Do you remember, by any chance, from the first half of your American history survey course, Citizen Genêt, Edmond-Charles Genêt (1763–1843)?   He was the central figure in the “Citizen Genêt Affair” in 1793.   Genêt came to the United States as the Girondist minister to the United States from France, arriving in May 1793, a few months after the execution of Louis XVI, and a few months after Britain and Revolutionary France commenced hostilities, a global war that would not finally end until 1815.

Genêt saw the French and American Revolutions as united in their commitment to liberty.   So did many Americans as well, who, as Gordon Wood has written, as Genêt travelled around the country, “sang the “Marseillaise,” waved the French revolutionary flag, and passed liberty caps around.” The Democratic-Republicans, like Jefferson, embraced Genêt—Jefferson would write Madison in May 1793, “Genêt wishes to do nothing but what is for our own good, and we should do all in our power to promote it.” But Federalists, with their sympathies with Britain’s cause, had dark suspicions of Genêt as the leader of a conspiracy to get the United States into an alliance with regicide France against the forces of European order. John Adams would write of Genêt many years, using the t-word, recalling the frenzy: “Terrorism, excited by Genêt.” Genêt was incautious and impolitic, and his efforts to use his position in America to commission privateering efforts against British shipping, rapidly brought the Genêt affair to a head. President Washington forced him to resign his position, though when the new Jacobin government in France demanded Genêt return, to face an almost certain rendezvous with the guillotine, he was allowed to the stay in the United States. He married an America, kept out of the public eye, and for many decades lived quietly as a gentleman-farmer in the lovely Hudson River town of East Greenbush.

What is the consequence of the Genêt affair? According to historians like Gordon Wood, Genêt helped exacerbate the growing divisions between the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians, leading to the first real national political parties. And it forced American foreign policy makers to define their neutrality in the conflict between Britain and France with greater force and precision, and perhaps contributed to President Washington’s famous statement in his 1796 “farewell address” that the United States needed to avoid “entangling alliances.”

I suppose in the intervening 225 years between Citizen Genêt and Benjamin Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, there have been other efforts by foreign powers to influence American policy, but none immediately come to mind, at least for their unabashed and unembarrassed blatant brazenness. Of course, no two situations are alike, but there are many parallels. Genêt believed that the international cause of liberty gave him the right to intervene in the internal affairs of a foreign nation. Dermer and Netanyahu clearly feel the same way about what used to be called “the global war on terror.”

Both crises highlighted confusions and uncertainties in American foreign policy. A few years after the Genêt affair, to return to your American history survey course, was the XYZ Affair, when the United States almost went to war against the French Directory in the late 1790s, in the so-called “Quasi-War.”  And then a few years after that, the country swung the other way, and the Embargo Act of 1807, and (that surefire generator of junior high titters) the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809,   paved the way to the War of 1812 and the second US-Great Britain war.

Once again, American foreign policy is mightily confused about who are our enemies. The United States is currently committed to the struggle against: 1) populist Sunni Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas, 2) radical Sunni Islamists, like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, 3) the remnants of Baathism and Arab secularism in Syria, and 4) Shi’ites of almost every stripe, and since several of these groups are currently engaged in bloody war against each other, it is difficult to fight all of these forces at the same time.   Our only allies in the Middle East are the conservative Islamic dictatorships of the Gulf (and Egypt, which is conservative and a dictatorship if not Islamic) and Israel. As in the 1790s, the problem is that it is impossible to wage war against all of America’s potential enemies without getting drawn into a war against more or less everyone in the region. But for Citizen Genêt back then, or Citizen Netanyahu now, this is not important. Both were perfectly willing to advance their own country’s self-interest at the expense of the United States, consequences be damned.

The Genêt Affair was a great clarifier—it helped create the first modern political parties because the Jeffersons and the Hamiltons, and everyone on down, were forced to confront their real differences on foreign policy matters. Perhaps the Netanyahu Affair will have a similar clarifying impact on US relations to Israel. For many decades, there has been no alliance more entangled than that between Israel and the United States, and for a number of reasons, Democrats and Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have generally been unwilling to confront their real differences on Israel policy. There has been little recognition that the current government of Israel sees its allies as conservative Republicans, and has absolutely no use for Obama or the Democrats, except that they expect all American politicians to be cheerleaders for Israel, regardless of its policies. And that the current Israel government has absolutely no intention of ever honoring any American reservation against settlement expansion, or feels any need to restart the peace process with the Palestinians. And this is why conservative Jewish voices, like the Jerusalem Post and the ADL, have been so worried about the Bibi-Boehner connection, because it threatens to make American policy towards Israel partisan and divided along party lines.

And of course, it has long been ridiculous that, in America in 2015, where Democrats and Republicans agree on just about nothing, Israel remains the one source of irenic, Johnny one-note harmony and unity.   It is long past due that a liberal Democratic view on the Middle East, on Iran, on Israel, and on the future of the settlements and the occupation distinguish itself from a conservative Republican alternative. And perhaps Netanyahu’s blunder will help bring this about.   And if Netanyahu and Dermer wanted to follow the precedent of Citizen Genêt, and retire to the Hudson Valley as gentlemen-farmers, both Israel and the United States would be better off.