ISRAELI CHARM DIPLOMACY NOT WORKING
ACCORDING to Middle East observers, the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the West has been declining over the years — on the back of rising awareness and shift of sentiment towards the cause of Palestine.
Generally, the decline can be attributed to the worsening and never-ending human rights abuses and crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), which have over the years become very outright in their oppression of the Palestinians.
“Charm diplomacy” where Israeli citizens and civil society seek to present a positive and benign image of their country via cultural, social, economic and political exchanges, especially as deployed under Benjamin Netanyahu, has failed to convince the people as social media is a powerful and potent antidote to the propaganda at the grassroots level.
YouTube videos that, for example, record the brutal treatment of Palestinian women and children by the IDF, which isn’t oneoff or isolated but systematic and ongoing, would naturally provoke outrage and sympathy.
Social media aside, politics too play a pivotal role in the shift and decline. In the United Kingdom, we see that it’s due to the mainstreaming of hitherto fringe politics and campaigns like the election of Jeremy Corbyn, elected the leader of the Labour party in 2015.
He’s known as somewhat of a maverick who regularly defied the party line by breaching the “three-line whip” on major issues such as membership of the European Union (although as leader, he advocated the remain position) and of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, nuclear disarmament and not least on Israel Palestine.
Traditionally, significant differences among the parties had been centred on political philosophies/ideologies, rather than policies. Tony Blair, under United States pressure no less, was biased towards the perspective of the Israeli side at one point in relation to the blockade of Gaza.
Corbyn as party leader effectively cut off the Labour Party from the pro-Israel lobby, more so when his core supporters embodied in the anti-Zionist Momentum group, acted as his “praetorian guard” (bodyguard) and enforcer of the party line.
There are other factors too, such as the increasing polarisation in American politics with the rise and emergence of the Trump cult personality from 2016 onwards that accelerated the decline.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is, of course, Jewish and was to later become the mastermind of the “Deal of the Century” that gave American blessing for Netanyahu’s plan to de facto (i.e., in practice, but not legally) annex or takeover administratively onethird of the West Bank.
In other words, the move from (temporary) occupation to (permanent) annexation that would destroy any hope for a viable twostate solution. His financial ties and interests in Israel deepened in tandem with his role relating to Middle Eastern diplomacy, as highlighted by the New York Times in “Kushner ’s Financial Ties to Israel Deepen Even With Mideast Diplomatic Role” in January 2018.
Arguably, under Trump, the pro-Israel lobby in the US (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC) — through Kushner — was at its peak and the closest it could ever get to being within “the inner circle of the inner circle” of the US president. In fact, as the Middle East Eye rightfully made the point (“The curious case of Jared Kushner and the Israel lobby”, Dec 4, 2017), Kushner personified the Israel lobby right at the very heart of the Trump administration.
The irony is that the pro-Israel lobby in the person of Kushner has succeeded in bringing Arab partners of the US into the proZionist sphere of influence. But domestically, the deep polarisation and division caused by the election of Trump has blunted the influence of the lobby as it got sucked into the political game — by openly shifting much of the support to the erstwhile president and the Republican party.
In other words, the strategic and tactical miscalculation of the pro-Israel lobby in the US by abandoning its bi-partisanship played straight into its own decline.
As Asa Winstanley cogently articulated in the Middle East Monitor (“The pro-Israel lobby is on the decline; let’s help it on its way”, Nov 30, 2019), expose on the pro-Israel lobby’s antics of dirty tricks and smear tactics to put the Palestinians in a negative light as contained in, for example, the 2017 Al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, only serve to further diminish its influence.
It’s also expected that the proIsrael lobby will become more isolated and insulated from policymaking institutions (executive and legislative) of the world’s major powers and, in due course, become something of an irrelevance. Its role would be increasingly taken up by Israeli government officials and citizens (public diplomacy) instead.
This is what happens when the aim of a lobby group is, actually at the end of the day, to deny justice to oppressed people.