In recent coverage of U.S.-Israel relations in the American media, Seth Mandel detects a leitmotif: the White House can’t seem to manage to get the stubborn Israelis to follow its orders. This (supposed) problem was, for instance, put forcefully before Kamala Harris by Bill Whitaker of CBS. Mandel observes:
Vice-President Harris could easily have rejected the premise of the question. . . . But Harris didn’t want to reject the premise, so she gave an incoherent answer implicitly reinforcing the idea that the administration believes it has the right to dictate policy to Israel.
But, Mandel notes, the evidence brought by reporters like Whitaker in fact suggests that the real problem lies elsewhere:
President Biden’s problem, it turns out, isn’t Israel’s defiance— it’s Iran’s defiance. Israel resisted going into Gaza until Hamas got tired of waiting and invaded Israel instead. Israel didn’t go into Lebanon until Iran made clear that it would be the only way to return displaced Israelis to their homes in the north. Iran-backed attacks have continued also from Iraq and Yemen, as well as from Iran itself.
Nobody has been asking Biden or Harris why the Iranians don’t listen to them. . . . Does the U.S. have sway over anybody? A major obstacle to getting an answer to the question about U.S. influence is that we only seem to ask it about the one country under assault and surrounded by genocidal enemies: Israel.
More about: Joseph Biden, Kamala Harris, Media, U.S.-Israel relationship