{"id":141788,"date":"2014-11-11T14:35:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T14:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=141788"},"modified":"2014-11-11T14:35:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T14:35:00","slug":"netanyahu-national-security-risk-washington-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/netanyahu-national-security-risk-washington-knows\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu Is a National Security Risk – And Washington Knows It"},"content":{"rendered":"

An anonymous U.S. official caused a dustup when he called the Israeli prime minister “chickenshit.” Others might have said worse.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Adil E. Shamoo and Peter Certo<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Last month, an anonymous U.S. official stirred a tempest in a teapot when he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u201ca chickenshit<\/a>\u201d in comments to the Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s Jeffrey Goldberg<\/a>. The insinuation was that while Netanyahu will happily rile up his right-wing base on issues related to Palestine or Iran, he lacks the political courage to take meaningful steps to resolve either conflict.<\/p>\n

State Department officials scurried to disavow<\/a> themselves of the remark. But the incident revealed an increasingly common conclusion in Washington: Netanyahu\u2019s foot-dragging on Middle East peace is not only frustrating for the United States\u2013it\u2019s dangerous.<\/p>\n

Once a taboo subject in Washington, the value of the U.S.-Israeli alliance has increasingly come under scrutiny among even leading members of the foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n

As Anthony Cordesman<\/a>\u2013a Mideast expert at the center-right Center for Strategic and International Studies\u2013observed, \u201cIt is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

General David Petraeus<\/a>, back when he was the head of the U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict \u201cfoments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel.\u201d Even President Obama<\/a> has listed the conflict as a factor in U.S. wars in the Middle East that are \u201ccosting us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

These comments by leading American figures were made four years ago\u2013well before the Obama administration had had its biggest dustups with Netanyahu\u2019s government. Two Gaza<\/a>wars<\/a> and another round of failed<\/a> peace talks<\/a> later, nothing has changed except Israel\u2019s increasing willingness to flout international law<\/a>\u2013as it did in its massive assault on Gaza earlier this year, which killed some 1,500 civilians.<\/p>\n

Now, even U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry\u2013a pro-Israel stalwart<\/a>\u2013admits<\/a>, to the chagrin of Israeli officials, that the lack of progress in peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians is feeding support for the Islamic State. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a leader I met with in the region,\u201d Kerry said of his efforts to cobble together an anti-Islamic State coalition, \u201cwho didn\u2019t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

One would think that such complaints from a key ally and patron would elicit some soul-searching in the Israeli government. Yet instead of charting a new course in his speech at the United Nations last September, Netanyahu fell back on an old, lazy recipe of demonization<\/a>, equating Hamas with the Islamic State and the Islamic State with Iran. And he continued oft-used delaying tactics, inviting the current coalition of Arab countries fighting the Islamic Stateto draft a new peace proposal<\/a> for Israel and the Palestinians\u2013despite his longstanding rejection of the Arab Peace Initiative<\/a> drafted over 10 years ago by many of those same countries. Officials in the Obama administration were reportedly \u201cunconvinced\u201d<\/a> that Netanyahu\u2019s proposal was sincere, given his lack of interest in direct talks with the Palestinians themselves.<\/p>\n

In addition, just days before an October meeting with President Obama, Israel announced plans to construct 2,610 new housing units in East Jerusalem in violation of existing agreements. In a rare public rebuke, Obama spokesman Josh Earnest<\/a> said that the new settlements will alienate Israel\u2019s \u201cclosest allies\u201d \u2013presumably including Washington\u2013and \u201ccall into question Israel\u2019s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uncowed, Netanyahu dismissed<\/a> the criticism, describing the U.S. rejection of the new settlements as \u201cagainst American values\u201d and \u201canti-peace.\u201d When an Israeli prime minister describes longstanding U.S. strategic interests\u2013in this case, conditions that would enable the creation of a viable Palestinian state and a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict\u2013as \u201cun-American,\u201d it\u2019s a clear indication that the United States cannot continue its current course of appeasing Israel\u2019s every demand.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a conclusion increasingly shared<\/a> by Israel\u2019s longtime allies in Europe. Sweden\u2019s new government recently indicated that it will recognize Palestine as a state. The UK parliament followed up with a symbolic recognition vote<\/a> of its own, and more European countries may soon do the same.<\/p>\n

Groups in the United States and in Europe, meanwhile, have worked with Palestinian activists to organize a boycott<\/a> of Israeli settlement products and academic institutions.\u00a0Indeed, U.S. civil society\u2013including many Jewish organizations\u2013is now leaps and bounds<\/a> ahead of the U.S. government when it comes to rethinking the U.S.-Israel relationship.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Netanyahu now looks poised<\/a> to mobilize his supporters in the U.S. Congress to vote against any nuclear agreement between Washington and Tehran.<\/p>\n

Yet even as official Washington simmers with frustration at Netanyahu\u2019s simultaneous demands for U.S. support and disregard for U.S. interests, officials rushed to put out the fire started by the anonymous \u201cchickenshit\u201d quip. As Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2019s Steve Walt put it<\/a>, if Washington pretends that the \u201c\u2018special relationship\u2019 is hunky-dory, even when it is obvious to even casual observers that it is not,\u201d then \u201cNetanyahu\u2019s not chickenshit\u2013the White House is.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Adil E. Shamoo is professor at University of Maryland and an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He is a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of Equal Worth\u2013When Humanity Will Have Peace<\/strong>. His website is www.forwarorpeace.com<\/a>. Peter Certo is the editor of Foreign Policy In Focus.<\/em><\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anonymous U.S. official caused a dustup when he called the Israeli prime minister “chickenshit.” Others might have said worse. Adil E. Shamoo and Peter Certo Last month, an anonymous U.S. official stirred a tempest in a teapot when he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u201ca chickenshit\u201d in comments to the Atlantic\u2019s Jeffrey Goldberg. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-141788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}