Plans Flop for Moderate Pro-Israel Lobby
ALTHOUGH MUCH IS OFTEN MADE in the mainstream press about the significant pro-Obama vote by American Jews during the last election, The New York Times dropped a bombshell on October 31 when it revealed that Obama’s favorable rating in Israel dropped to about 4 percent this past fall according to a poll for The Jerusalem Post.
This news reflects the fact that despite apparent cosmetic differences between political factions in Israel and American Jews, hard-liners in Israel (and in the American lobby for Israel) reflect popular opinion within their respective constituencies.
Another evidence of this is the fact that what appeared to be an ambitious effort to launch a “moderate” pro-Israel lobby to counter the heavy-handed clout of the hard-line pro-Israel lobby known as AIPAC appears to have gone belly-up.
As a consequence, AIPAC—which is short for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—continues to reign supreme in official Washington.
The newly established pro-Israel organization known as J Street recently held its first national conference in Washington but the meeting—from a public relations standpoint—was a bust. Not only did Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. boycott the conference (suggesting rather pointedly that the government of Israel doesn’t particularly care for “moderate” American Jewish organizations) but also a bevy of U.S. senators and members of the House of Representatives who had initially agreed to attend—or otherwise lend their public support for the conference—ultimately decided it would not be in their best interests to do so. That is, AIPAC and Israel wouldn’t approve.
In addition, the actual meeting itself received sparse coverage in the mainstream press which otherwise likes to report on matters relating to gatherings of pro-Israel Americans. Clearly this group of pro-Israel Americans—who have something critical to say, on occasion, about Israel—was not seen as worthy of significant press coverage.
J Street was set in motion as an ostensible “alternative” to AIPAC, emphasizing that J Street and its supporters were most definitely lovers and supporters of Israel but that, unlike AIPAC, they would feel free to criticize Israel as necessary.
And while some critics of Israel—such as the ardently pro-Arab (and occasionally quite blatantly anti-Jewish) magazine, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs—enthusiastically babbled on about the creation of J Street, hyping its existence as “proof” that “not all American Jews support Israel unconditionally”—J Street has had little influence in Washington or in affecting political opinion within the American Jewish community. J Street largely exists in the rhetoric of its own press releases. And the big flop of its first national conference drove that point home most painfully.
The fact that President Obama did dispatch his national security advisor, General James Jones, to speak at the conference was no real surprise. There have been more than a few wags who have referred to J Street as “Obama’s Jews,” in light of the fact that the president and some of his key advisors—including General Jones—have been suspected of being less than obedient toward the overall demands of Israel and its lobby.
Even Rahm Emanuel—the American-born Obama chief of staff whose father was one of the “founding terrorist fathers” of Israel and who, on his own, did a brief stint as a volunteer for the Israel military—was reportedly repeatedly denounced as a “self-hating Jew” by high ranking Israeli government officials for lending his name and credibility (in the American Jewish community) to the initiatives of the Obama administration.
So what remains in play is the fact that Obama’s loyal opposition—the Republican Party—is firmly in lockstep with the “mainstream” hardliners in AIPAC. And J Street is a road to nowhere.
Although the Democratic leadership in Washington has always been firmly in the camp of Israel, the GOP cemented its ties with AIPAC in particular (and the well heeled fanatics who support that lobby) during the Ronald Reagan era.
At that time, traditional American nationalism went by the wayside as far as the GOP leadership was concerned. Reagan and the national Republican power brokers not only firmly aligned themselves with Israel, but also supported sovereignty-surrendering free trade internationalism and flagrantly opened up American borders to wave upon wave of illegal immigrants as never before.
The few elements of the Democratic Party in Washington that do dare to question all-out support for Israel—right or wrong—are largely isolated to increasingly smaller numbers in the Congressional Black Caucus and a few independent-minded folks like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D Ohio) and a handful of others, largely those who have substantial numbers of Arab-Americans in their congressional districts.
As far as the American Jewish community itself is concerned, polls taken both by J Street and the AIPAC-allied Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith during Israel’s violent attack on Gaza—including the slaughter of helpless caged animals in the little Gaza zoo—reflected that roughly eight out of every ten American Jews admittedly supported Israel’s Gaza venture (which most people around the world viewed as a horrific series of war crimes). And considering the fact that the Gaza rampage was particularly grotesque, the fact that so many American Jews openly supported it is revealing.
Thus, the hopes of a handful of good people who dreamed that J Street would somehow add an element of sanity, balance and common sense to the Middle East debate (to the extent that there is any “debate” at all) seems to be just that: a dream. _
Letters
Israeli Extremism Threatens the World
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman may have tipped his Mossad hand when he reportedly told Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that Israel may use nuclear weapons against Gaza. The threat to Israel is not the 1.5 million Gazans who reside in the world’s largest open-air prison.
The threat is the fast-growing global outrage at the abuse inflicted on Palestinians, commencing with the ethnic cleansing of 400-plus villages six decades ago.
Not since 1948 has this enclave of extremists mounted such a public relations offensive. Christian Zionist President Harry Truman trusted Jewish Zionist lobbyists when he solicited assurances that they would not become what they immediately became: a racist theocratic state with an expansionist agenda destined to create serial crises in the region.
The merciless global agenda pursued by colonial Zionists is the single greatest threat to world peace, as confirmed yet again by Lieberman’s warning. As the primary remaining ally of these Jewish nationalists, the risks to the U.S. increase with each passing day as Tel Aviv works behind the scenes to catalyze yet another conflict.
JEFF GATES
Arizona
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