A much bigger strategic move

Well, so much for the supposedly all-powerful Jewish lobby. Lee Smith:

The vanishing political import of the American Jewish community appears to have taken [at] least some of its leaders—used to Oval Office sit-downs and plenty of concerned hand-holding—by surprise. But you can bet it didn’t take Obama six years to comprehend the political import of James Baker’s famous observation about the Jewish community’s voting patterns. If, as the former secretary of state once said, “F— the Jews; they don’t vote for us anyway,” Obama saw the flip-side of Baker’s crude insight: The president could stick it to the Jews, since they’d vote for Democrats no matter what.

Obama was able to hammer away at AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby largely because the liberal segments of the Jewish community found it convenient to believe that Obama’s target was just Benjamin Netanyahu, the stubborn and arrogant right-wing prime minister who drove decent people crazy. Sure, Bibi speaks proper English and went to MIT. But he built housing in settlements, he didn’t end the occupation, he stopped pretending to negotiate with a partner who also stopped being willing to pretend to negotiate, and then he made public his disagreement about Obama’s Iran deal, and spoke to Congress, to boot. Whatever stresses existed in the American-Israeli relationship were clearly Bibi’s fault. If he stopped being such a jerk, then good American Jewish liberals like themselves would all be eating latkes in the White House again.

What these community leaders seemed not to have fully understood is that American Jewish political power is linked not just to the financial power of Jewish donors or the influence of Jewish voters in a few key cities but more fundamentally to the strategic importance of the American-Israel relationship. What they certainly did not see is that tension with Bibi served Obama very nicely in a much bigger strategic move, which was the main aim of Obama’s Middle East policy since 2009: namely, to downgrade the U.S. alliance with Israel in order to make room for America’s new can-do regional partner, Iran.

Comments

[JTF]

Thanks for this. Bang on target.

[RY]

Agreed.
This simple article really sums the situation up.

Sadly.

Thank you, Mick.