My take on the unfounded furor on the right over Obama's remarks on Israel and the 1967 borders last week:
Changing the debate to one about whether or not Obama is sufficiently pro-Israel also allows Republicans to fight on the battlefield on which they feel most comfortable — nationalist litmus tests. Whether we're talking about flag pins, the New Black Panther Party, American Exceptionalism, or the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, Republicans prefer conflicts that are fundamentally defined by the president's failure to express sufficient cultural or patriotic loyalty. The actual policy questions are replaced by fights at which Obama is at a fundamental disadvantage, having to prove a negative: That he does not hate white people, Jews, or the country he's chosen to serve.
It's politically obvious why conservatives are doing this. But by replacing the conversation over a viable two-state solution with one about the president's fealty to Israel, they are paradoxically exacerbating Israel's existential peril. To paraphrase former Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert, absent a two state solution, in all likelihood we will have a one-state solution — and that one state won’t be Israel, at the very least, not as we know it today.
Better to have a fight over nationalist bonafides than the actual issue at stake. Better for the right not is, not better for Israel.
