U.S. – Israel not in crisis, but…

The strain in US-Israel ties is one of the key issues in the Israel election campaign – and rightfully so. But if you glance at US media during the last couple of months, you’d think the relations have never been worse. Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in The Atlantic, which announced a “full-blown crisis,” described relations as “the worst it's ever been” and quoted an anonymous administration official calling Prime Minister Netanyahu “chicken___”  unleashed a torrent of commentary to this worst-ever-crisis notion. Even venerable Bob Schieffer chose to question the Israeli leader about it on “Face the Nation.”

But history paints a very different picture. Until the late fifties, relations between the two countries were frosty and remote, and France was Israel's primary ally. In the sixties, Israel mistakenly sunk the U.S.S. Liberty, tragically killing 34 American sailors. In the seventies, President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger froze all aid and deliveries to Israel, declaring a “reassessment” of U.S.-Israeli relations, after a harsh argument between Kissinger and Israel's Prime Minister Rabin. In the eighties, the Reagan administration tried to thwart Israel's plans to invade Lebanon by leaking its battle order to John Chancellor on NBC's Nightly News. In the nineties, there was the Pollard espionage affair; the freezing by President H.W. Bush of the loan guarantees to Israel, then the Israeli sale of Falcon fighter planes to China scandal. The list goes on.

One could argue that this nadir in US-Israel relations is personal, between their leaders and not governments. But that would also be incorrect. The leaders themselves, both President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have mostly praised one another. The bad blood does not publicly emanate from them, but rather from anonymous “senior officials” and leaks from closed-door sessions — later denied.

To be sure, such leaks reflect a problem, but they pale in comparison to prior eras, when calumny was cast openly. “This American chutzpah makes my blood boil,' said Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin of President Carter in 1979. Twelve years later Israel's cabinet member Rehav'am Ze'evi declared President George H.W. Bush an “anti-Semite.” In 1997 Martin Indyk, then U.S. Ambassador to Israel, was derided as a “Jew-boy.” This same vitriol was also directed at Henry Kissinger in 1974 and U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer on the Knesset floor. Same goes for the Americans. Secretary of State James Baker, for example, was cited in 1992 as saying, “F— the Jews – they didn't vote for us,' raising hell in Israel.

What’s occurring now is no crisis. A crisis is when President Eisenhower tells Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in 1956 that if Israel doesn't immediately withdraw from the Sinai it will face severe economic sanctions. Or when America credibly threatens to devalue the British Pound and withdraw IMF aid when Britain similarly refuses to withdraw its forces.

Those were crises — not when a nameless official calls the Israeli Prime Minister names, especially when followed by a wave of qualifications and condemnations from the White House and State Department.

And a refusal to host senior Israeli officials is also not a new phenomenon. It happened to Ariel Sharon, then Israel's Minister of Defense, who was declaredPersona Non Grata for his role in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon.

In fact, America and Israel have never been so closely aligned. Recent polls (and http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4600107,00.html) show high levels of American public support. Congress is as supportive of Israel as it has ever been. Tourism and trade volumes between the countries are peaking. Military aid is at a record high. Defense technology export policies are generous. Security cooperation has never been so close.

There are strains in the relationship, of course, as there are in any, but those should be viewed through the prism of history. I, for one, believe that Israel should be grateful to the American people for their strong, unwavering support.

However, even though the current strains are not the worst ever, they do have a destructive potential. If the Obama administration provides insufficient support to Israel in the United Nations Security Council regarding a unilateral move the Palestinians say they will make later this month, or if the US signs a deal with Iran on its nuclear program that fails to address Israel’s s genuine concerns, Israel and America will find themselves in a “full-blown crisis.” Such an outcome could be disastrous for Israel. That is why its leaders must make every effort to avoid a crisis in their relations with American officials.

Rather than fanning the flames of crisis and creating self-fulfilling prophecies, officials on both side need to reduce the inflammatory rhetoric and focus on finding practical ways to fix what needs to be fixed.

Uri Sadot is a Research Fellow at Israel's Institute of National Security Studies. He holds an MPA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs.