On the day before Passover, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wowed the members
of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, with a sterling pledge of
unconditional support: “America and Israel share a common history--nations
founded to be beacons of democracy, forged by pioneers, fulfilled by
immigrants. … Let us join together to recommit ourselves to the
best of our heritage, and together look to the future. Israel and the
U.S., now and forever.”
Publicly, Pelosi said nothing about the brutalities of Israel’s
counterproductive forty-year occupation of the Palestinian territories,
but she did hold closed-door talks with Prime Minister Olmert. Then
she met with leaders of the Palestinian Authority before traveling
to Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Pelosi’s congressional delegation included Democrats Tom Lantos,
Henry Waxman, and Keith Ellison, America’s first Muslim congressman,
as well as Ohio Republican David Hobson. Lantos, premier cheerleader
for Israel in Congress, explained that the model of the Cold War should
serve as a salient reminder of the benefits of conversing with hostile
states rather than merely shunning them: “We talked to the Soviet
Union for over half a century, and there’s no doubt in my mind
that the tremendous amount of interchange had something to do with
the collapse of the system.”
Ever since President Truman extended legal recognition to Israel in
1948, many Democrats have had close ties to mainstream Israel and to
Israel’s lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC). Neoconservative Republicans find themselves aligned mainly
with Israel’s reactionary Likud, Bibi Netanyahu’s party
left with only nine Knesset seats.
In a clear policy shift, Pelosi and Lantos now are refusing to follow the neoconservatives’ and
AIPAC’s advice that isolating Syria helps Israel. The same reasoning motivated
Republican congressmen Robert Aderholt (Alabama), Joe Pitts (Pennsylvania), and,
Frank Wolf (Virginia) to talk with Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad weeks
before Pelosi’s Democrats saw him.
As a service to Israel, the Speaker even agreed to carry a message from Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to President Assad. Yet, President Bush and his tutors
claim that congressmen who talk with foreign leaders undermine his foreign policy.
Alas, there is nothing to undermine. In six long years, the White House has not
been able to formulate a productive foreign policy for the Middle East so that
the region remains mired in gridlock and chaos--with no progress in sight.
If the Baath regime in Syria were overthrown, as the neo-cons have urged, the
feared Muslim Brotherhood would likely come to power. That would be far more
menacing to Israel than the secular Baathists who just want the Golan Heights
back and a humane settlement for the stateless Palestinians. The Muslim Brotherhood,
moreover, would back the Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq and even try to overthrow
the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. Fortunately, Israel’s policy makers understand
that.
It is the President’s flawed leadership that rightly prompts his congressional
critics to propose a different foreign policy, one that promotes negotiating
with allegedly hostile regimes rather than isolating them, calling them evil,
and threatening to overthrow them.
Ironically, Prime Minister Olmert now agrees with Pelosi’s rather than
the President’s approach to Syria. Since the occupation of Iraq has turned
into a catastrophe and Israel’s war against the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah,
turned into a fiasco, an attempt to overthrow Assad would only further aggravate
Israel’s isolation from its neighbors.
As the first branch of the nation’s government, Congress has an obligation
to address the executive’s incompetence. “We have to make
decisions based on our judgment,” the Speaker explained. “Thus far,
the president's judgment has not been good in terms of, for example, the war
on Iraq. So with all due respect to the president and the role he has, we want
respect for the role we have. And members of Congress have gone on fact-finding
trips since our country began. We're not going to stop because the president
wants to avoid the facts and doesn't want to engage in dialogue."