Keep quiet, carry stick

Editorial

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, a week ago, before the Israeli leader headed to Washington to meet U.S. President Barack Obama and to attend the annual AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) Policy Conference.

While Harper reiterated the absolute right of Israel to defend itself, he also seemed to go out of his way to put a damper on the war words we’ve been hearing vis-à-vis Iran’s mission to develop nuclear weapons.

“We want to see a peaceful resolution of this issue,” Harper told Netanyahu. “And we want to see every action taken to get a peaceful resolution of the situation.”

Harper has been steadfast in his support of Israel during his years as prime minister and this may have been the most pointed statement Harper has made to suggest that Israel take a more cautious approach. One Israeli commentator wondered if “the Americans” had told Harper to cool it.

The quick stop in Canada was presumed to be a jaunt with the mission of getting a feather of unequivocal support in Netanyahu’s cap before he ventured south, where previous welcomes have been decidedly equivocal. Instead, while Harper offered a mildly cautious approach, Netanyahu, while still in Ottawa, wasted no time before offering his enthusiastic commendation to Obama after his major foreign policy address on the topic on March 4.

If “the Americans” did influence Harper’s approach, perhaps it was to urge him to gently play “bad cop,” so as to make Obama’s slightly more accommodating tone appear even more “good cop.”

At issue during the Netanyahu-Obama meeting was the reality that Israel may have the military capability to eliminate the threat now but, as Iran’s nuclear project continues, it will reach a point at which only the American military has the capability to blast the nearly impenetrable bunkers Iran is developing. This means that Israel has the unenviable choice of acting alone comparatively soon or waiting until its security is left entirely to the mercy of the Obama Administration or, perhaps, the next president and his people. While none of us knows exactly the date when that line will be crossed, it is a choice Netanyahu will need to make with the weight of Jewish history and the Jewish future on his shoulders. Only those who have forgetten history would not make a direct parallel with the last time the fate of millions of Jews were left in the hands of well-meaning, but equivocating, Western powers with other things on their minds.

All of Obama’s emphatic words at the AIPAC confab last weekend aside, he is, after all, a man, a mere human and a politician at that, subject to the whims of his electorate. With Republicans, rightly or wrongly, comparing him to Jimmy Carter, whose own relationship with Iran and spiking gas prices led to his massive defeat, Obama will be influenced not only by his apparently genuine assurances to Netanyahu, but by a host of other domestic and strategic interests as well.

One of the truly unsettling things to come out of the mouth of some Republicans – Ron Paul, notably – is the equation of diplomatic pressure and sanctions on Iran with rising gas prices at American pumps. This is a frightening prospect. An election year in the United States, American voters can be bellicose and their leaders can beat the drums of war perhaps too readily, but voters often, in the end, vote with their wallets. While the men battling to be Obama’s opponent in November are more hawkish than he is (Paul excepted), the whole lot of them are unlikely to put principle ahead of baying of consumers aching from $5 gallons of gas – even though it is the Republican contenders who are flaming the fires of gas price outrage.

In at least one of the comments he made this week, Obama was spot on.

“There is too much loose talk of war,” Obama said.

U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta speculated openly a month ago that Israel would probably bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities this spring, as if he were some talk show pundit instead of the man charged with executing America’s military policy. And Netanyahu himself has had to muzzle his own ministers who have been gabbing publicly about strategy and potential actions and timelines.

We doubt that Israel’s military and political leaders lack either the strategies or the resolve necessary to address this extraordinarily difficult and existential matter. It may be in the nature of the media, in this era of always-on news, to speculate, parse, hypothesize and prattle. But the people who will make the decisions on these issues with unprecedented stakes should, to the greatest degree possible, keep their minds open and their mouths shut.

Obama himself reiterated the now-famous proverb uttered by Theodore Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

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