Hurriyet Daily News
'Chutzpah' is fine but what about 'hubris?'
By SEMİH İDİZ
It was important and groundbreaking that U.S. President Barack Obama should have underscored the need for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders during his so called "historic Middle East address" last week.
This also put him very much in line with the Turkish view, and increased hope in the Middle East, and much of the world – where his remarks were generally welcomed – that the United States was finally coming around to an objective and realistic position on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.
It was inexplicable, however, that the same President Obama should have given reason to the Israeli right wing – as he did only a few days later during his speech to AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israeli lobby in America – to argue that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's determined stance against his suggestion had forced the president of the most powerful nation in the world to eat his words and backpedal.
Again the impression the world is getting is of the tail wagging the dog. This does not alter the fact, however, that even President Obama, and his Middle East advisors, in their moment of candor and realism, had little choice but to acknowledge the core problem in the Middle East.
When Turkish President Abdullah Gül suggested the same in his article to the New York Times in April, that carried the title "The Revolution’s Missing Peace," Israeli officials, quoted by the Israeli media, were quick to accuse him of "chutzpah."
But as the Turks say, "the way of the mind is one" and anyone who desires to be objective about the Middle East recognizes this basic truth, along with other basic and glaring facts such as the continued grabbing of land that does not belong to it by Israel for the sake of new settlements.
As an aside here it must be emphasized that Hamas, which unlike many Turks, I consider a terrorist organization, and other Palestinian groups engaged in terrorism against Israel, have provided successive Israeli government with the best excuse for continuing their policies, especially on the settlement question.
Every deadly attack against Israel has been used to further Israeli interests such as the latest attack after which the Netanyahu government immediately authorized new settlements on Arab lands as "punishment." The damage that Hamas has done to genuine Palestinian interests is therefore vast.
The question for Israel, however, is clear. How can it, as one of the most isolated countries in the world, for which international sympathy continues to drop rapidly, hope to lean on a blindly supportive U.S. administrations forever? Developments in the region and Washington's somewhat desperate efforts to save its interests there suggest that this is not endless.
And article by The Associated Press’ Robert Burns last week, which carried the title "US quietly expanding defense ties with Saudis,” no doubt, provided Israeli policy planners some food for thought also, especially given the growing military ties between Washington and the Gulf states.
What makes the question posed here even more valid is the fact that anger at the way Israel is seen to be manipulating U.S. foreign policy is also on the increase in America itself. I was in Washington D.C. recently for a presentation at the Wilson Center on the latest developments in the Middle East. I was in the U.S. capital a few weeks before that also for a similar presentation at the Brookings Institution.
During both visits, my discussions with Americans made the growing impatience with Israel apparent to me, and this came as something of a surprise since it was not an attitude I had witnessed with such openness in my previous visits to Washington.
The latest commentary by Barry Lando in the Huffington Post, an increasingly influential Internet newspaper provides a concrete example for some of the things I was hearing.
Lando, in his scathing May 22 commentary titled "The President's Speech – What Obama Should Have Said to AIPAC," wrote the following:
"As president of the United States, I was elected to serve the interests of all 300 million Americans – not a tiny minority, numbering just 2.2 percent of our population. Of course, we value your great contributions to all facets of our society and our culture, but that doesn't translate into continuing to give AIPAC the right to call the shots on a key element of our Middle Eastern Policy. "
The full article is well worth reading in order to understand a mode that is emerging in the United States, which should of course be of deep concern not just to AIPAC members but also to Israel. The simple fact is that Washington cannot sustain its one-sided policy of supporting Israel come what may if it wants to serve its broader interest in the Middle East.
On the other hand, Israel itself cannot interminably sustain its present stance in the Middle East either in the face of what is going on in the region. There is no status quo ante here, no doubt much to the chagrin of hawkish Israeli officials. Put another way, there are no more user-friendly Hosni Mubaraks, and the situation is as President Gül told the Wall Street Journal last week.
In his interview Gül expressed satisfaction about President Obama's statement about the 1967 borders during his Middle East speech. He also expressed understanding for Obama's argument that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a Hamas that does not acknowledge its right to exist.
Gül also declared that Israel was right to put its security first. But he went on to say that to do that effectively, it needed to understand the meaning of the democratic uprisings in the Arab world, namely that new elected governments would no longer be allowed by their voters to tolerate "humiliating” Israeli policies.
Israelis are fond of accusing others of "chutzpah." No doubt they thought the same about President Obama after his Middle East speech. But there is another term bequeathed to us by the ancient Greeks in all their wisdom.
This in turn applies very much to the right-wing mentally that has taken over Israel, which believes that the Israeli tail can wag the U.S. dog endlessly. That term is "hubris." If you insist on hubris, eventually the gods on Mount Olympus intervene in anger to put an end to it.
Israel has the right to exist and everyone must acknowledge this unreservedly. It also has the right just as any country to protect itself against terrorism. But this does not give it the right to deny the existence of others. Neither does it give it the right to use overwhelmingly disproportionate force against Palestinians in the name of "retaliation against terrorism."
And finally, it most certainly does not give it the right to use terrorist attacks as an excuse to continually expand into lands that do not belong to it in the name of "punishment."
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=chutzpah-is-fine-but-what-about-hubris-2011-05-23
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