Israelis read Obama right. Well, half right.

I have been arguing that the Obama administration's promise to reassess its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of Netanyahu's late-election disavowal of a two-state solution is not an expression of pique but the seizing of an opportunity. A report from the New York Times' Jodi Rudoren suggests that a lot of Israelis agree with me:

Several Israeli analysts said the administration’s criticism of Mr. Netanyahu seemed like a pretext for a longstanding plan to change the United States’ policy of protecting Israel in international forums, which the administration has said it will reassess. Others suspect a ploy to undermine Israel’s lobbying efforts against the American negotiations for a nuclear accord with Iran.

I don't know that there was a longstanding plan; policymaking is usually more reactive than people assume. But any rational U.S. actor (see Baker, James) would look for an opportunity to alter the U.S.'s one-sided relationship with Israel -- the U.S.'s near-total absence of leverage, the political imperative to provide unconditional support no matter how thoroughly Israel undercuts U.S. policy, the impossibility of imposing consequences such as limiting aid or joining the rest of the world in condemning Israeli settlement activity.

I see Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser (cited by Rudoren), as half right here:

Administration rebuke to Netanyahu name-checks those "indissoluble bonds"

Obama often alludes to "indissoluble" or "unbreakable" bonds between the U.S. and Israel. I've long thought this unseemly, a dangerous sign of unconditional support. If the United Kingdom went fascist in ten years, would our bonds with that longtime ally be indissoluble? Relations between countries should never be unconditional (though arguably, I guess, "bonds" could endure when political alliances fray).

It's worth noting that in rebuking Netanyahu's election rhetoric seeming to delegitimize the Arab vote and disavowing commitment to a Palestinian state,  the Obama administration name-checked those "bonds":

“The United States and this administration is deeply concerned about rhetoric that seeks to marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens," Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One. "It undermines the values and Democratic ideals that have been important to our democracy and an important part of what binds the United States and Israel together.”

More substantively, Earnest implied that the basis in international law for the U.S.'s constant protection of Israel in the U.N. is also cracking:

Jack Goldsmith's disillusionment

John Podesta, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, has an op-ed calling on Obama to release the legal memos setting forth the administration's rationale and guidelines for targeted killings. Good for him. As he notes, he has standing to weigh the competing imperatives of national security and public disclosure -- and with respect to the administration's legal deliberations, he comes down firmly on the side of disclosure.

I am more interested, though,  in the thinking of someone with even more standing to address the legal issues arising from the administration's covert operations: Jack Goldsmith, the short-term head of George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel who countermanded the insane torture memos that authorized the Bush administration's torture regime.  There's a link to a Feb. 5 Goldsmith op-ed at the bottom of Podesta's. Goldsmith's latest tells a sad story of disillusionment when compared with Goldsmith's 2009 writings.

Goldsmith takes a step back to consider not just the need for disclosure regarding the drone memos but the need to develop a new legal framework for "secret warfare":

Andrew Sullivan's vision for Obama is appealing. But what about Afghanistan?

Ever since November 2007, I have both enjoyed and caviled at Andrew Sullivan's heroic chronicles of the Obama presidency, which started as prophecy in November 2007.  That's the case with his latest Newsweek cover, which makes a pretty strong case that if re-elected Obama will have the chance to fulfill his stated ambition of being a "transformative" president in the Reagan mold --one who "changes the trajectory" of American politics, as he famously/infamously posited during the 2008 campaign.

So far, the rhythm  of Obama's tenure has indeed somewhat tracked Reagan's: two years of transformative legislation enacted in tough economic times; an approval rating that dipped low as unemployment broke double digits, leading to a major midterm setback; then the recovery of economic growth and popular approval (at very different paces). In prospect, Sullivan sees for Obama the chance to protect and enact the seismic legislation passed in his first two years; to cut major tax-and-spending deals with a chastened (or at least cornered) GOP; and to help feather down the collapse of repressive regimes and foster democratic revolution in a major corner of the globe. He protests that the forward vision is "potential, not prophecy," but with that caveat lets hope have its creative way.

It's a 3000-word vision, so perhaps one can't demand too much supporting detail.  That said, it suffers from a signature Sullivan sleight-of-hand: the paragraph brief, that builds a case by grammatical momentum, stuffed with "items in series" -- that is, comma-separated talking points that sweep the reader past some pretty questionable claims or omissions. Take the foreign policy side of the vision of second-term "potential':

"Unless" war is necessary? -- or until?

Like Peter Beinart, I'm mildly heartened by evidence that "Obama's backbone vis Bibi [is] proving infectious" on Capitol Hill.  Yet  I'm troubled by a perhaps random note in Barney Frank's otherwise forceful message to Bibi to back off (as reported by the Hill's Julian Pecquet):

Hope, frustrated

This lede brought a long-percolating bit of pattern recognition to the forebrain:

U.S. President Barack Obama sought to ratchet up pressure on China over its currency and trade policies, warning Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday that Americans were growing "impatient and frustrated" over economic relations.

This was, shall we say, not the first time Obama invoked or betrayed frustration -- his own, or Americans'.  There's Netanyahu (Nov. 8):

There's no doubt that Obama is frustrated and angry in the extreme with what he perceives to be Netanyahu's recalcitrance when it comes to Arab-Israeli peacemaking (Nov. 11).

Economic stagnation:

While protesters and police battled on the streets of Oakland, in the pre-recorded interview Leno asked Obama for his views of what was behind the Occupy Wall Street movement:

Look, people are frustrated. And that frustration expresses itself in a lot of different ways. It expressed itself in the tea party, it's expressing itself in Occupy Wall Street... Everybody needs to understand that the American people feel that no-one is looking out for them right now.

Beinert gestures toward "the liberal forces in Israel"

One of the most common criticisms of Peter Beinert's seismic essay taking the United States Jewish community to task for unconditional support of all Israeli government actions was that Beinert selectively surveyed recent Israeli history to present a portrait of the country that overemphasized its rightward swing and alleged growing rejection of liberal democratic values.  Jonathan Chait, for example, wrote:

In the same vein, Peter now paints Israel as falling almost inexorably into the grip of the far right. “The Netanyahu coalition,” he writes, “is the product of frightening, long-term trends in Israeli society.” There is certainly some truth to this – Russian immigration and the higher Orthodox birthrate have altered the face of the Israeli electorate. On the other hand, it was not that long ago that left-of-center parties governed Israel. Demography does not work that rapidly. Though he concedes that Israeli government can move in and out of power quickly, the tone of his essay has the same two-minutes-to-midnight urgency.

I myself wrote, "Beinert overemphasizes the repressive and aggressive elements in Israeli society," adding, "But the one-sidedness of Beinart's characterization of Israel does not negate his argument. His purpose is to warn; his argument is not that Israel is wholly given over to repression and oppression but that it is trending the wrong way, and that the American Jewish establishment is enabling its worst tendencies and so alienating young American Jews...In short, Beinert's is a family argument."

In an interview with Haaretz published today, Beinert seems to acknowledge the point -- that his purpose was, as Chait put it, "to grab the American Jewish leadership by the lapels and shake some sense into it," and that the seizure required a certain selectivity: