Although I'll take it as a starting point. There seems to have been only one piece of good news to come out of last week's Israeli elections, which resulted in an apparent victory for Benjamin Netanyahu (he still has to put together a coalition of parties, but that seem likely at this point). That good news is President Obama's unwillingness to accept the election outcome as a mandate, or otherwise as a justification, for Netanyahu's last minute descent into racism and hatred as a means for coming from behind in the polls. Far from offering any kind of an olive branch to the current and likely future Israeli prime minister, he has actively and aggressively pushed back against him. You can see this illustrated here, among other places on the Web, if you have not done so already.
On the other hand, given the contempt that Netanyahu has already shown for Obama, the President's rebuke is not likely to result in a change in Israeli policies toward the Palestinian Arabs, Iran, or anyone or anything else. From the time he first rose to power back in the 1990s until the present, Netanyahu has been one thing, and one thing only: a bully par excellence. Bullies are relentless in their self-interest, and bullies are opportunistic, and Netanyahu's behavior in the days immediately before and after the election illustrate both tendencies. Before the vote, he appealed to right-wing Israeli voters by warning of large numbers of Arabs voting, and abandoning his previous half-hearted commitment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since the election, however, he has desperately tried to walk back both statements, and convinced no one in the process that he stands for anything except himself.
Netanyahu has effective done for Israel what Ronald Reagan and his followers did for the United States: destroy the vision of an open, progressive society that had the power to cure its own ills, and replaced it with a pervasive climate of them-versus-us fear that destroys everyone but the promoters of the fear--who long ago learned how to make money off of it. How successful has this been in Israel? Well, the election outcome says something about how many Israelis, even supposedly liberal ones, buy into Netanyahu's zero-sum vision of the Palestinian question. But no one should think that this success has been limited to this. Israel, founded by Jews with a progressive, even socialistic bent, has parted so far from its founding vision that it has its own 1% problem. And let it not be said that Netanyahu is not canny enough to join the economic and Palestinian issues at the hip. Housing's too expensive? Simple. Bulldoze the Palestinians out of their homes, and then there's plenty of land for everyone. (Except the Palestinians, of course).
I'm not ignorant of the existential problems Israel faces. It is surrounded by nations whose citizens and governments are devoted to its destruction. Even worse, those nations are perfectly happy to sacrifice its fellow Arabs, the Palestinians, as proxies for its hatred. As long as the Palestinians are willing to blow themselves up, why should those nations do more than silently underwrite the violence. Israel has no power to change the way those nations, and its peoples, view Israel. That is a key part of the existential reality. The other is that this leaves Israel needing an international "big brother" to stand behind in, economically and militarily. The United States has played that role cheerfully for decades, in no small part because of a sense of shared values with the Middle East's only democracy (which is why even "peaceniks" like George McGovern supported Israel reflexively).
But, when it comes to international alliances, the United States cannot depend on Israel alone. It needs support from the international community for its own existence. And the international community is slowly but surely turning against Israel--or, at the very least, against Netanyahu's vision of what Israel should be. This too is reflected all over the Web: here, for example. Even worse for Netanyahu and his vision, to say nothing of the corrupt Republicans who support both, American public opinion, and especially Jewish-American public opinion, has begun to call into question our historically reflexive support for Israel.
Well, I'm openly calling it into question. I'm a long-standing supporter of Israel's right to exist and flourish. I felt that way long before I married into a Jewish family, and I still feel that way today. But Israel can no longer exist as a nation that effectively is divided into citizens and refugees. And the United States, as Israel's chief existential underwriter, can no longer afford to support Israel in its present form. The price tag for doing so is the soul of both nations, as well as a war from which no one might survive. I do care about and pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem is far from being at peace; if anything, the status quo is ready to explode.
It's time for Obama to have a dialogue with Netanyahu, once the new Israeli government is formed. Actually, a monologue, one that begins with Obama saying "I talk, you take notes." Obama must demand that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and its own Jewish citizens conform to the original vision supported by both Israel's founders and its supporters in this country. And, above all, it must make future American aid, even military aid, conditional upon the meeting of this demand.
I'm not alone in feeling this way. It's past time to pretend that those of us who think this way are on our own. We must speak up without fear or failure. Israel needs us. Not the Israel of Netanyahu and his well-heeled, bigoted supporters, but the Israel that can and should still exist, as a light for the rest of the Middle East, and the rest of the world.
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