grand Ayatollah Syed Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah for his stance in defence of Arab women's rights. Consequently, the 89-year-old Thomas quit her journalism career and Nasr was fired by CNN — a harsh decision. (Nasr might feel vindicated on learning that British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy had equally eulogised the ayatollah on her blog as "a decent man", but she was not disciplined by her government for her remarks — they were only removed from her site.)
Hypocritical reaction
Those who went after Thomas and Nasr failed to recall, to cite but one example of many, that Golda Meir, the late Israeli prime minister, once declared, "there is no such thing as Palestinians". If that was not an "inappropriate" remark, what is? Anyway, she was never taken to task.
Hardly a week passed between Netanyahu being praised by Obama for his readiness to take "risks for peace" and his government demolishing three Arab houses in occupied East Jerusalem — an action that is bound to infuriate Palestinians, including Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently said there was no point in resuming direct talks with the Israelis under current circumstances. Even Haaretz, the Israeli daily, acknowledged that this Israel action in occupied East Jerusalem has "effectively end[ed] an unofficial freeze of such internationally-condemned demolitions".
Obama may be walking a thin line, but he should not miss the point that Israel is nowadays facing increasing criticism from the American Jewish community and others over its deplorable actions. This should embolden him to take crucial steps towards resolving this 62-year-old conflict.
For example, the World Zionist Organisation is slowly being dismantled "and nobody seems to care", writes J.J. Goldberg, editorial director of the American Jewish newspaper The Forward. In a lead story, The New York Times last week revealed that in violation of US laws "at least 40 American [evangelical and Jewish] groups ... have collected more than $200 million [Dh735.6 million] in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish [colonies] in the West Bank and [occupied] East Jerusalem over the last decade".
After a visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Times' columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes, "Israel goes out of its way to display its ugliest side to the world by tearing down Palestinian homes or allowing rapacious [colonists] to steal Palestinian land". In another column, he stresses that "the [Israeli] occupation is morally repugnant" and goes on to quote an Israeli human-rights activist who pointed out an Israeli colony "that looks like an American suburb". Of the fowl kept there, he said: "Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians round here".
How can Obama close his eyes while Netanyahu proceeds with his two-faced policies? Must we all wait until the election in November? But then what will Palestinians do if he loses?
George Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
