The Obama administration’s ongoing pique over Netanyahu’s upcoming speech to Congress is not over protocol, argues Elliott Abrams. Rather, the White House has specific reasons for deliberately encouraging a spat with Israel. Most disturbingly, it wishes “to use the current tension to harm Israel’s support in the United States permanently.” Abrams writes:
All opinion polls in the last several years show a partisan edge in support: overall support for Israel is steady and high, but its composition is changing. More and more Republicans support Israel, and the gap between Democratic and Republican support levels is growing. President Obama acts as if he sees this as a terrific development, one that should be enlarged as much as possible before he leaves office. That way he would leave behind not just an Iran deal, but weakened support for Israel on Iran and everything else. Support for Israel would become less of a bipartisan matter and more a divisive issue between the two parties. It is not hard to envision Obama in retirement joining Jimmy Carter as a frequent critic of Israel, pushing the Democratic party to move away from its decades of very strong support for the Jewish state.
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