What Israeli Elections Mean for Obama

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu waves to supporters at the Likud party headquarters in Tel AvivWhile in most countries immigration moves the electorate to the left, in Israel immigration moved the country to the right. In the United States the left is counting on demographics to make it easier for them to win elections, but in Israel demographic shifts have made it easier for the right to win.

But the biggest problem for the Israeli left is that it’s tethered to its own version of ObamaCare in the form of the Palestinian Authority which won’t make peace, won’t stop funding terrorism and won’t stop playing the victim. As with ObamaCare, the Israeli left teeters between running on the disastrous peace process that everyone hates and pivoting away from it toward economic bread and butter issues.

For Obama and European leaders, Israel is reducible to the peace process. And the Israeli left depends on the support of foreign governments for its network of foreign funded non-profit organizations. The Israeli left can’t let go of its exploding version of ObamaCare because the left is becoming a foreign organization with limited domestic support. Its electorate isn’t in Israel; it’s in Brussels.

The Israeli left is short on ideas, both foreign and domestic, and its last remaining card is Obama.

Escalating a crisis in relations has been the traditional way for US administrations to force Israeli governments out of office. Bill Clinton did it to Netanyahu and as Israeli elections appear on the horizon Obama would love to do it all over again.

There’s only one problem.

The United States is popular in Israel, but Obama isn’t. Obama’s spats with Netanyahu ended up making the Israeli leader more popular. The plan was for Obama to gaslight Israelis by maintaining a positive image in Israel while lashing out at the Jewish State so that the blame would fall on Netanyahu.

That was what Obama’s trip to Israel had been about. While his approval ratings in Israel briefly picked up, they clattered down again over his attitude during the recent Hamas war. Polls show that the majority of Israelis don’t trust him to have their back on Islamic terrorism or Iran. And that’s bad news for him and for an Israeli left that needs to sell the image of a good Obama and a bad Netanyahu.

The foreign policy crowd is divided on whether Obama should intervene in Israel’s elections and how much. Trial balloons being floated show that Obama Inc. is at the very least willing to play coy about suggestions of sanctioning Israel. The sanctions are unlikely to ever get past Congress, but they never have to exist. Obama’s people are letting the Israeli left and their media outlet Haaretz do the heavy lifting by drawing up political doomsday scenarios and then issuing non-denial denials.

The idea is to undermine Netanyahu without getting Obama’s hands dirty. Anonymous leaks provide plausible deniability without anything that can officially be traced back to Obama. While Obama, Biden and Hillary spin the attacks as “normal disagreements between friends” for the consumption of Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish, the Israeli left warns that the relationship between America and Israel has been completely wrecked.

While Jewish Democrats have remained oblivious, as intended, these tactics have only hurt Obama’s image among the Israeli target audience. And that has strengthened Netanyahu’s image as a strong leader willing to stand up for his country’s interests.

In trying to weaken Netanyahu, Obama only made him stronger.

The Israeli left however isn’t done yet. Unpopular with the public, its members still control the police, the judiciary, the media, academia and the entertainment industry. They form the Israeli “Deep State” made up of everyone from top security officials to the media who are constantly warning about the threats to democracy from democracy, the dangers of right-wing extremism and the need to crack down on “incitement” which usually means any view that diverges from that of the left.

When it comes to elections, the left compensates for its unpopularity with fake third parties that claim to be centrist or reformist. Yesh Atid, the current incarnation of the fake third party built around an anchorman who went from high school dropout to the Minister of Finance, is sinking, but it had already fulfilled its purpose. The next incarnation of the fake third party will be headed by Moshe Kahlon.

Moshe Kahlon is a familiar figure, a defector from the conservative Likud party, a fake moderate who claims that the “extreme right” has taken over his old party. Swap out Reagan for Begin and it’s the exact same rhetoric you can hear from a Charlie Crist or a Larry Pressler.

The left may not be able to win a popularity contest, let alone a contest of ideas, but it has been agile at manipulating Israel’s multi-party system to its advantage. It doesn’t need to beat the right. It just needs to build a coalition out of fake third parties fueled by public frustration with the existing dominant parties while finding ways to splinter the right. And that’s where Obama can do the most harm.

Obama has failed at winning over Israelis, but he doesn’t need to if he can force Netanyahu to make enough concessions to destroy his image. And then the right begins to eat itself. It’s the same tactic that Obama used against Congressional Republicans. Uniting the left and dividing the right had worked well in America. Netanyahu’s willingness to compromise has lost the right without winning over anyone else.

Netanyahu may not be beatable this time around, but if his coalition can be watered down with enough leftists then it compromises his ability to get anything done while creating a ticking time bomb. New elections are the result of the ticking time bomb finally going off. The “inclusive” coalition favored by this administration last time around effectively undermined the Netanyahu government.

If a more solid conservative coalition emerges from the election then Obama will have lost. But the overall relationship would remain unchanged even if the left won.

No Israeli government can deliver the things that Obama wants because they are physically impossible. The PLO does not want peace. It will not agree to any final deal that ends all future demands on Israel and all justifications for violence against the Jewish State. And even if such a deal were reached, it would have no impact on Hamas which controls Gaza and will control the West Bank. Nor would it make the regional Muslim violence that the conflict is frequently blamed for vanish into thin air.

Even a government of the left would still be berated because there are Jews living in Jerusalem and across Israel in places that Obama disapproves of. No Israeli government could ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million Jews. And even if it did, new demands and claims of occupied territory would follow.

A government of the left can however give Obama political cover. It would avoid making statements about Iran and freely put Israeli lives at risk to meet administration demands. Its members would help Obama maintain the illusion of a friendly relationship no matter how ugly things become behind the scenes. There would be no more public tension and nothing to raise questions for American Jews.

And that’s what Obama really wants. Israel is meant to be a scapegoat in foreign affairs and a safe fundraising line for Democratic politicians. It’s supposed to take the blame for Obama’s foreign policies while posing for photos with him for Jewish audiences.

That’s where Netanyahu rocked the boat by speaking out. That’s what infuriates Obama.

Obama’s ideal Israeli government would allow itself to be berated and blamed for everything without ever speaking up in its own defense. It would be pathetically grateful for any attention from Obama. That’s all the Israeli left can offer him and it can’t even deliver that because it can’t win.

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  • jeepwonder

    Israel realizes the dangers in trusting any muslim, and Obama’s muslim loyalties are out for all to see.

    Bibi wants Israel to survive so that obviously puts him at odd with Obama. I just don’t see Obama outsmarting a wet bag. Valerie Jarrett may understand islamist thinking due to her connections and loyalties towards Iran, but she doesn’t understand Bibi.

  • truebearing

    Not being from Israel, and not being Jewish, I can only say that most of what I have learned about the political world in Israel comes from Daniel and FPM in general…and of course, the ever-so-impartial and brilliant Jen Psaki. Try as one might, there doesn’t seem to be much of any value to be gleaned from our media parrots.

    It seems that the Israeli people, much like the slower to awaken American people, have felt that visceral discomfort when watching or listening to Obama. His treachery is palpable. He projects an unmistakable malignancy. Israel, more than any nation on earth, has constantly faced the exigency of survival. That requisite awareness has made them far too adept in the detection of hostility, not to mention affinity to Islam, to fall for the lies that trip off in tandem from Obama’s forked-tongue.

    • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

      This is all true. Whatever truth is reported about the Mideast and Israel, can be found in Daniel’s columns on Sultan Knish and FrontPage. The MSM, on the other hand, is a fantasy land much like a video game you really don’t want to play.

      • truebearing

        Just look at the disparity in reporting on the Middle East between FPM and Fox, which is the most honest network, by far. Then look at the rest. It is apalling how corrupt our media has become. Any counter-revolution in this country, should it come to that, should make the media target #1.

        • herb benty

          #2 Academia- marxist, anti-semitic, anti-Christian, anti-American “professors”……next!

          • vonrock

            Surely many more, once you start lying you can’t stop.
            But it’s the things we don’t know thats troubling.
            ‘when vile men rule wickedness walks on both sides
            or something like that.

          • herb benty

            Ya, wickedness affects everyone and everything.

  • camp7

    There is no boat of compromise, there is no bridge of trust.
    Obama is the demon, of traitor and the cussed.
    The Jews are his derision, the Jews are his demise.
    The Left can give him cover, but blame is his fact cries.
    Israeli find their future, Israeli know their past.
    Israeli stands against the band that will make lies to last.

    A leader they have now, one that we have none.
    It’s up to them to rock the boat to spill the wicked fun.
    Robes of hate with power now,
    will feed the foes of good.
    Israel, Netanyahu,
    give them what truth should.

    • herb benty

      That was good!

  • StanleyT

    Kahlon scares me. The Israeli public seems to keep looking for a saviour and every election, there’s that “great white hope”, the new party that’s going to change things. Have they learned their lesson after Lapid and Yesh Atid? I sure hope so.

    • Daniel_Greenfield

      People don’t tend to learn their lessons. And they listen to the media.

  • WillielomanIII

    Spot on analysis. Like the US, I am still amazed that conservatives have abandoned the media and the popular culture to the Leftists, it is an idiotic policy. The most effective thing that the “right” in both countries could do is to buy the popular media businesses, and have a focused effort to penetrate the popular culture, entertainment, etc.

    • Hi there

      In Israel, it is a bit more complicated. Conservatives haven’t abandoned the culture, as much as Leftists have bullied them out.
      The sheer arrogance that Leftists use when attacking non-Leftists (in the Orwellian name of stopping ‘incitement’ as Daniel pointed out) can never be used by people less arrogant and more tolerant. In other words, Conservatives are too timid. They are accused and don’t know how to respond. They turn inward and don’t bother to argue with the Leftist elite.
      The result is a cowed majority, with little medium for expression, and a dictatorial minority who use words like “liberty, tolerance, coexistence, respect for Arabs….” to mask their totalitarianism.

    • Daniel_Greenfield

      In Israel, the left has done its best to lock out competing voices with an oligarchy. Finally Adelson began giving away a paper which became the most popular one in the country so they effectively banned it with a law specifically targeted at it.

    • truebearing

      Spot on. If conservatives can’t buy the media, they should create it, like Murdoch did with Fox.

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      The New York Times just published a column from fascist maxie blumenthal.

  • Hard Little Machine

    Obama spent money and effort trying to foist Livni on Israel and it worked about as well as Obama’s $275 million support of Egypt’s secular YouTube generation in the first round of post Mubarek elections. What Obama will foment is something where, even if Netanyahu is replaced anyone, literally anyone else who’s electable will be worse, from Obama’s point of view.

    • Daniel_Greenfield

      Anyone except Arafat’s zombie corpse

  • cree

    The left creates its own failures in everything it does everywhere, eventually. With eventually, most see, feel and all live leftism’s failures; they catch up as reality and it sucks. Here as well as everywhere, failure brings negative life changing calamity with dangerous consequences like Ferguson or an Hamas-Israeli war. Their utopian ideal for national and world geopolitics creates upheaval, not harmony. Eventually, living leftism produces resentment and regret.

    More and more in Israel are realizing survival is at stake; we and Europe are next. Failure bad, failure good, if delusion is cast out, in time.

  • Hi there

    Excellent article. Made sense out of the ‘balagan’ in Israeli politics, for us much of the chaos could be made sense of.
    I will be saving this article for future reference, for times when Israel’s left pulls the rest of us to the edge of the cliff. It’s good to understand what’s happening.

  • namberak

    I think I spotted an editing error. I see ‘Polls show that the majority of Israelis don’t trust him to have their back on Islamic terrorism or Iran.’ Shouldn’t that actually read ‘Polls show that the majority don’t trust him.’? ;-)

  • Dan Knight

    Thank you Daniel for a conservative Jewish view of the crisis. We will continuing hoping and praying for the defeat of the Left. Israel, and everyone living there will be safer. And the rest of the world will sleep better too.

  • carpe diem 36

    “Obama has failed at winning over Israelis” – well, he also failed at winning over Americans, as the last elections, and especially the last one in Louisiana show. Against Netanyahu Obama looks like a lost leader who has lost all his following and is now angry and does not know what to do so he is flailing his hands and threatens to rule as if he were king. Netanyahu is a real leader and behaves like one, and Obama cannot stand the obvious difference between him as a weak president and Netanyahu as a strong one and a much better speaker to boot.

  • carpe diem 36

    Israel became successful when it followed America as it used to be, on the right and for freedom and Capitalism. Obama has failed to take America to the left, this is not what Americans want and the same goes for Israelis. The lefty professors can preach all they want, the people in the real economy do not follow the left which will make the country go the way the USA is going down the drain.

  • mtnhikerdude

    Americans would welcome Netanyahu as our President and the Israeli left would welcome Obama as their President. DUH

  • mtnhikerdude

    Hijacking commercial airplanes is the PLO’s contribution to the Planet .

  • mtnhikerdude

    My question is will America survive two more years of this present administration?

  • Matthew Johnston

    The right of return has never been on the cards, between payments, settlement in a Palestinian state, citizenship in countries that have refugee camps like Syria.

  • Bandido

    If Obama had lived in the 1930s, he would have been a rabid National Socialist. That is his mentality today: ideas eighty years out of date, he is a virulent racist who learned at the anti-Semitic feet of Wright and Farrakhan, and anti-Western to the core Of course, National Socialism was a profound reaction against Western civilization, as is Obama himself.

  • Mladen_Andrijasevic

    The Israeli Left has gone completely bonkers

    It is sad that French Jewish intellectuals understand more what is at stake than Israeli authors
    http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/12/it-is-sad-that-french-jewish.html

    As for the elections…

    Whom to vote for in the coming Israeli elections on March 17,2015? It’s a no-brainer!
    http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/12/whom-to-vote-for-in-coming-israeli.html

    • http://twitter.com/#!/DavidWLincoln David W. Lincoln

      The Left has fallen to the level of when Jews argue with Jews, those closer in perspective to them are believed.

      Cultural poverty exhibited par excellence.

  • dartson

    Besides Cahlon’s “center” party, the crucial role in forming the future coalition will be played by the Avigdor Liberman’s “Israel – our home” party. Liberman has positioned himself as a right-winger, but recently made some alarming statements about the need to compromise and reach a strategic agreement with the Arab world. If both Liberman and Cahlon defect to the left, there is a chance of forming a left-center coalition with Labor and Yesh Atid. Of course, three months is like eternity in Israel and the Middle East, so the final outcome of the elections may radically differ from today polls.

  • Daniel_Greenfield

    Conservative Jews, like all conservatives, go after the media, but have no special license to do so.

    I certainly receive no special license when I attack the New York Times or CNN.

    • truebearing

      Well, you should be given a hunting license…with no bag limit.

  • USARetired

    Obama must stay out of Israeli politics as everyone knows he is a devout Muslim and has no business butting into anything in Israel! And while we are on this subject, The fact Obama is an illegal alien, and a Muslim disqualifies him for any office in America!

  • Maranatha2011

    Obama just doesn’t know it yet, but his goose is cooked. No matter what he does, he loses. It’s just a matter of time, and the more he tries to browbeat Israel, the worse it will be for him. God says so.

    • lyndaaquarius

      Israel is a force for good in the world and our president stands in opposition to that force.His goose is cooked. America is a force for good in the world and our people are waking up to how precious our Constitution really is.Not only will we survive the next two years, but We’ll start seeing many signs of our rejuvenated nation.

      • Moa

        The more Obama does, the more the whole World sees the bankrupt nature of the Leftist Narrative.

        Recent elections all around the World show that citizens are fed up with the Left and are moving Right: look at elections and events in Australia, Norway, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Egypt, Ukraine, and soon in UK (with UKIP).

        The Left’s ‘goose’ is indeed ‘cooked’. Citizens of the First World understand that the Left are complete failures and no longer believe the lies despite the huge amount of media propaganda. That is why the Left needs to import uneducated dependents from the Third World – as a population replacement since the existing citizens know the Left is all false promises and imcompetence.

  • Erudite Mavin

    Excellent commentary Daniel of what Netanyahu and Israel is facing with Obama’s Alinsky like rules for his agenda to take down Netanyahu.
    You nailed it with your gas lighting analogy

  • herb benty

    Binyamin Netanyahu has more chutzpah in his little finger than Obama and his whole band of progressives combined. Obama supports and gives aid to Israel’s enemies, and how is Netanyahu supposed to react again?

  • Maynard

    I still can’t understand how any American Jew could have
    voted for Obama when everything he does and all that he says shows he considers
    Israel to be unworthy of consideration. Nor can I believe there are people in
    Israel who expect help from Obama, that
    is like a field mouse expecting help from a hungry hawk. I truly hope that Mr Netanyahu will ignore him and go ahead and do his best for Israel and, I expect he will do so if the people of Israel will support him.

    • Daniel

      “All in Israel are not of the House of Israel.”
      That was written over 2000 years ago………..and it’s true today.

  • Pericles

    “In trying to weaken Netanyahu, Obama only made him stronger.”

    Producing precisely the opposite effect desired or intended. Obama is definitely good at doing this. He wanted to weaken the Tea Party but made it stronger instead, to demolish Republicans, but gave them a majority in the Senate, to grant amnesty but producing a revulsion by the electorate. Maybe he’s our biggest asset just by doing what he’s doing?

  • Pericles

    “The “inclusive” coalition favored by this administration last time around effectively undermined the Netanyahu government.”

    There’s no compromising with the Devil. Netanyahu, of all people, should understand this. So should the Republicans in the Congress when it comes to compromising with Obama. The world would be a better place if they did.

  • Pericles

    “Obama’s ideal Israeli government would allow itself to be berated and
    blamed for everything without ever speaking up in its own defense.”

    Same attitude he has towards GWB and Republicans. Unfortunately, in this regard, he gets more cooperation from GWB and Republicans. What is it about Obama that his targets are willing to place bull’s eyes on their backs?

  • SCREW SOCIALISM

    The left in Eurabia is doing a great job of destroying Europe.

    Muslim rape gangs, London transport bombings, plot to kill Queen Elizabeth, beheading of Lee Rigby, open islamist threats to wage 9/11 scale attacks on europe.

    Let the left’s support of Islamist Imperialism blowback in their face.

  • nomoretraitors

    “In trying to weaken Netanyahu, Obama only made him stronger”
    GOOD. Stick it in his eye, Bibi