What Makes Washington so Pro-Israel?

1. What memories of an Obama aide can teach us on Biden’s Israel policy

Ben Rhodes worked under Barack Obama from the early days of Obama’s first presidential campaign. During Obama’s years in the White House, Rhodes served as deputy national security adviser; he oversaw much of the traffic relating to Obama’s relations with Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish community.

Rhodes has a book coming out, and he recently sat down for an interview with Peter Beinart on the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s podcast, Occupied Thoughts.

It’s well worth the 44-minute listen if only to get Rhodes and Beinart’s well-articulated description of where progressives currently stand on issues relating to Israel.

But there’s also much to learn from Rhodes (who, contrary to many other Obama-era advisers, did not find himself in the Biden administration) about the outlines that will define the new president’s approach to the Middle East.

One key takeaway is that regardless of any concerns (whether real or made up for political reasons) Israelis and pro-Israel Americans might have about Biden, the existing policymaking architecture on anything that has to do with Israel will deter the president and his team from veering from a defined centrist line.

In other words, it’s not about Biden’s feelings toward Netanyahu (did he have to wait four weeks before picking up the phone to call Bibi?), nor is it about any misgivings people on his team may have toward the Israeli leader because of the way he treated Obama. The future of the relationship will be determined by factors that were in place before Biden entered the Oval Office and will remain after he leaves: a pro-Israel press (Rhodes refers to it as “pro-Likud media”); Jewish officials with an intuitive pro-Israel understanding of the situation both in the administration and Congress; and a well-organized, well-connected, well-informed pro-Israel lobby.

Rhodes goes to great lengths to make sure his observations don’t come across as “conspiratorial”—and they don’t. But they do illustrate how any American administration, especially a Democratic one, works within an ecosystem that leans toward the pro-Israel side. “I remember looking around the room in the situation room at a meeting on an Israel-Palestine issue, and every single one of us in the meeting was Jewish,” Rhodes recalled. “We understand the Israeli fears and grievances and concerns intuitively as Jewish Americans.” He also noted the level of engagement and specificity of pro-Israel advocates who came to meet with him at the White House during the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran, some of whom Rhodes described as “armchair nuclear scientists.”

Much of this may come across as ranting from a former Democratic administration official recovering from a tough 8-year stretch of having to deal with a community that disagreed with many of his boss’s policies. But if applied to the future, Rhodes’s observations make clear that just as Obama worked within the overall pro-Israel framework of American politics, so will Biden. The same infrastructure of pro-Israel forces and sentiments is still in place.

2. The Democrats’ waning leverage

The second takeaway from Rhode’s description of his life in the frontlines of Democratic Middle East policy is that partisan politics has given right-wing Israelis the upper hand in any issue relating to Israel. Rhodes describes Democrats as being in a “defensive crouch,” having to explain and apologize for members of their party on the left who may be critical of Israel.

He argued that the Israeli agenda is set by the right-wing—a group that opposes, either openly or tacitly, the two-state solution. These right-wing actors, who represent the majority of Israelis and who usually set the tone in the Israeli government, know that American politics on Israel is playing in their favor: They will always have the entire Republican Party to back them (thanks in large part to evangelical Christian voters) along with conservative Democrats more likely to side with the Israeli government on key issues (see, for example, the Iran nuclear deal.)

Bottom line: Once Israel became a partisan issue, Democrats lost much of their leverage and find it increasingly challenging to pressure Israel into any concessions since Israelis can shop around for better offers from the other side.