Last week during budget deliberations, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) entered into the Congressional Record some frightening and seditious advice for Israel.
The occasion for such advice? McCain is apoplectic over the Obama administration's response to Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, officially rejecting the two-state solution championed by the United States and his racist incitement of Arab voters on election day.
Indeed, Obama has hinted that the U.S. may abandon Israel at the U.N., his Chief of Staff recently stated that Israel's 50-year occupation must end, and administration officials rejected Netanyahu's backtracking on his election-day comments.
Before offering Netanyahu and Israel advice on how to deal with Obama, he embraced Netanyahu's dishonesty by pardoning his racism and rejection of U.S. policy as normative electioneering:
There has been a lot of pressure on Israel as a result of the only free and fair election that you will see take place in that entire part of the world. There has been a harsh criticism of the things Prime Minister Netanyahu said during that campaign.
I point out to my colleagues sometimes things are said in campaigns that maybe we say in the heat of the campaign and maybe it is OK if we apologize.
Then, McCain offered advice to Israel by having an op-ed by Bret Stephens, entitled "The Orwellian Obama Presidency," read into the record, making clear while doing so that Stephens's seditious and offensive remarks represent his own views:
Today, one of the most astute observers, in my view, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, had some advice for the Israelis. From his article in this morning's Wall Street Journal entitled "The Orwellian Obama Presidency'':
Here is my advice to the Israeli government, along with every other country being treated disdainfully by this crass administration: Repay contempt with contempt. Mr. Obama plays to classic bully type. He is abusive and surly only toward those he feels are either too weak, or too polite, to hit back. The Saudis figured that out in 2013, after Mr. Obama failed to honor his promises on Syria; they turned down a seat on the security council, spoke openly about acquiring nuclear weapons from Pakistan, and tanked the price of oil, mainly as a weapon against Iran. Now Mr. Obama is nothing if not solicitous of the Saudi Highnesses.
The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let's hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.
The suggestion that Netanyahu should not worry about U.S. support is about the worst advice anyone who cares about Israel could give. Indeed, only someone interested in using Israel as a political football, as do McCain and Stephens, would suggest Israel pull a Sarah Palin and "go rogue."
I have long held that only outside pressure will prompt Israel to disengage from a military occupation which threatens its very survival. Which is why, as an American Jew invested in Israel's success and Palestinian self-determination, I fully support the Obama administration using any peaceful policy initiative necessary to force Israel to end its decades-old occupation, remove its settlements and seek a real, viable peace.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, recently published by Oneworld Publications.
