The Real Conspiracy

Hillary Rodham Clinton believes a right-wing opponents are out to get her husband, but she’s wrong. It’s actually a Zionist conspiracy. It has been lost on no one that Monica Lewinsky is Jewish, but no one has identified why she would want to hurt the President, especially if she loved him. The answer, of course, is the Elders of Zion needed to distract Clinton so he would get off Bibi Netanyahu’s back and stop trying to force him to make dangerous concessions to the son of Hitler.

My tongue is only partly in my cheek because Israel’s friends definitely were looking for a respite from the one good snub deserves another approach to U.S.-Israel relations. After all, it is probably no coincidence that the same Administration that has adopted the “won’t tell no matter what you ask policy” with regard to the current scandal would adopt one of the most silly foreign policy approaches ever devised.

The Washington Post dubbed the Administration policy toward Israel “snub diplomacy.” Apparently the geniuses in the State Department somehow believed that refusing to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister or having a state dinner or other humiliations would convince Netanyahu to soften his position. You know a major problem exists when government officials are saying the Israeli was being treated worse than Bulgaria’s head of state. As a reporter once said about Ronald’s Reagan relations with Menachem Begin during the AWACs fight, the White House might as well write Bill hates Bibi on the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk. In truth, both Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were despised not only by the President but by most of the Congress. At least Bibi has some fans painting “We Love You Bibi” on the sidewalk at the other end of the street.

It is hard for anyone to say with a straight face anymore that Clinton is the most pro-Israel President in history. Still, officials in his administration are a far cry from those in the previous one who took great joy in publicly lambasting the Israelis. And, in the grand scheme of things failing to invite Netanyahu to dinner isn’t as important a measure of the relationship as, say, the arrival of the first stanch of America’s most sophisticated fighter planes to Israel at almost the same time as snubgate.

Given the brilliance of Foggy Bottom diplomacy, it shouldn’t have been too shocking that officials there cooked up the other wonderful idea of inviting Yasir Arafat to the Holocaust Museum. The “striped-pants boys,” as Harry Truman referred to them, work under the constant delusion that reason will always prevail if the case is presented well (unless, of course, you’re dealing with people you really don’t like such as Saddam or Muammar). Thus, Arafat would surely learn from a visit to the museum and have a far greater appreciation of Jewish suffering. Yea, right.

The Museum elders, in their wisdom, decided to snub Arafat, which, naturally, provoked a firestorm. Without revisiting all the arguments about the issue, let me just suggest that letting him come would have made the case of the critics even stronger. Inevitably, he would have left the museum and said either immediately afterward or when he returned home something to the effect that what is really needed is a museum to the holocaust perpetrated by the Jews against the Palestinians.

Now because the IQs of the advisers to the Prime Minister are on par with those in the White House, Netanyahu decided to stick his finger in the eye of the President by meeting with some of Clinton’s most vocal enemies (a.k.a. conspirators). “Gee,” Bibi must have thought, “if I piss off an already pissed leader of the Free World he’ll surely come around to understanding my political constraints and Israel’s security dilemma.”

I think it’s great that many Christians are devoted supporters of Israel. When violence breaks out in the Middle East and American Jews all cancel their reservations, the evangelists fill the Israeli hotels. The only problem is that, historically, the Moral Majority et al. have rarely been with us in the trenches when we needed them on policy issues.

It’s also great that members of Congress are sympathetic to Netanyahu; they can help constrain President Clinton from adopting George Bush-like policies. The reality remains, however, that foreign policy is made by the President and he is the one you need on your side when risks are taken for peace and when a war with Iraq is on the horizon. This doesn’t mean you need to give in to all the President’s demands, especially unreasonable ones dictating (another brilliant State Department idea) how much land to cede to the Palestinians. It does mean, however, that you show respect for the President, regardless of how he treats you, and do everything possible to find common ground.

Thank you Monica and conspirators for giving us all time to reflect on the errors of our ways and allowing us to think about how we can all get along better.