Iran Will Not Be the End. For Israel, the Goalposts Always Move

Bret Stephens, the New York Times’ inveterate war monger, has a prediction: The Iran War means Israel will be more likely to make peace with the Palestinians: “Benjamin Netanyahu will face a much tougher time fending off international pressure for Palestinian statehood if the Tehran regime falls and Saudi Arabia offers peace with Israel.”

This is a recurring theme amongst Zionists justifying slavish, unconditional US support for Israel: Israel is a good faith actor that wants to make peace, but feels insecure ’cause of [insert X] and only needs the US to [insert Y] and then Israel will be ready to end its occupation of Palestinian lands and support a two-state solution. Above all, Stephens has argued, if Israel is to take “risks” for peace, it needs to feel confident in America’s steadfast support:

Why did Netanyahu acquiesce to Donald Trump and call off attacks on Iran, or agree to Trump’s 20-point peace plan? Because most Israelis believe — based on his decisions to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and bomb Iran’s nuclear sites — that he’s the best friend they’ve ever had in the White House.

Stephens wrote the above last October. This argument has become even more fallacious in the months that followed, especially this weekend.

For starters, the US has been an unconditional backer of Israel for decades. Still, the only thing that it has achieved is to breed a sense of impunity amongst successive Israeli governments. Whenever the US has pushed for peace, it has always been against an Israeli government that engaged in conduct that undermined America’s stated goals, such as continuing illegal settlement construction, if not outright hostility (ex. Shamir and Netanyahu in the 1990s, and Netanyahu again against Obama).

Rather than show gratitude by being a constructive partner, Israel has pocketed American support and done whatever it pleased — confident that American presidents lack the political will to impose penalties. In fact, the only time Israel really started to change its behavior was not when the US indulged Israel with more aid packages and other goodies, but when the Bush Sr. Administration withheld a $10 billion loan request and threatened to condition military aid.

Stephens recognizes the utility of US leverage and sticks when it comes to every other country in the world. Only when it comes to Israel, we are told, must the US go out of its way to placate Israel, offer more assurances of undying love, boost military aid, and fulfill every Israeli request, such as moving our embassy. But there’s no evidence that this has made Israel more likely to pursue peace; all the evidence suggests it has emboldened the most intransigent and militarist currents in Israeli politics. That is utterly predictable: Spare the rod, spoil the child.

When hasn’t the US given Israel practically everything it wanted? Did Biden win any leverage or goodwill from Netanyahu for his roughly $20 billion in aid, along with protecting Israel from Iranian and Houthis’ missiles and diplomatic backlash? No, Netanyahu pocketed the gains and then worked for Trump’s reelection.

Was the second George Bush not a steadfast ally of Israel? Bill Clinton undercut all the leverage Bush Sr. had achieved and, in the end, got a demeaning lecture from Netanyahu in the Oval Office. And what about Trump? No American president has indeed acquiesced to Israeli demands as much as Trump. But it is false that Trump has gotten anything in return. Netanyahu is undermining the Gaza peace plan with Israel’s near-daily ceasefire violations. And as for Iran? Well, in the end, he’s prodded Trump into a war of choice.

Moreover, Stephens’s claim that Iran stands in the way of peace needs a historical review. Back in the early 1980s, Netanyahu declared on American television: “There is a major force behind most of these groups that is the Soviet Union. If you take away the Soviet Union, its chief proxy, the PLO, international terrorism would collapse.”

The PLO was not a Soviet proxy. It was an indigenous Palestinian response to the displacement from their homeland. By presenting the Palestinians as mere Soviet appendages, Netanyahu sought to 1) align Israel’s enemy with the US’s bete noire, since Israeli governments have always sought to manipulate Americans into believing that Israel’s cause is their cause, and 2) pretend as if the Palestinians have no independent, legitimate grievances against Israel and that if the USSR disappeared, so would the Palestinian cause.

After the Soviet Union bit the dust, Netanyahu shifted his focus: Saddam Hussein needs to be removed for there to be peace. All of this is gaslighting by a fanatical propagandist designed to obscure the Palestinians’ aspiration to be free of Israel’s military rule. For Netanyahu et al, that reality — that the conflict continues not ’cause of outside forces but because Israel is hell-bent on interminably subjugating the Palestinians and stealing their land — needs to be hidden from view. So blame the Soviets, and later Saddam, and now Iran.

Additionally, Stephens’s prediction ignores the fact that Netanyahu and the right-wing militarists who run Israel act out of their own ideological imperatives and not solely in reaction to external actors. For Zionists who dream of a Greater Israel, their ambitions are not contingent on the comportment of any Palestinian faction, Iran, or any other nation. Their opposition to a Palestinian state is not rooted in any practical considerations that can be assuaged; it is a deeply ideological opposition, and one that is increasingly messianic. So it will not matter if the Islamic Republic falls; Netanyahu will not budge on a Palestinian state.

Stephens seems aware of this at some level since he speaks about “international pressure,” but 1) that pressure is unlikely to be forthcoming in the foreseeable future, and 2) we can expect, given his track record, that Stephens will decry the pressure.

Because, for Zionists, beyond their kneejerk aversion to any criticism of Israel, the goal posts will keep on moving. There will suddenly be a new bogeyman that explains why now is not the right time to pressure Israel to take “risks,” and why the US needs to do just one more thing for Israel. There is always just one more thing the US must do for Israel to truly make it feel safe (the safety of Palestinians does not exist in the minds of these people), and that one more thing may be another war.

Already members of the ruling party in Israel, Netanyahu’s Likud, ministers in the Israeli government, members of the so-called Israeli opposition (which often sounds crazier than Netanyahu), and Netanyahu himself are positioning Turkey, a NATO member, as the new enemy.

Israel always needs an enemy, and that enemy always serves as an excuse as to why Israel cannot make peace right now, but once so and so is taken care of (with American help), then Israel will be ready, and so on it goes. Too bad for Stephens that the American people are less duped than they used to be by Israel and its American loyalists.