A deaf ear and Iran’s playing of the US

Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrong about the danger Iran poses to his nation, the U.S., and to the world just because he comes across as a hard ass? Is Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, wrong that Iran wishes to annihilate his nation andours just because he comes across as a no nonsense type of guy? Perhaps the Obama administration should curb its obsession with the messenger and listen to the message. The administration, in the interests of our own nation, should finally make an attempt to understand Israel, one of the U.S.’s closest allies.

Israelis are complicated people and so is Israeli politics. It is no secret that the Israeli Knesset is more rambunctious and fractious than our own (often bordering on senseless) Congress. Israelis are tough folks and although it may be cliché these days, they can most accurately be described as Sabras, the term given to describe Israelis that means hard and prickly on the outside and soft and sweet on the inside.

{mosads}I grew up with Israelis in America and we were collectively a rambunctious bunch, constantly arguing about one thing or another, usually about a girl or whether the IROC Z28 was the best car in the world. When my best friend, Yaki, set upon teaching me to ride his motorcycle, I drove it right into a parked car. Instead of the event coming to blows, he called me an idiot (repeatedly), laughed heartily, and asked if I was okay — and then we got down to business: fixing his motorcycle. Israelis are simply passionate and pragmatic people who like to argue, another reason I liked my friends so much.

It was during my years with the American Jewish Committee that I received my first taste of Israeli diplomacy and diplomats. A colleague at the time, a fellow much better suited to a cubicle researching this or that, could not figure out how to deal with the Israeli Consulate and its officials. I was put up to bat, though my portfolio did not include working with the many consulates in Los Angeles.

Now an ambassador, Arthur Lenk and I had met on various occasions and, I think, liked one another. When we began to work with one another, I returned his keen self-assuredness in equal measure and we immediately got along great. He shared his perspective on the various issues and I shared mine, both open to one another and accomplishing a great deal as a result. This mirrored the beginnings of my close relationships with many Israeli diplomats to this day.

This is why it is so hard to see some of my countrymen so fundamentally misunderstand Israel and Israelis. I am devastated to see my president chastise and actively, purposefully alienate Israel, while being so snowed by Iranian good tidings.

Some have posited that Obama is anti-Semitic and/or anti-Israel. I don’t believe this was so in the beginning, but the president’s views on Israel have clearly evolved since his first days in office. I do believe that Obama has come to vehemently dislike Israelis, whom he seems to see as the eternal aggressor against Iranians and the Palestinians who, in the president’s view, “just all want to all get along.”

Further, the president’s lack of understanding Israel, coupled with his later steadfast unwillingness to understand Israelis, have closed off his best source of perspective on Iran available to him…that of the Israelis. Added to this all around bad situation is the fact that Israeli candor and correct perspective on Iran is interfering with what Obama sees as his only lasting legacy: “peace” with Iran.

The president needs to understand that which the Israelis understand so well. This isn’t a community organizing project in Chicago or an intergroup relations effort ala a Human Relations Commission of any given American city. The Iranians are simply not an aggrieved segment of the citizenry who sits around a table and advocates for their particular group or ethnicity amongst other Americans.

The Iranians are true believers who want and actively seek to do that which they say. It is folly to believe that Iranians will adhere to any deal the administration has so fecklessly cobbled together. It is inconceivable that the Iranians, with the sanctions relief so generously bestowed upon them, will not arm themselves, Hezbollah and Hamas and other terrorists, for war against Israel, their Arab neighbors and finally the U.S. This windfall for the Iranians will translate into deaths…in Israel, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Eurasia and, yes, in the United States… and they will still build a nuke.

Using Israeli brashness as an excuse to discount Israeli views on Iran is not only ridiculous, it is dangerous. Israel is not a nation that can bet with the security and the very existence of its nation, as if playing a weak hand in poker in the hopes of getting lucky. Israel is a one bomb nation, meaning that if Israel is hit by just one nuke, delivered by one of Iran’s ever advancing missiles or the smaller nukes they are sure to gleefully provide to fellow terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is finished…game over for the Jewish state. It is our job as Americans not to let that happen to any of our allies, particularly to one as important to us as Israel. 

Katz is the principal of TSG, LLC, a consultancy that advises foreign governments (including the government of Azerbaijan), NGOs and corporations in the realms of strategic communications, politics and policy. He is also the former head of Public Affairs and Public Relations for the American Jewish Committee, based in Los Angeles.