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Edgy about Obama
By Bernard Avishai
Tags: Israel, Barack Obama

In the early 1980s, as a young community organizer in Chicago's projects, Barack Obama had had enough of Louis Farrakhan's acolytes, black separatists who were increasingly anti-Semitic. "Notions of purity of race or of culture," Obama wrote in his 1995 memoir, "could not bring self-esteem" to typical blacks any more than they could to him, the son of a white mother, and longed-for African father. "Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we'd inherited."

You might think that Obama - natural cosmopolitan, editor of the Harvard Law Review, reader of Philip Roth - would be the kind of leader American Jews would flock to. Who if not Jews have benefited from the ideal of "integration" that made Obama's candidacy possible? And, indeed, at least 60 percent of American Jews (and a much higher proportion of young Jews) already say they'll be voting for him.

But Israeli elites have remained resistant, even condescending, and these attitudes have reinforced those of older American Jews, especially in Florida, which Obama needs to carry. Blogs circulated by Israeli rightists claim that he has had a "disturbing pattern of associations" - for example, with Columbia University's Rashid Khalidi, whose big sin, apparently, is his own pattern of association with the very Palestinian Authority leadership Israel's centrist government considers a negotiating partner.
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Yet even my centrist friends in Israel, young and old, smart and smarter, seem edgy about Obama. ("America is not ready," they say.) Veteran columnists charge Obama with both naivete and - without seeing the contradiction - Machiavellianism. One of Channel One's new TV news anchors, whose Tel Aviv pals probably think Jim Crow is the name of a bourbon, pounced on him for misremembering which concentration camp his uncle helped liberate. As if the deep impression made on a sensitive youth by his uncle's postwar shock is not the point.

What's the problem? Perhaps there is something about Obama's hybridized identity that does not quite fit the social logic Israelis think vaguely consistent with Zionism. Who, if not we Israelis, are still anxious about whether our nationalism entails "purity of culture" or "bloodlines"? If democratic standards can make a black man a mainstream American, can it not also make an Arab a mainstream Israeli? To what "demographic" does Obama belong?

Israelis instinctively fear charismatic leaders who can whip up huge audiences, especially leaders who seem sincere about Christian grace, without being pro-settler evangelicals. Will Obama, so the argument goes, be another Jimmy Carter - you know, another peacemaker out of his depth? The fact that Carter actually achieved a peace treaty, indeed, risked his presidency to force Anwar Sadat to agree to the deal without a settlement freeze by Israel, is beside the point. Israelis are allowed to condemn settlements. An American who does is not "a friend."

There is probably a buried fear, in this context, that Israel's special pleading - about how non-Jews have no right to judge Israel's conduct of the occupation - may not quite work on Obama, just as it did not work on Dr. Kissinger. Like liberal Israelis who cringe when they hear Avigdor Lieberman justify land grabs by citing "Jewish history," Obama has heard apologetics for victim exceptionalism from sly black pols like Al Sharpton since his youth. You can't just tell him - how did Prof. Yehezkel Dror put it? - that "morality must be subordinated to survival." It takes one to know one.

The most obvious problem with Obama, however, is more immediate. He has had the brass to insist on persistent diplomacy, not military action, against Iran. He would not utterly renounce the use of force, he told AIPAC in measured, unapologetic language last week, but he would first rebuild America's alliances and meet with Iranian officials. He would offer to ease sanctions and work to end Iran's comparative commercial isolation - if in return Iran ended its nuclear program.

My friends in the center are not persuaded. Many, it seems, would like to see a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities before President George W. Bush leaves office - or they think they might - or want a new president who at least entertains the idea. They think (rashly, I believe) that a strike can be something relatively clean and decisive, like the one against Iraq in 1981 or Syria last year. They've applauded Bush for invoking the lessons of Munich, even if he has learned his history from PowerPoint. Anyway, if there are greater complexities in the region - honor cultures, rival Islamic theologies, pro-American sentiment in the Tehran bazaar, etc. - Israeli elites want to be the ones to tell Washington what to think about them. They don't want to be told.

Obama, in other words, represents a change Israelis are not sure we know how to live with after 40 years of talk about our strategic military alliance. He symbolizes America's great power to attract, as opposed to its degraded power to deter. Indeed, he wants to be the face of global integration, from Rio to Jakarta - ironically, the very integration Israeli entrepreneurs excel at. John McCain says he will be the jihadists' worst nightmare. Obama reminds us that the war McCain helped launch has been their dream come true.

Obama's AIPAC speech was, in this sense, a masterful gesture toward the future, and he richly deserved his standing ovation. He reassured his audience about Israel's security, but emphasized collective security. He promised Israel support for its capital in an "undivided" Jerusalem, without barbed wire and walls, but did not promise the Likud a "united" Jerusalem. Most important, he promised not to neglect the peace process until his last year in office.

For Israelis, this last promise may well provoke the saddest fear of all. It is the fear of hoping again.

Bernard Avishai is the author, most recently, of "The Hebrew Republic" (Harcourt). He blogs at www.bernardavishai.com.
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  1.   UNLIKE BUSH, OBAMA CAN THINK ABOUT THINGS 09:53  |  indrajaya 13/06/08
  2.   The right is edgy about Obama? There`s good reason 10:18  |  Natallie Durson 13/06/08
  3.   It must have been like this in 1939 11:16  |  Dror 13/06/08
  4.   why zionists are edgy about Obama should be the title 11:59  |  mehmet 13/06/08
  5.   AMERICA IS DOOMED 12:42  |  VIPER 13/06/08
  6.   #3, DROR, shut the f&&k up 12:45  |  VIPER 13/06/08
  7.   To # 4 13:59  |  Choni Davidowitz 13/06/08
  8.   edgy about obama 14:00  |  matt 13/06/08
  9.   Obama,Obama,where is Hillary? 14:08  |  Ronnie Wolman 13/06/08
  10.   GET REAL ALREADY! IF HE WERE AS GOOD AS HE WANTS US TO BELIEVE 14:14  |  Nancy 13/06/08
  11.   Obama will make peace with Iran and make Israel a rogue state 14:55  |  Raed Kami 13/06/08
  12.   You`ve got to be kidding 14:59  |  Ariel 13/06/08
  13.   god save us all 15:15  |  curious george 13/06/08
  14.   You people really need some Xanax 15:35  |  Aphemia 13/06/08
  15.   No American President will abandon Israel! 15:43  |  ATLAS 13/06/08
  16.   Response to Nancy 15:50  |  Mark B. 13/06/08
  17.   Who Cares What Israelis Think? 16:25  |  CHGODMK 13/06/08
  18.   Dror @3 16:27  |  Philip 13/06/08
  19.   ATLAS 16:38  |  Natallie Durson 13/06/08
  20.   Obama: I Will STAND with the MUSLIMS 16:54  |  Linda Rivera 13/06/08
  21.   Mehmet the ignorant 17:02  |  x-ray 13/06/08
  22.   GET READY WITH OBAMA IN OFFICE UNTIL 2017 17:32  |  indrajaya 13/06/08
  23.   #4 Choni 17:55  |  Lou Medel 13/06/08
  24.   Maybe President Obama will cause more Jews to make Aliyah 17:56  |  Zev 13/06/08
  25.   BUSH FOR AMBASSADOR IN IRAQ 18:00  |  indrajaya 13/06/08
  26.   #12 Ariel 18:01  |  Lou Medel 13/06/08
  27.   #19 Linda Rivera-All out of context 18:04  |  Ellis 13/06/08
  28.   #9 Ronnie Wolman wants Hillary? 18:08  |  ellis 13/06/08
  29.   useless post 18:44  |  JP 13/06/08
  30.   Ellis: Hillary`s Policies 18:53  |  Ronnie Wolman 13/06/08
  31.   Most reasons for edginess expounded herein are WRONG 19:01  |  s 13/06/08
  32.   You can be certain that if Obama say`s something today 19:04  |  * BEN JABO 13/06/08
  33.   To # 5 America doomed 19:19  |  Tom Clark 13/06/08
  34.   DOESN`T OBAMA PANDER ENOUGH TO ISRAEL 19:28  |  JH 13/06/08
  35.   Ridiculous article..ridiculous statements 20:33  |  Connie 13/06/08
  36.   I wish Jews had a good reason to `fear` Obama 21:34  |  Michael N 13/06/08
  37.   Edgy About Israelis Like Avishai 02:09  |  Tod Zuckerman 14/06/08
  38.   Dror # 3 Israel is responsible for Israel not America 03:34  |  American in NY 14/06/08
  39.   zev # 24 Maybe President Obama will cause more Jews to make Aliya 03:38  |  American in NY 14/06/08
  40.   #17, CHGOD: "will be feeding right out of his hand" 06:06  |  Cipora Julianna Kohn 14/06/08
  41.   Obama 21:30  |  P. J. Casey 14/06/08
  42.   Obama -where`s there`s smoke could be a fire 16:00  |  * BEN JABO 15/06/08
  43.   AssTricks Bin Jibberish Where there is smoke there could be fire 03:44  |  American in NY 16/06/08
  44.   #43-2 American NUTZI - contribute something worthwhile 14:02  |  * BEN JABO 16/06/08
  45.   Obama seems to be hiding facts 14:19  |  * BEN JABO 16/06/08
  46.   Israelis Have Trouble Dealing With Blacks #1 20:39  |  ARTH 16/07/08
  47.   Israelis Have Trouble Dealing With Blacks #2 20:42  |  ARTH 16/07/08
  48.   Israelis Have Trouble Dealing With Blacks #2 21:43  |  ARTH 16/07/08
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