Ignoring Israel
You had to wait until more than halfway through Monday’s debate to hear the one mention of Israel.
“I met with Bibi, believe me, he’s not a happy camper,” said Republican candidate Donald Trump, using Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname. The comment went unchallenged as part of a wider discussion of the Iran deal and how the US should fight Islamic State.
The candidates spoke a lot about “allies,” but never mentioned the US’s main, and most long-standing, ally in the Middle East, Israel. “We need to vacuum up intel from Europe and [the] Middle East. We need to work with our allies,” said former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.
At the debate hosted at Hofstra University, Clinton focused on the need to work with NATO and “Muslim majority nations” in the Middle East. She noted that Muslims have been on the front lines of the war on terror. “They can provide information to us, not be alienated and pushed away.”
Although Israel went unmentioned, it was the veritable elephant in the room when the Middle East was discussed, and when Kurdish allies fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq were mentioned by Clinton in the context of defeating the terrorist group. “We need to intensify air strikes, and support Arab and Kurdish partners, take out ISIS in Raqqa... [and we will] push ISIS out of Iraq within a year,” she said.
Mentioning the Kurds was a good step for Clinton in a campaign where neither candidate has acknowledged their essential role in fighting the extremists. The former secretary of state’s prediction that it could take up to a year to defeat ISIS in Iraq is also prescient; the battle to re-take Mosul is just beginning.
It was surprising to see the way in which the Iran nuclear agreement has become a very American issue, removed from its Middle Eastern context.
“The Middle East is a mess. Under your direction, you started the Iran deal. They were ready to fall under sanctions, they will be a major power the way they are going,” Trump asserted.
The candidates sparred repeatedly over the deal. What was interesting is – unlike during the debate over the deal when Israel played a central role as one of the major opposition voices – today’s questions are more likely to be grounded in whether it was a US foreign policy failure.
Clinton claimed that as secretary of state she helped prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. “They were weeks away,” she told the audience. “I spent a year and a half to put together coalition with Russia and China to put sanctions... [US President Barack] Obama and [Secretary of State John] Kerry got a deal that put a lid on Iran’s program, without firing a shot. That’s diplomacy and working with other nations.”
Clinton said that – in contrast to the role she and later Kerry played in diplomacy – Trump’s approach would get the US into another war.
It is a positive development to see Israel take the backstage in US politics. Too often it has seemed as if candidates tried to outdo each other to show who was more pro-Israel. In the process, they lost sight of reality and gave the false impression that Israel wields too much influence in US policy.
The reality in this debate was that policies, such as how to deal with ISIS – or whether the US left a vacuum that led to the rise of ISIS, a Trump accusation – took center stage. Trump repeatedly claimed that US allies, such as Saudi Arabia, were not shouldering the burden of their own defense. That was a place in the discussion where the recently signed 10-year, $38 billion aid deal for Israel might have been discussed, but wasn’t.
There were other allusions to items that tangentially relate to Israel; Trump mentioned Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal, whose son’s anti-Israel work has previously been an issue; Clinton emphasized the importance of cybersecurity, a field in which Israel excels.
All in all the question is: What does the debate matter for the Middle East?
Both candidates see ISIS as a major enemy that needs to be defeated. Trump claimed it has tentacles throughout the world and is a global threat. Unfortunately neither candidate bothered to discuss what the post-ISIS Middle East should look like, and neither bothered to even mention Syria, the country where ISIS got its first major foothold before it succeeded in Iraq and committed genocide against Yazidis.
It was the Syrian conflict that initially fueled ISIS, not the Iraqi vacuum. Bombs are falling on Aleppo, but neither Clinton nor Trump seemed to notice. They were too busy discussing China, Russia and North Korea.
Is this because the candidates have tired of the Middle East, which is viewed as a hopeless morass? Trump wants a retreat from foreign commitments; Clinton wants to focus on US security.
“We can’t let those who would destabilize and interfere with America do so at all,” Clinton said. For Israel, that’s probably a good thing. Israel has suffered in the past from candidates who saw the need for Israeli-Palestinian peace as a linchpin for the region. Here are two candidates who seem to see Israel – not as a destabilizing part of the Middle East – but as an almost banal and obvious ally, one so uninteresting it doesn’t need mentioning.
Israel tends to like the limelight, but does better away from it. The region as a whole requires US commitment and interest. For both of these candidates, the region, Iran and ISIS seem to be the major focus. All of that can be welcome news in Jerusalem. •