Obama's Obeisance to the Lobby Concerns Me Not

A friend is disturbed by Marty Peretz's renewed endorsement of Obama--"What Obama Said to Me About Israel", and by Obama's obeisance to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who my friend points out served in the Israeli army in the 80s at a prison where Palestinians were tortured. How can you have such faith in Obama to change U.S. policy? Well I have faith.

First off, it's interesting that this shidduch, to use the Yiddish phrase for marriage or a deal, is happening right now. Obama has clearly won, and now he is getting a laying on of hands by a prince of the Israel lobby, actually two princes, who pronounce that he's kosher. My crowd has always said that the lobby is important, this just shows it. Expecting Obama to cut the lobby out is naive. It is not for nothing that he sold out Ali Abunimah in Chicago some years back; I wish he didn't but he did, and it was a necessary step to his advancing to the national stage.

I don't mean to suggest that Obama is insincere either. The great demand of Walt and Mearsheimer, and of others who support Palestinian right of self-determination, is that We be included at the table of foreign policy. We're not asking that Marty Peretz be thrown out, or Goldberg, or Dennis Ross even, no; we're saying that other Americans be included, from Ali Abunimah to Zbig Brzezinski to Rob Malley to MJ Rosenberg to Leon Hadar. Of course we seek a great weakening of the Israel lobby, but what I have always said is that a robust debate of what the American interest is visavis Israel is all that we need. When that takes place, Americans will exercise real fairness in our dealings, and the situation will change. And I do think this is happening: that an Obama administration will include Chuck Hagel and many realists who believe that Israel is damaging our position in the world, and that its allies are promoting a dangerous idea about Islamofascism... Obama is a real smart guy. I am sure he has read Walt and Mearsheimer's paper on line.

It doesn't even bother me so much that Peretz is claiming Obama. Peretz is a Washington type, he loves power, he likes to be at the table. He has good political values in some areas, he held Al Gore's hat for him for a long time. The greatness I see in Obama is a cold ability to weigh the arguments of petitioners without being beholden. He doesn't anger, he doesn't fall in love. His language is considered. He has the unique ability to triangulate the Palestinian position and Marty Peretz's and maybe bring about an understanding, the ability not to frighten Holocaust-era Jews. I have that faith.

The most important lesson of Aaron David Miller's book is that the greatest achievement by any president in the Middle East came through the efforts of a guy who really liked Arabs 30 years ago. Jimmy Carter: Camp David. Carter was a rich, rural man who adored Anwar Sadat and even Hafez al-Asad. And he threw himself at the problem, in defiance of the domestic considerations his aides kept warning him about, and was willing to toss his presidency aside to achieve something here. After all, Sadat gave his life for what Carter was merely sacrificing position or reputation to achieve.

The other Democratic paradigm is Bill Clinton, who didn't want to spend any political capital on the problem--no, he'd been impeached and wanted to rise again with his wife's presidency. Clinton's Camp David team was almost all Jewish, its chief negotiator acting as "Israel's lawyer" (per Miller); and it achieved nothing, and the second intifadah began. Ambassador Kurtzer has now written that the next president should have a diverse team, including Arabists.

I recite this history only to say that Obama is more in the Carter camp than the Clinton one. I've read his wife's thesis at Princeton and Obama's first book. These people entered public service because they wanted to change things. No I can't imagine that he will torch prospects of a second term over the issue, but I think he truly understands, as Carter did, that this is the great hidden secret of American politics, and the great challenge to a true statesman is to lead America out of this swamp. Jews are powerful; he needs Jews to get there.

Comments

[john]

Carter's Camp David cost the US taxpayer big:

more aid to Israel,

$2 Billions p.a. to Egypt

Frankly, I dont want to pay for the peace map or the peace trip or the peace road or the reconstruction of Plestine.

The US is broke.

[Madrid]

I agree with you John. US world-hegemony is weakening very quickly, the US is bankrupting itself, and a US brokered middle-east peace will cost us an additional trillion or so.

I am hoping for a simple disengagement from Israel--a time when American citizens finally understand the state their country has sunk to and demand that we use our resources for ourselves and build a sustainable self-sufficient economy.

Israel will never make peace until it gets off the welfare dollar. And in any case, every year Israel does not make peace, the situation, demographically and militarily, gets more and more perilous for it. Young Israeli professionals like more and more to live outside of Israel. In my small town, I constantly meet Israelis that have left for better pastures. So in the long term, the country simply has no future as an ethno-religious theocracy, as it is now.

My one worry is that those Jews who stay behind will feel so backed into a corner that they will let the nukes fly, and the world will be truly SOL as a result.

On the other hand, I figure its leaders can predict the response of the rest of the world to such an event.

[Madrid]

I find it very satisfying to contemplate Israel, stupidly staying on precisely the same trajectory that it is currently on, in 10 or 20 years.

Oil will be about $1000 a barrel; Western Governments will be scrambling around to try to meet their energy needs, cutting whatever deals they can with the Russians, the Saudis, the Iranians, whatever Iraqi gov't exists; the US military, which currently consumes more energy than Greece does per year, largely shut down (as will be most other energy intensive militaries).

Think of all those Brooklynites sweltering in the desert; no water, no energy, no future, surrounded by angry, poor Muslims.

Funny stuff.

[Madrid]

I feel like Richard Witty with his multiple posts, but here goes. One last post for the night:

Phil is way too sanguine about Obama.

The fact is that Jewish power wants the same ol', same ol', and that is what Jewish power is gonna get, whether its McCain, Obama, or Billary. The sad thing is that the same ol', same ol' is a dead end for both America and Israel.

The rest of us are only here for the ride.

[hlmeankin]

I'm glad that Phil's implicit assumption behind why Obama will not chllanage Israel is now clear.
"Jews are powerful; he needs Jews to get there."
Now, can we say: He couldn't get to be president without the support of Jews?
If Phil believes this then other questions follow: Where does this power come from?
From wealthy Jewish Billionaires? From the vast network of philanthropic institutions they fund? From their disproportionate numbers in the media world? from their donations to politicans? From all of the above. And is it fair to say, that the opposition of Jews to discuss "Jewish Power",
has to do with their fear of losing it?
And this: Do Jews in this power position help America in its foreign policy or hinder it? And I mean those who fill the power positions not the marginalized ones..who oppose using America to further Israel's ends..
I have to say, I'm afraid that at this point in time they definitely hinder America..
but I certainly hope that folks like Phil, can turn it around...

[bar_kochba132]

Since Obama is leading the world past "tribalism", I am looking for the Palestinians, who we all know are saintly people, unlike the nefarious Jews (right, Gilad Atzmon?), so I am sure that they will be the first to embrace the "progressive" ideas Obama is trumpeting. As a result, I expect them the give up their demand for an independent Palestinian state, since such a thing is "tribalistic" (just like Zionism, right Gilad Atzmon?). Thus, the Palestinians will lead mankind to its utopian, universalistic, anti-parochial, anti-nationalist future. No Palestinian state=Paradise. I can sign on to that!

[samuel burke]

in this blog phil finally comes out and reveals what obama represents.....more of the same kow-towing to the same old zionist american jews by americas politicians.
they may not be 100% sure of him yet but obama will come around one way or the other.

as for me, i really could give an owls hoot about the politics. Today the u.s is mired in many many problems from which it will not extricate itself without major changes, and sooner probably rather than later the american zionists whether jews or christians will be on the proverbial canoe without a paddle because a change is certainly coming.

obama to me represents only an outside chance for change in our middle east policy...in the end though he will probably be another wilsonian who will either be blackmailed into subservience or bribed by the desire to keep power into sacrificing the palestinian issue on the altar of zionism.

as for the jews in america, just be ware, the zionist dont give a hoot about you just as they did not give a hoot about the european jews...its all about the state, the "asset" is the state, and anti semitism whether here or anywhere else only serves to enrich the state with what a state needs, jewish population.

if america discovers this great "secret in american politics" as phil called it , how do you think john and jane doe, who have to shop at walmart and pay four dollars a gallon of gas will feel? would you like to gander a guess? youre smart enough, you wont have to dig too deep to come up with the answer, its all written right there in your dna.

america will resent you, and israel will gain more citizens when you leave on your aliyah.

Max Nordau
There is nothing innovative about this nationality. Before the sixth congress, Max Nordau, one of the leaders and founders of the Zionist movement wrote:
“…If Eretz Yisroel will once again be inhabited by Jews, the Jews will be able to hold onto her with their strength and with their labor (Today the number of inhabitants in Eretz Yisroel amounts to 600,000 people, among them 60,000 Jews, at the same time that some 6 million Jews aspire to return to this land.) Anti-Semitism shall no longer affect them for there they will be able to find rest and work and dedicate themselves to their occupation in peace, like any other nation that lives with confidence on their land. On the contrary the Jews who do not wish to return to Eretz Yisroel can remain in their places, as they wish, and if anti-Semitism shall continue to degrade them in the future as well, we will be forced to endure this situation as well. They could have escaped from it and they didn’t escape – probably they feel surrounded by good things and they tolerate their suffering with indifference, or they are not at all affected by it, or they have some other remedy. Let the situation be whatever it is – there is no need to worry about these people.”
If so, the purpose was already determined in the beginning of Zionism – Israel above all, and that is foremost. And so the people are for Zionism and the state, and not the state and Zionism for the people. If the state is an asset in its own right, then everything is legitimate in the quest to attain the state, because without the state there is no nation. (It’s interesting to note the explanation of Dina Poras, one of the most noteworthy holocaust researchers, for this argument in “Ho’oretz” 4.12.91: “From the moment that the state was made the most important, Jewish lives became secondary, because “the state of Israel is above all”; and again there is a striking similarity to “Deutschland iber ales”.

[samuel burke]

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12834

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I’m curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?
BARACK OBAMA: You know, when I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man -- as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel, and during the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted. That was part of my upbringing, to be traveling and always having a sense of values and culture but wanting a place. So that is my first memory of thinking about Israel.
And then that mixed with a great affinity for the idea of social justice that was embodied in the early Zionist movement and the kibbutz, and the notion that not only do you find a place but you also have this opportunity to start over and to repair the breaches of the past. I found this very appealing.

[hlmeankin]

"As a result, I expect them the(sic) give up their demand for an independent Palestinian state, since such a thing is "tribalistic""
Ah yes. Nothing like a good appeal to absurdity. On this ride we must equate all nationalism with "tribalism". Now, I'm not one to raise national liberation to an absoute good, but it seems pretty clear, that Israel's brand,embraced by the reactionaries of the Diaspora,seems to be the most toxic one on the agenda....
Or does dropping 1000 cluster bombs on a country when the end of the war is hours away signify a form of lightness onto mankind? Eh bar_kochba132 baby?

[samuel burke]

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12834

Obama vs. The Lobby
No matter how much he grovels, it's never enough
Poor Obama. No matter how much he tries to placate the Israel lobby, they just won't take yes for an answer. The Lobby has been after him for months, trying to dig up "evidence" that someone with the middle name of "Hussein" is necessarily an enemy of Israel. The best they could come up with so far were the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's jeremiads, which didn't have much of an effect at the polls, as the North Carolina and Indiana primary results – and subsequent national polls – attest.

Yet Obama still keeps trying to appease the Lobby. He's purged staff members who so much as looked cross-eyed at the Israelis, such as one poor adviser who meekly suggested that talking to Hamas might not be such a bad idea. He was out faster than you can say Mearsheimer and Walt.

Speaking of which: the Obama-oids have gone out of their way to distance themselves – i.e., "reject and denounce" – those two hate-criminals, even though, as Philip Weiss trenchantly avers,

[Charles Keating]

Nothing like watching your super-power country's next leader candidates all fall all over themselves trying to placate less than two percent of the country's population in their misperceived vision of what's best for a tiny nation on the far side of the world.

I bet born and bred Israelis have no respect at all for the USA. I don't blame them. Res ipsa loquitur.

[Todd]

"I don't mean to suggest that Obama is insincere either. The great demand of Walt and Mearsheimer, and of others who support Palestinian right of self-determination, is that We be included at the table of foreign policy. We're not asking that Marty Peretz be thrown out, or Goldberg, or Dennis Ross even, no; we're saying that other Americans be included, from Ali Abunimah to Zbig Brzezinski to Rob Malley to MJ Rosenberg to Leon Hadar. Of course we seek a great weakening of the Israel lobby, but what I have always said is that a robust debate of what the American interest is visavis Israel is all that we need."

How to take this apart?

Of course Obama is insincere. Is there a new definition of the word?

Among the "Americans" that need a seat at the table, which one represents the majority-which one is even a traditional American with only one passport? I don't see it.

Yes, it would be a good idea for zionists to be thrown out of the discussion, if not out of the country.

Why shouldn't the Israel lobby be destroyed rather than just weakened? Why shouldn't these people be punished for their actions, rather than have some of their power and privilege taken away? What happened to the Jewish zeal for justice?

I wasn't even alive during the 1960s, but many in the Jewish community rattle on forever about their role in changing the nation through supporting civil rights and opposing Vietnam. What happened to these people as adults? My guess is that much of the protest was insincere- and much has been played up at that!

How much responsibility is the "meritocracy" willing to take for the rot that has taken place in the U.S. since its rise? My guess is that we'll get some sort of shell game, and then they'll go off and hide- maybe even behind someone like Obama.