It could have been worse for Israel Tuesday—much worse—with Barack Obama's last speech at the United Nations General Assembly. "Israel," he , "recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land." It was a relatively anodyne phrase, given that there has been some concern here that the president might use the occasion to try to push for initiatives to reshape the Palestinian-Israeli issue. It's long been one of Obama's chief concerns, predating his tenure in the White House, and if it's been on the back burner the last several years, with less than four months left on the wheel, it's legacy time now. No matter that Obama's tinkering may further destabilize a typically volatile region that is much more dangerous now than it was when he first came to the White House seven years ago.
Given the fractious relations between the White House and the government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—as documented in part, for instance, by Israel's former ambassador to the United States Michael Oren in his 2015 book Ally--it's reasonable for Jerusalem to expect contention with the White House until Obama's very last day. Some Israeli officials refer to period lasting from the presidential election until inauguration day as the "kill zone," a time frame during which an unleashed Obama will still wield most of the power of the presidency with very few of its responsibilities. Accordingly, a source familiar with the workings of the prime minister's office explained that Jerusalem has been exploring different ways to shape the context in anticipation of one last public fight with the Obama White House.
The feeling is that Obama's tempered formulation at the U.N. was likely due to the fact Donald Trump has drawn closer to Hillary Clinton in the polls and the White House is keen to preserve Obama's legacy. A speech recognizing a Palestinian state, calling for a Security Council resolution, or drawing new parameters for resolving the conflict might damage Clinton's support—which is to say that Obama's nearly inevitable Hail Mary will likely come after the November elections.
Others here in Israel's capital suggest that Netanyahu's media offensive may have played a role in deterring Obama, for the present anyway. Last week the prime minister's office posted a two-minute-long on YouTube in which Netanyahu explained how "the Palestinian leadership... demands a Palestinian state with one precondition: no Jews." Netanyahu continued: "There's a phrase for that," he said. "It's called 'ethnic cleansing.' And this demand is outrageous. It's even more outrageous that the world doesn't find this outrageous," he said. "Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage."
The State Department was outraged, the "terminology" "inappropriate and unhelpful," which is to say the video had this otherwise enlightened White House playing defense. Obama allies in the U.S. press and Netanyahu adversaries in the Israeli media also pounced on the prime minister.
Former Obama official and now national director of the Anti-Defamation League Jonathan A. Greenblatt : "it is hardly surprising or offensive that Palestinians insist that no Israeli sovereignty, which the settlers insist on bringing, can exist in an independent Palestinian state. There is nothing intrinsically anti-Jewish nor anything remotely amounting to 'ethnic cleansing' in this policy position."
Actually, that's incorrect—Palestinian leadership has been clear that no Jews will be able to remain in a future Palestinian state, whether they insist on Israeli sovereignty or not. As the Palestinian Liberation Organization's chief representative to the United States Maen Arekat Tablet magazine in 2010,
[AREIKAT]: I remember in the mid-'90s, the late [PLO official] Faisal Husseini said repeatedly "OK, if Israelis choose to stay in a future Palestinian state, they are more than welcome to do that. But under one condition: They have to respect and obey Palestinian laws, they cannot be living as Israelis. They have to respect Palestinian laws and abide by them." When Faisal Husseini died, basically no Palestinian leader has publicly supported the notion that they can stay.
What we are saying is the following: We need to separate. We have to separate. We are in a forced marriage. We need to divorce. After we divorce, and everybody takes a period of time to recoup, rebound, whatever you want to call it, we may consider dating again.
[TABLET]: So, you think it would be necessary to first transfer and remove every Jew—
[AREIKAT]: Absolutely. No, I'm not saying to transfer every Jew, I'm saying transfer Jews who, after an agreement with Israel, fall under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state.
The point it seems isn't to argue before the fact of a Palestinian state how many Jews should stay or even how many would want to stay, but rather as a precondition it shows that the Palestinians are not ready to live side by side with Jews, within the borders or outside them. A regime promoting ethnic cleansing is incapable of soundly governing a state.
Israeli officials explain that Netanyahu has often pointed out the insidious nature of the demand, and this is hardly the first time he's called it "ethnic cleansing." Thus, one Israeli official told me that the video had nothing to do with a preemptive push back against the administration.
Similarly, a senior official from a D.C.-based Jewish organization wrote me in an email that "the video was probably not aimed at any particular person or initiative at the U.N. The Israelis have been reconsidering how they do public diplomacy, because explaining all the sacrifices they've made for peace hasn't bought them any good will. So now they're shifting to asserting their rights."
Netanyahu's "No Jews" video then is best seen in a larger framework of strategic communications and media outreach. Part of that is about going to the press directly, and some of it means bypassing a typically adversarial media, foreign and domestic, to speak directly to those who constitute Israel's bedrock of support, the American public.
Just two months ago, Israeli journalists were complaining that Netanyahu was "crushing" the country's free press. "Efforts to stifle freedom of the press can be seen as part of a broader attack by Mr. Netanyahu and his ministers on Israel's democratic institutions," Israeli journalist Ruth Margalit in the New York Times. Today, however, journalists in Tel Aviv complain that Netanyahu won't stop talking to the media. "His marathon press briefings last four hours, six hours," one journalist tells me over dinner. "Bibi is relentless." One non-journalist tells me he saw the prime minister briefly after he'd completed one long session with the press—"and he was still in briefing mode: point one, point two, etc."
If Netanyahu is overwhelming the press with detailed information, he's using a very different approach to woo the English-speaking non-media, on Snapchat, Twitter—he did his first live Twitter chat recently—and most importantly YouTube, including the "No Jews" video.
These intimate fireside chat style video presentations are the brainchild of David Keyes, the prime minister's office new English-language spokesman. Keyes's is in human rights and communications. I saw his unique brand of guerilla video activism on display in Vienna last July when during the final round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Keyes "punked" the Iranian delegation by marching out a locally-based Iranian dissident disguised as a mullah. The eight or so Netanyahu videos so far produced, getting 40 million views total, are of a very different nature—sober and thoughtful, yes, but also warm, expressive, and in places even somewhat self-deprecating.
In this , Netanyahu explains how a scene of a Palestinian father telling the police to kill his infant son "shook him to his very core." In this , he apologizes for his nasty blunder during Israel's last elections when he warned that Arabs were coming to vote in "droves" and petitions Arab citizens of Israel to partake in Israeli society in "droves."
The purpose, it seems, is to explain Israeli society and politics through connections and likenesses to American society. If U.S. evangelicals can always be counted on to support Israel, here Netanyahu seems to want to expand that base to different groups of Americans. he extends his condolences to the LGBT community after the terrorist attack in Orlando at a gay nightclub that left 49 dead. In the "No Jews" video, Netanyahu asks, "Would you accept ethnic cleansing in your state? A territory without Jews, without Hispanics, without blacks?"
Much of the Obama administration's political success last year is owing to the fact that it relied on various echo chambers in the media to market its policies to the American public, sometimes explaining them and often obscuring them, as it did with the Iran deal. Netanyahu seems to have at last concluded that he can't defend himself or his country in that forum. As he did when he made a speech in Congress criticizing the Iran deal, he is taking his case straight to the American people.