Published: 26 April 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Obama had an unusual relationship with the American Jewish community, going way back to his days as a student and a community activist in Chicago. He expressed his strong feelings toward America’s Jews in multiple opportunities. Many of his closest aides and confidants were Jewish. Known were the festive Chanukah candle lighting gatherings and Passover Seders that were conducted in the White House.
One example was Obama’s address to the 6,000 delegates in the 2013 Union of Reform Judaism convention in Washington DC, where he told the cheering crowd how inspired he was by the support of the American Jewish community of the struggle for civil rights and the identification with African Americans.
Obama was genuinely pro-Israel. He had a deep appreciation of the basic Zionist argument and he supported Israel’s right to exist and flourish. At the same time he was a proponent of the two-state solution and of the ending of Israeli occupation without compromising on Israel’s security. One of the notable steps was his financial support of of the Iron Dome anti rocket defence system that Israel was developing, not to mention that he continued the decades-long financial and military support.
I recall, that when Obama came to Israel to attend Shimon Peres’s funeral in September 2016, he gave a eulogy that was the most profoundly Zionist statement made by a foreign leader in that State occasion. Yet, despite all that, many people in Israel regard Obama’s term negatively.
Fuelled by Netanyahu’s direct pro-Republican politics and the firm Israeli position against the Iran deal, Israelis were led to believe that Obama was ‘bad for Israel’. Subsequently, Netanyahu deepened the divide among American Jews regarding Israel. Simply put, if American Jews were supportive of Obama, then the implied message was that they were not fully behind Israel. This caused great discomfort among many American Jews. Their loyalty to Israel was questioned and their frustration with Israel’s policies grew.
I noticed that some of my friends here have turned to me saying: now we know what you have been going through all these years in Israel, now we understand
With the election of Donald Trump things got much worse. Politically, over 70% of the Jewish vote went to Hillary Clinton, consistent with previous campaigns where the Jewish vote was mostly Democrat. But this time it was different. There have been American presidents in the past that did not receive the Jewish vote, but when it came to Israel, the bi-partisan support ensured that Israel is not in the equation. This was no longer the case.
Netanyahu was the one who started the association of support for Israel with the Republicans and the Christian evangelists. As I said before, this was done during the Obama years. But after Trump’s election the trend was intensified. From the moment Trump was elected, Netanyahu and large parts of Israeli politicians went out of their way to celebrate his election and portray him as the person who will correct all of Obama’s faults.
It reached a climactic point when Trump announced that the US will recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy. Israeli leaders (including some from the centre and moderate left) were jubilant, and once again, the argument was that this was not done by Obama.
I have been in New York now for around three months. Not surprisingly, I travel in more liberal circles. Most of my friends and acquaintances are deeply engaged with Israel. They often travel to Israel, have family members living there and many work in Israeli-oriented Jewish organisations. Typically, I find that their sense of American politics today is of embarrassment mixed with despair. They are alienated from the current American leadership in ways I haven’t seen before.
They define the socio-political situation in America in very harsh terms and they wish and act that change will come sooner or later. In this context, one can only imagine how they feel when Israel is not only ‘pleased’ with American policies, but rather that Israel is one of the closest allies of this administration. In other words: the country that they love is supporting the elected leadership that they reject (and many also despise).
I noticed that some of my friends here have turned to me saying: now we know what you have been going through all these years, now we understand. So, there seems to be a new alliance, between like-minded Israelis and Americans that find themselves in similar, though not identical, situations. Now is the time to work together to get our countries back on track.
