Should Netanyahu's return to power cause the U.S. to alter its policy towards Israel?

The Washington Post thinks so. I don't.

Israeli voters have returned Benjamin Netanyahu to power. The editors of the Washington Post aren’t pleased. They begin their expression of displeasure this way:

Objectively speaking, Israel might be stronger than ever before in its 74-year history. Its military is all but unchallengeable by other Middle Eastern countries. Arab countries increasingly either recognize it diplomatically or deal with it as if they did. Even Lebanon, whose government is under the influence of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah party, has made an agreement with Israel over offshore natural gas drilling rights. At home, the country’s tech-driven economy generated per capita output of $51,000 last year — the 25th-highest globally, according to the World Bank.

And yet, in national elections this week, many Israelis voted as if none of this were true.

But Netanyahu was Israel’s prime minister during much of the time during which these happy outcomes were achieved, maintained, or made possible. Thus, the Post’s patronizing attitude towards the Israeli electorate is not just offensive, it’s absurd. There is no disconnect between the restoration of Netanyahu and the “objective” conditions the editors describe.

Other objective conditions also militated in favor of restoring Netanyahu to power. They include the threat posed by Iran and the ongoing violence of Palestinians. As the Post acknowledges, Israeli voters concluded that Netanyahu provides better protection against these serious threats than his opponents do. And it’s their lives that are at stake.

The Post may disagree with the Israelis’ assessment. Or it may think that other issues (such as gay rights, to which its editorial alludes) should be more important to Israelis than their security concerns.

Both views are misguided in my view, but that’s okay. Folks write misguided opinion pieces all the time.

However, the Post’s editorial goes further. It contends that if Netanyahu forms the government he’s very likely to form and if that government adopts the “illiberal” policies the editors anticipate, the U.S. should view these developments as showing a low regard by Israel for its special relationship with America.

Translation from editorial-ese: The U.S. should punish Israel for its “illiberalism.”

Doing so would be folly. It’s one thing if an ally or strategic partner of ours acts against our security interests. When that happens, the U.S. needs to reconsider the relationship. But the Post’s editors don’t claim that a Netanyahu-led government will change Israeli policy in any such way . The Post’s indictment is for illiberalism, not fecklessness, unreliability, or betrayal.

There are at least two reasons why the Biden administration should reject what the Post urges it to do. First, it’s improperly intrusive, and arguably anti-democratic, to punish a democratic ally over a disagreement with the domestic policy choices of its elected government.

Second, and more importantly, it’s against our national interest to do so. We form alliances and strategic partnerships to further our economic and security interests. We shouldn’t lose or lessen the advantages we thereby obtain because we disagree with the domestic policies of our allies and/or strategic partners. To do so is put the interests (as we see them) of a foreign population ahead of our own interests.

Biden administration policy towards Saudi Arabia illustrates the point. Biden loosened our ties with the Saudis to some degree because of Saudi human rights abuses, including the government’s apparent complicity in the murder of an occasional op-ed writer for the Washington Post.

Was this move in the economic and security interests of America? Not in my opinion. It may have made Biden feel good, but I wonder how he felt when, after so much anti-Saudi rhetoric, he had to go hat-in-hand to the Saudis in an unsuccessful effort to increase the supply of oil.

It might be argued that Israel presents a special case. In this view, our alliance with that country isn’t based solely on economic and security considerations, it is also based on shared values and traditions. To that extent, the argument continues, we shouldn’t be indifferent if Israel eschews our values and becomes just another Middle East autocracy.

But there is no danger of this. Nothing Netanyahu has done in all his years in power, or will ever do, puts Israel on anything like a par with its neighbors. At its most “illiberal,” Israel is still an oasis in a region full of authoritarian, and in many cases murderous, regimes.

For this reason, as well as the others discussed above, even if one agrees with the Post’s complaints about the policies it expects from a new Netanyahu government, these complaints do not support the Post’s suggestion that the U.S. should change the way it relates to Israel.