US Jews need to stop Biden from reentering Iran deal — Israeli tells Israel lobby group

An Israel lobby group associated with the Democratic Party gave a platform to an Israeli to say that American Jews “betrayed” Israeli Jews by not opposing the Iran deal in 2015, and American Jews need to take an “active role” in trying to prevent the Biden administration from returning to the deal.

Writer Yossi Klein Halevi said that the Iran deal is viewed by many Israelis including himself “as the single greatest strategic threat that this country has faced in decades.” Not Iran, the Iran deal. And U.S. Jews have a special responsibility to let Biden know that returning to the deal is a “betrayal” of Israel.

Halevi expressed these hawkish views in the Israel Policy Forum’s “virtual annual event” on December 16. The IPF is an Israel lobby group on the left-center, which supports the two-state-solution and opposes the Trump “peace” plan and Israeli annexation plans.

Halevi said he worries about the relationship between Israeli and American Jews because both communities have reason to feel “betrayed” by the other. Then he issued his marching orders on the Iran deal.

Most Israelis view the Obama administration as hostile and the Trump administration as probably the most pro-Israel administration we’ve ever had…

My concern is the future of the American Jewish Israeli relationship. What’s worried me about what’s emerged in the last few years is a growing sense on both sides of the relationship that we no longer have each others’ back…

I know that many American Jews were justifiably outraged by the uncritical embrace by the Israeli government of the Trump administration. It went far beyond gratitude and really was a passionate relationship– without thinking about what the Trump administration meant for American Jews, for the kind of America that allowed American Jewry to thrive. I would go so far as to define [Trump] as an existential threat to the liberal order that sustained the emergence of the American Jewish community as we know it today.

On the other side, many Israelis still harbor deep resentment toward the American Jewish community for not opposing more vigorously the Iran deal in 2015, and I’m really worried about how that’s going to play out in the coming months. Will the Jewish community take an active role in trying to convey to Biden that returning to the 2015 deal even with cosmetic changes would be seen by Israelis as a betrayal? And so we’re now in the realm where each side feels betrayed by the other, and that’s what worries me. And I would go so far as to say that each side has grounds for feeling this deep sense of betrayal of its most basic interests.

This is another warning to Joe Biden, served up by an Israel lobby group that has opposed Trump, not to reenter the Iran deal.

The fear here is that the new administration will adopt wholesale with some cosmetic changes, the Iran deal, which many Israelis like myself view as the single greatest strategic threat that this country has faced in decades.

Remember that Obama had to spend a Ton of political capital to push the Iran deal through in the face of organized Jewish opposition, pushed by the Israeli government. He was opposed by among others Chuck Schumer, who later said he saw the deal as a “threat to Israel,” and who only advanced in the Democratic Party for his opposition.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Brookings Institution official and former State Department aide under Hillary Clinton, said that we don’t have to worry about Biden getting back into the Iran deal now.

“I think what Biden has said repeatedly is that he is willing to reenter the deal if the Iranians return to compliance with the deal,” she said. But Iran is “very far from compliance… so the conditions he has set to reenter the deal don’t exist, and I personally am skeptical that the Iranians are going to go there any time soon.”

Wittes also said it was against the American interest for Israel support to be openly debated by our politicians. She said it was “most troubling that politicians have instrumentalized the relationship, weaponized the relationship in their domestic politics” in an effort to speak “to their own political base.” She seemed to refer to both rightwing Republicans and leftwing Democrats who run for or against Israel. When they do that, “it’s not serving the best interests of the two countries, it’s serving domestic political interests.” Message: Let’s not allow Israel to become a political football, because many Americans won’t agree with blind support for the country.

As for Israeli politics, Halevi said that his concern is that the battle is now between the far right and the right, and there is now no oxygen on the left. “There is no left right divide, there is only a center and right divide,” he said. It appears that rightwing Jewish parties will be getting 80 Knesset seats in the next parliament.

That is extraordinary.. ..The choices are either Netanyahu getting reelected and having a clear majority or futher to the right a government set up by Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar who is very hard line on all the issues that I find problematic, from annexation of the territories which Gideon Sa’ar was a passionate supporter of to expelling African refugees from Israel…. I desperately want to see Netanyahu unseated. But not at any price.

Wittes also said that Israeli annexation of portions of the West Bank is “the red line” for Biden, and he has the support of the Democratic caucus in opposing it.

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