The Future: Professional Jews (Part III)

Before last week’s Israeli election, foreign policy analyst, David Makovsky tweeted:

“Having devoted my professional life to strengthening U.S.-Israel relations and Israel’s ties with its Arab neighbors, I’m struck by how little attention the unprecedented shift in American public opinion toward Israel is receiving in Israel’s election campaign.  If the next Israeli government fails to reverse the erosion of Israel’s standing on both sides of the American aisle, the consequences could be lasting with grave strategic consequences.”

Many people, me included, are what we refer to as “professional Jews.” We work at Jewish organizations, so our professional life and our heritage-identity-faith are united. Pundits are not “professional Jews,” but most American Jewish pundits must decide how they will manage their public profile and their content around their “Jewish identity.” That requires a public posture toward Israel. David is an example of such a person, and what is striking about this tweet is how he leads with that.

Let’s create context for what the experience of being a rising pundit or analyst in the realm of American foreign policy looked like in the 1980s. The Reagan-Bush years, which lasted from 1980-1992 were defined by their home states – California and Texas. These gargantuans formed the cornerstone of the Republican Party’s success.

Yes, back then California was a red state.

The case of Texas was more interesting. A “southern state,” it turned Republican after decades of being Democrat during the 1968 election. A New England blue-blood family like the Bushes saw the writing on the wall and moved to Texas.

With oil as one of Texas’ primary industries, the Bush family and the Republican Party, at large, was default pro-Arab because it was pro-oil. What path then was an up-and-coming Jewish pundit or analyst to take? The best path was the Democratic Party. Implicitly, the shade the Republican Party threw on the Democrats, then, was that it would favor Israel to maintain its support among Jews. But what occurred was an effort by the Clinton Administration to prove it was not biased toward the Jewish state and that its foreign policy chops were robust: meet the Oslo Accords.

As an adolescent and teenager during the Oslo Accords Era from 1993-2001, I believed in these Accords; I hoped they would succeed. I woke in the morning to read The New York Times and on more than one occasion was crestfallen to see a Hamas suicide attack in Israel. Still, until the end – a bitter one – after Ehud Barak succeeded Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister and joined President Clinton at Camp David with Yassir Arafat, I hoped, and expected these Accords would succeed.

I am grateful that President Clinton has been clear since that moment that Arafat rejected the offer to create a Palestinian state. The Accords’ failure lay at Arafat’s feet, not Israel’s.

This is lived history. I experienced it. I remember it. Nothing that has happened from 2001-2026 overturns that lived experience from the 1990s and early aughts, so I regard the pro-Palestinian movement since 2001 as farce – dangerous farce – but farce because of this lived experience – because I know that American Jewry, the US government, and Israel were deeply invested in creating a sustainable, lasting peace between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Oslo Accords death was slow. Sharon’s 2005 Disengagement from Gaza was a transitional moment – half-Oslo, half-not. With the Abraham Accords, we found a real strategy for the present and the future. The shift? The “conflict” is not a local one between two national movements – one Jewish and one Arab-Muslim. The issue is a regional one and has been since the Zionist movement’s advent during the closing era of the Ottoman Empire.

The “issue of the palestinians” is one that can – only – be resolved in regional terms. That is part of the error of Makovsky’s tweet, which was immediately re-tweeted by Democratic Majority for Israel. I appreciate this effort to offer a framework for pro-Israel Democrats, but the death of Oslo is – now – final.

The closing sentence of this tweet is: “If the next Israeli government fails to reverse the erosion of Israel’s standing on both sides of the American aisle, the consequences could be lasting with grave strategic consequences.”

This statement is false. For all the reasons to be outraged about MAGA and a Trump Presidency – primarily 1/6/21 – none of that can falsify what is veracious. Yes, the blue-blood Bush family moved to Texas and, in concert with that state’s oil industry, the Republican Party was by default a pro-Arab party.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Texas. Texas is not only about oil. It’s also evangelical terrain, and in W. Bush, we saw that mixed messaging: one-part pro-oil and the other pro-Bible. Today, with American energy independence, the pro-Bible is dominant. The Republican Party is a pro-Israel party through and through contra Makovsky.

Makovsky’s tweet reveals more than it intends and it uncovers an entire outlook of “professional Jews” that cannot be our future.