More Oddities in The US "Debate" Over Israel/Gaza

This Rasmussen Reports poll
-- the first to survey American public opinion specifically regarding
the Israeli attack on Gaza -- strongly bolsters the severe disconnect I documented the other day
between (a) American public opinion on U.S. policy towards Israel and
(b) the consensus views expressed by America's political leadership.
Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided
over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against
militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive
-- by a 24-point margin (31-55%). By stark constrast, Republicans, as
one would expect (in light of their history of supporting virtually any
proposed attack on Arabs and Muslims), overwhelmingly support the
Israeli bombing campaign (62-27%).

It's not at all surprising,
then, that Republican leaders -- from Dick Cheney and John Bolton to
virtually all appendages of the right-wing noise machine, from talk
radio and Fox News to right-wing blogs and neoconservative journals --
are unquestioning supporters of the Israeli attack. After all, they're
expressing the core ideology of the overwhelming majority of their
voters and audience.

Much more notable is the fact that
Democratic Party leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi --
are just as lockstep in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli
attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or
even reservations about, Israeli actions. While some Democratic
politicians who are marginalized by the party's leadership are willing to express the views
which Democratic voters overwhelmingly embrace, the suffocating, fully
bipartisan orthodoxy which typically predominates in America when it
comes to Israel -- thou shalt not speak ill of Israel, thou shalt
support all actions it takes -- is in full force with this latest
conflict.

Is there any other significant issue in American
political life, besides Israel, where (a) citizens split almost evenly
in their views, yet (b) the leaders of both parties adopt identical
lockstep positions which leave half of the citizenry with no real
voice? More notably still, is there any other position, besides
Israel, where (a) a party's voters overwhelmingly embrace one
position (Israel should not have attacked Gaza) but (b) that party's
leadership unanimously embraces the exact opposite position (Israel was
absolutely right to attack Gaza and the U.S. must support Israel
unequivocally)? Does that happen with any other issue?

Equally
noteworthy is that the factional breakdown regarding Israel-Gaza
mirrors quite closely the factional alliances that arose with regard to
the Iraq War. Just as was true with Iraq, one finds vigorous pro-war
sentiment among the Dick Cheney/National Review/neoconservative/hard-core-GOP
crowd, joined (as was true for Iraq) by some American liberals who
typically oppose that faction yet eagerly join with them when it comes
to Israel. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world -- Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East, the U.N. leadership
-- opposes and condemns the attack, all to no avail. The parties with
the superior military might (the U.S. and Israel) dismiss world opinion
as essentially irrelevant. Even the pro-war rhetorical tactics are the
same (just as those who opposed the Iraq War were demonized as being
"pro-Saddam," those who oppose the Israeli attack on Gaza are now
"pro-Hamas").

Substantively, there are certainly meaningful
differences between the U.S. attack on Iraq and the Israeli attack
on Gaza (most notably the fact that Hamas really does shoot rockets
into Israel and has killed Israeli civilians and Israel really is
blockading and occupying Palestinian land, whereas Iraq did not attack
and could not attack the U.S. as the U.S. was sanctioning them and
controlling their airspace). But the underlying logic of both wars are
far more similar than different: military attacks, invasions and
occupations will end rather than exacerbate terrorism; the Muslim world
only understands brute force; the root causes of the disputes are
irrelevant; diplomacy and the U.N. are largely worthless. It's
therefore entirely unsurprising that the sides split along the same
general lines. What's actually somewhat remarkable is that there
is even more lockstep consensus among America's political leadership
supporting the Israeli attack on Gaza than there was supporting the
U.S.'s own attack on Iraq (at least a few Democratic Congressional leaders opposed the war on Iraq, unlike for Israel's bombing of Gaza, where they virtually all unequivocally support it).

* * * * *

Ultimately,
what is most notable about the "debate" in the U.S. over Israel-Gaza is
that virtually all of it occurs from the perspective of Israeli
interests but almost none of it is conducted from the perspective of
American interests. There is endless debate over whether Israel's
security is enhanced or undermined by the attack on Gaza and whether
the 40-year-old Israeli occupation, expanding West Bank settlements and
recent devastating blockade or Hamas militancy and attacks on Israeli
civilians bear more of the blame. American opinion-making elites march
forward to opine on the historical rights and wrongs of the endless
Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict with such fervor and fixation
that it's often easy to forget that the U.S. is not actually a direct
party to this dispute.

Though the ins-and-outs of Israeli
grievances and strategic considerations are endlessly examined, there
is virtually no debate over whether the U.S. should continue to play
such an active, one-sided role in this dispute. It's the American
taxpayer, with their incredibly consequential yet never-debated multi-billion-dollar aid packages to Israel, who are vital in funding this costly Israeli assault on Gaza. Just as was true for Israel's bombing of Lebanon, it's American bombs that -- with the whole world watching -- are blowing up children and mosques,
along with Hamas militants, in Gaza. And it's the American veto power
that, time and again, blocks any U.N. action to stop these wars.

For
those reasons, the pervasive opposition and anger around the world from
the Israeli assault on Gaza is not only directed to Israel but -- quite
rationally and understandably -- to America as well. Virtually the
entire world, other than large segments of the American public, see
Israeli actions as American actions. The attack on Gaza thus harms not
only Israel's reputation and credibility, but America's reputation and
credibility as well.

And for what? Even for those Americans who,
for whatever their reasons, want endlessly to fixate on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who care deeply and passionately about
whether the Israelis or the Palestinians control this or that West Bank
hill or village and want to spend the rest of their days arguing about
who did what to whom in 1948 and 1967, what possible interests do
Americans generally have in any of that, sufficient to involve
ourselves so directly and vigorously on one side, and thereby subject
ourselves to the significant costs -- financial, reputational,
diplomatic and security -- from doing so?

It's one thing to argue
that Israel is being both wise and just by bombing the densely
populated Gaza Strip. It's another thing entirely to argue that
the U.S. should use all of its resources to support Israel as it does
so. Those are two entirely separate questions. Arguments insisting
that the Gaza attack is good and right for Israel don't mean that they
are good and right for the U.S. Yet unstinting, unquestioning American
support for whatever Israel does is just tacitly assumed in most of
these discussions. The core assumption is that if it can be established
that this is the right thing for Israel to do, then it must be the
right thing for the U.S. to support it. The notion that the two
countries may have separate interests -- that this may be good for
Israel to do but not for the U.S. to support -- is the one issue that,
above all else, may never be examined.

The "change" that many
anticipate (or, more accurately, hope) that Obama will bring about is
often invoked as a substance-free mantra, a feel-good political slogan.
But to the extent it means anything specific, at the very least it has
to entail that there will be a substantial shift in how America is
perceived in the world, the role that we in fact play, the
civil-liberties-erosions and militarized culture that inevitably arise
from endlessly involving ourselves in numerous, hate-fueled military
conflicts around the world. Our blind support for Israel, our
eagerness to make all of its disputes our own disputes, our refusal to
acknowledge any divergence of interests between us and that other
country, our active impeding rather than facilitating of diplomatic
resolutions between it and its neighbors are major impediments to any
meaningful progress in those areas.

UPDATE: One
related point: I have little appreciation for those who believe, one
way or the other, that they can reliably predict what Obama is going to
do -- either on this issue or others. That requires a clairvoyance
which I believe people lack.

Some argue that Obama has filled key
positions with politicians who have a history of virtually absolute
support for Israeli actions -- Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel
-- because Obama intends to continue, more or less, the Bush policy of
blind support for Israel. Others argue the opposite: that those
appointments are necessary to vest the Obama administration with the
credibility to take a more active role in pushing the Israelis to a
negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, and that in particular,
Clinton would not have left her Senate seat unless she believed she
could finish Bill Clinton's work and obtain for herself the
legacy-building accomplishment of forging an agreement between
the Israelis and Palestinians (this morning's NYThints at that scenario).

I
personally find the latter theory marginally more persuasive, but there
is simply no way to know until Obama is inaugurated. Whatever else is
true, the more domestic political pressure is exerted demanding that
the U.S. play a more even-handed and constructive role in facilitating
a diplomatic resolution, the more likely it is that this will happen.