What Democrats Should Learn From Netanyahu’s Inability to Form a Coalition, but Probably Won’t

“He turned the cause of Israel into a partisan issue in U.S. politics.” That was just one of many criticisms that editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffery Goldberg levied against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September 2016.

Goldberg’s comments came after the death of former President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres, but they could have been said by anybody on the left who consider themselves to supportive of the U.S.-Israel alliance. Criticisms that Netanyahu and the Republican Party have been in an alliance to the detriment of the U.S.-Israel alliance have been common in liberal and Democratic circles since then-Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Netanyahu to speak to Congress while the Obama Administration was engaged in nuclear talks with Iran. Liberal concern over a Trump-Netanyahu alliance is just a continuation of what began over a bitter dispute over how to deal with Iran during the Obama years.

Democrats who said they were more sympathetic towards Israel numbered at 42% in 2017. By March of this year that number had fallen to 27%. For liberals who say they sympathize with Israel, everyone is to blame for the drop in Democratic support, but themselves. They insist that representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota or Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are outliers, but they cannot escape the fact that Democratic presidential candidates skipped the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy conference in March after defending Omar’s “all about the Benjamins baby” comments as simply raising questions about money in politics.

Earlier this month, Israel was on the receiving end of over 600 Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli civilians. In addition to missile attacks on population centers, Hamas a fired Kornet anti-tank missiles at a civilian van.

If liberals are truly concerned that the U.S.-Israel alliance is becoming a GOP-Netanyahu alliance, they need to ask themselves why Trump, the bane of much of the world’s existence, is so popular in Israel or why Netanyahu’s main rivals in the most recent elections focused on Netanyahu the man, not Netanyahu’s foreign and security policies.

Last month Israel re-elected Netanyahu despite a corruption indictment. Outside of Israel, Netanyahu is not exactly very popular and yet is on the verge of passing the country’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, as the country’s longest serving prime minister.

At about the same time as Obama’s former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul was tweeting, “You know is quietly thrilled about Trump’s recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights? Putin,” Blue and White leader Yair Lapid said that Trump’s decision was “a dream come true” and called on the rest of the world to do the same. The Israeli Labor Party, once synonymous with the country, won a measly 4.4% of the vote and only six out of 120 seats and has spent almost 20 years out of power.

But now, Israel is heading back to polls, not because Netanyahu is a radical hardliner or warmonger, but because some on the Israeli right view him as too much of a squish. The concept that Netanyahu may be too soft is something that nobody in Europe, the United Nations, or on the American left can ever comprehend.

Ask a liberal American, particularly a young liberal American, what the significance of 2000 or 2005 is in Israel and they probably could not tell you, which is why they still propose similar peace plans to the one that Yasser Arafat refused to accept in 2000 which only to lead to the Second Intifada — dooming Labor’s electoral prospects for a generation or how unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has only brought constant missile attacks and multiple wars with Hamas.

A pre-election poll showed that 42% of Israelis favor a two-state solution with the Palestinians, with 36% opposed. For comparison’s sake, the same percentage of Americans currently approve of Trump’s job performance.

When you tell a people under constant siege from Iranian-supplied missiles for nearly 15 years, to exercise “restraint,” or have to deal with a Palestinian leadership who use the peace process to destroy the peace process, do not be surprised when they fail to take your electoral and national security advice.

Israel needs friends in the world, if Democrats want to be those friends, they need to stop blaming Trump or Netanyahu and do some self-reflection as to why it so many Israelis view their policy prescriptions as failures and recipes for disaster.