Shlomo Ben Ami: ‘The US abstention at the UN was a way of twisting Israel’s arm’

By chance, Shlomo Ben Ami, 80, spoke to EL PAÍS in London just after leaving a theater where he saw a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic An Enemy of the People. “The Israeli left is doubly orphaned. In Israel, it has become the enemy of the people. It is one of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s great victories. And, on the other hand, our colleagues on the international left have not been able to empathize even with the October tragedy [the Hamas attack, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis],” laments Ben Ami, the last foreign minister of a Labor Party government in Israel.

“It has been such a sudden outburst against Israel that it almost makes it seem that it was latent. Nothing like this has ever happened. That is Hamas’ great victory. And what prevents us from stopping this current against us is Netanyahu’s extremist government,” he adds.

With a deep understanding of previous peace processes — and, therefore, of the intense and high-conflict relationship that for decades has linked the United States to his country — his analysis of what happened at the U.N. Security Council on Monday is illuminating. The Biden administration’s decision to abstain from the vote on a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — a move which allowed it to be passed by the Council — has been a severe blow to Netanyahu’s government. And, without a doubt, Ben Ami points out, it has been much more significant than other U.S. abstentions in previous years.

“It is part of a bottom-up strategy, to send signals to Israel that things can change, which began with Biden’s comment leaked to the press that he no longer considered Netanyahu an asset to the United States, but a burden,” recalls the politician and historian, who constantly returns to the place of his training, the university town of Oxford. “But it’s not so much a change of strategy regarding the Middle East as a way of twisting Israel’s arm,” he qualifies. “To tell it that it can’t go on the way it’s going. They are fed up with Netanyahu. And Netanyahu’s response also reveals his conviction that Washington wants him out.”

President Biden had a strategic vision for the Middle East, Ben Ami points out, which involved achieving a stable U.S. alliance with Israel and the Arab countries to confront the threat from Iran. Hamas’ success has been to lead Netanyahu into a war without clear political objectives that has placed his country outside the Western axis of recent years, the same one that supported Ukraine against Russia and China.

“Netanyahu has become a danger to Western objectives in this new Cold War between the United States and China and Russia. Israel is not where it should be,” says Ben Ami. Biden, he recalls, is a “gentile Zionist” who has professed a great love for Israel for years. The decision to corner his ally in the U.N. Security Council, despite being a measured move that was limited to abstention, was something of a personal drama for the U.S. president.

But the close relationship between Israel and the U.S. has always had a clear limit: never put yourself before U.S. geopolitical interests or the objectives of the president in office. And Netanyahu, hand in hand with his extremist coalition, has even managed to split the U.S. Jewish community, which has never before wavered in its support for Israel.

“Today, there has also been a before and after in the Jewish community in the United States. There is even a new current among its intellectuals, called diasporism, which seeks to create a new ideology that will put an end to its dependence on Israel [...] What is happening now was unthinkable. Because until now they lived in a kind of medieval Spain, before the expulsion: an integrated community that made intellectual, academic and economic contributions. That was American Judaism, which this war has managed to alter,” laments Ben Ami, a former ambassador to Spain who knows the history of Spain and the Jewish community in depth — including King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s order to expel all Jews from their kingdoms.

The veteran politician does not believe that in the current situation, a unilateral recognition of the Palestinian state, as Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has pledged to do, would be of any use. But he admits that, even in times as dark as the current one, it is essential to begin building a future vision of peace that Netanyahu, focused on his own political survival, is not considering.

Israel today finds itself in a situation of isolation. The extremism of those who govern the country has tarnished its international image, the former minister laments. According to Ben Ami, the actions of the Netanyahu government have put Biden in a very difficult situation: the U.S. president cannot head into an election with the baggage of his failed strategy for the Middle East. The Democratic leader, therefore, needs to “save face” in the new international scenario.

“It would also be enormous blindness on the part of Israel to ignore the enormous currents of alienation that are emerging in the United States. In the Democratic Party, for example, or among young people. Netanyahu is guilty of the fact that the country has embraced the most extreme factions of American society, such as evangelicals or Trumpism,” he points out.

The U.S. government was careful not to vote in favor of the U.N. resolution on Monday. It abstained, and even said immediately afterward that the text was not binding, Ben Ami recalls. But it was a clear sign that Washington was willing to go further, especially as long as Netanyahu remains at the head of Israel.

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