Mondoweiss

Jeffrey Goldberg Says American Politicians Can Say 'Whatever They Want About Israel'

Marty Peretz and Jeffrey Goldberg are powerful journalists; Obama lately talked to both of them about Israel. Peretz had a "longish" conversation, Goldberg did an interview. Why did Obama go to them? He obviously believes that they have the keys to the Jewish leadership, or a large segment thereof. Maybe they do. Joe Lieberman is inaccessible to Obama, so are Malcolm Hoenlein and Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner and Anne Lewis. Go where you can get it, as my guru likes to say.

I find the Goldberg conversation with Obama weird. There's a general atmosphere of Goldberg, a former Israeli soldier, vetting Obama in his capacity as a representative of Jews who are outsiders in American society and who "feel Jewish worry." No other people's interests or worries are invoked in this interview. Not the American interest, not a word about the life and suffering of the Palestinians (though yes a question about settlements). This is surely a sincere reflection of Goldberg's parochial concerns, but it makes you wonder why he gets to write for the New Yorker and the Atlantic about Middle East matters. Two years ago at Yivo, J.J. Goldberg, the Forward editor, said that Jeffrey Goldberg had distorted an aspect of  Palestinian politics in a piece to serve a rightwing agenda. (Bill Kristol stood up for Jeffrey Goldberg, and no wonder; these guys as much as anyone produced "the mindset" that gave us Iraq, which Obama is sworn to change.) I wish the Goldberg boys would have this out; it's the Iraq soul-searching the Jewish community needs.

Goldberg says here that Jimmy Carter said Israel was turning into an "apartheid" state. No, Carter only made this claim with respect to the West Bank. Goldberg says at the top that Obama is fighting to win over Jewish voters in Florida. Is that really why Obama is making obeisance to Jews? It's much broader than that. It's about money and media and cultural power; "Jewish voters in Florida" is now the media's euphemism for this larger sociological reality, and it's a form of disinformation.

Then there's Goldberg's requirement that politicians respond to Jews in their "kishkes," or guts:

if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

This sounds like a tribal shibboleth. Goldberg is basically saying, So long as you say you love Israel,  you can say whatever you want about Israel. Can he point to one politician or official who says whatever he wants about Israel? I don't know what world he's living in. Jimmy Carter says whatever he wants and he's vilified by among others Goldberg. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel ventured recently that the Israel lobby "intimidates a lot of people" on Capitol Hill. Will that comment disqualify Hagel from being Obama's VP?

Bush Suggests Obama's an Appeaser at Knesset--the Israel Lobby Finally Enters Our Political Discourse

Today's a great day. George Bush's crazily craven speech at the Knesset, a naked obeisance to the Israel lobby, has caused Chris Matthews to charge that Bush and Hillary, with her "obliterate Iran" talk, are competing for a "domestic political" constituency. Why is Israel the "Hyde Park" of American politics? Why is this issue "the podium of American politics?" he asked.

Good questions. He cannot ask them seriouslywithout having John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt, who advanced this subject more bravely than anyone else, on his show. If not now, a year from now.

Oh and let's not forget Obama. He had a "longish" conversation with Marty Peretz on the telephone re Israel. And also provided slavish answers re Israel to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. It's a party, come on down!

Wait-- not you, you're not invited.

P.S. Just now on NBC Nightly News, John Yang said the Bush speech was aimed at a "key" American "voting bloc."

Neocons Don't Have Time for Golf. Or Didn't. Maybe Now They Do?

Scott McConnell comments on Bush's promise of giving-up golf while the war's on:

There’s also a more complicated sociological point to be made here: that the WASP establishment which ran the country’s foreign policy rather decently in the years after World War II has been nudged from the central halls of power, and one is now more likely to find its scions working on their handicaps or plotting elaborate middle age man getaways to this historic courses of Scotland than clawing their way up the ranks of the foreign affairs intelligentsia.

I agree, and wonder why there isn't any journalism on the subject of the new establishment. The answer, my friend, is: the fear of another Holocaust if we talk about Jewish power. So journalists betray their mission of informing the public on the grounds that the public is not to be trusted, and then tell themselves that the public is too stupid to notice this anyway. But people aren't too stupid. They know that significant changes have taken place in the sociocultural makeup of the establishment, especially the foreign-affairs branch; but they get little information about it, and the result is that commenters on my blog can claim that Jews run America, when obviously it's not that simple...

'Commentary' Ignores Palestinians' Eyewitness Testimony in Denying that Zionists Drove Arabs From Jaffa in '48

Last week I blogged about Commentary's piece denying the Nakba, which was underwritten by the chairman of the New-York Historical Society-- a landmark of Nakba denial, published in what was once a glory of Jewish intellectual tradition: Commentary, the magazine I grew up with, stacks of it, my parents didn't throw it away. The article demonstrates how fealty to Israel is eroding Jewish intelligence, as it has forced some of the smartest people on the planet to devote themselves to alchemy, coming up with elaborate proofs that black is white.

One paragraph that particularly disturbed me said that "huge numbers of Palestinian Arabs were being actively driven [Commentary's emphasis] from their homes by their own leaders and/or by Arab military forces.. In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the [Arab] municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea..." In making this assertion, author Efraim Karsh denied the New Standard View, that the Zionists forced the Palestinians from Jaffa. He offered no evidence.

Having just attended a speech on the Nakba by Lila Abu-Lughod, an eminent anthropologist at Columbia University, in which she stated that her father had been "driven" out of Jaffa by Zionists, I posted about the Commentary piece, and a couple days later Commentary published an annotated version online, including the following footnote to support Karsh's claim re Jaffa:

One Cheer for Olbermann's Latest Bush/Iraq Tirade

Tonight I watched one of Keith Olbermann's trademark rants against George Bush. It went on for 15 minutes of vituperative outrage, generally surrounding Bush's politico interview, and his decision to give up golf while the Iraq War was going on...

The first thing you have to say is that it's completely impressive that Olbermann gets to hold forth with such fury, it's a proof that we still have a democracy, even on commercial TV. Good for him. He's surely ignored a lot of responsible people telling him to Cool it. The second thing is that Olbermann's analysis is a little cheap. He blames Bush for the Iraq War. Good, so do I. He says that Bush is a nincompoomp. Agreed. There are suggestions that Bush is doing it for business interests. There is anger that Bush overruled the "realists." If you're going to talk about realists, you have to talk about neocons, and you have to talk about ideas. This war was built on bad ideas. Yes George Bush showed the worst judgment in American history, but he is a nincompoop, he doesn't have time to read books. Guys who read books came up with this war and he was swayed by their arguments post-9/11. Of course it's his fault, but it's also the fault of the guys who read and wrote books.  Blame the intellectual agents of this horror, or you are going to have more like it.

Olbermann also gives a pass to the Congress, saying it was misled by mendacious Bush-fed intelligence. But Congress voted for this war; the Congress showed a disastrous lack of judgment when handed obviously-shaky intelligence. Barack Obama was a state senator then, in Chicago, and he knew it was a bad war, Lincoln Chafee knew it when he did the minimum and went to see the CIA guys. The weird thing about Olbermann's rant is that it's so focused on George Bush, and so trembling with operatic outrage, that it creates an odd sympathy for its nincompoop target. I'm glad MSNBC is airing this stuff. I just wish Olbermann was smarter.

Prophet Without Honor: 'Sydney Morning Herald' Prints American's Appeal for 1-State Solution

The Sydney Morning Herald has an op-ed by Chicago's Ali Abunimah saying that the one-state solution is gaining adherents worldwide. The two-state solution "has all but disappeared as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are caged into walled reservations by growing Israeli settlements and settler-only roads - a situation that resembles the bantustans of apartheid South Africa," Abunimah says, and points out that the number of Palestinians under Israeli rule is about to exceed the number of Jews, at 5 million.

The Herald is one of Australia's two leading papers, sort of the NYT of Aussie. A pity that Abunimah can express these views down under but not here. When does the author get invited on to op-eds here? Our journalism is broken, even as Abunimah is right, the one-state option gains adherents.

If Israel Is a Democracy, Why Does a Liberal Jewish Leader Forswear a Coalition With Arabs?

It's too bad that Huffington Post runs bellicose articles like this one by Amitai Etzioni, in which he rationalizes the Israeli occupation and dismisses the idea of separation between church and state as high-falutin' western values. I thought Huffpo was more enlightened than this.

I just heard Ehud Olmert speaking about democracy on television, introducing George Bush. I was in the barber shop, and had brought Righteous Victims, Benny Morris's book, with me to read while I was waiting. I came on the following episode, in Chapter 14:

Following elections in 1999, Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, wanted to create a new coalition to replace Netanyahu. Barak had 50 votes from Labor and four other centrist and left-wing factions, short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. "Another 10 votes, held by three Arab parties, could be expected to go along with Barak on the peace process, but the new prime minister was loath to induct them into his coalition and make it dependent on Arab consent," Morris writes. So Barak ended up making a coalition with the religious right, Shas. I.e., a center-left guy built his coalition with religious right Jews so as to escape the Arab grasp.

This is interesting for a few reasons. Barak failed at Camp David the following year to make a peace with Arafat. I generally blame Israeli intransigence (insistence on an undivided Jerusalem, on a security force on the Jordan river, and unjust appropriation of West Bank colonies) but Arafat surely also deserves some blame. Whatever-- If Barak had had Arabs in his coalition, would he have behaved differently? Would Arafat and the Arab world Arafat had to represent, visavis the holy sites in Jerusalem, have behaved differently?

Also, if Israel is a true democracy, why is there an objection to giving power to Arabs in a coalition dependent on them? After all, that is the character of a representative democracy: one man, one vote, and some day, some way, your vote may be the determinative one. Arabs were denied that opportunity by the Israeli left, in favor of Jewish parties. The same Jewish parties that are now forcing Olmert to build more illegal colonies. Imagine for a moment an American group being left out in the cold politically on a racial basis--it's unimaginable, especially in post-Obamaland. This just shows: Israeli-Arabs are second-class citizens.

Finally, I would note that Benny Morris is garlanded by the pro-Israel mainstream American press as a balanced sage. He is the darling of the New Republic, the New Yorker has lately written that he flatters no one's prejudices, least of all his own. Can you imagine an American historian, or an Arab one, passing along this disturbing information in such a matter-of-fact manner, without comment?

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.

Oren Shows, It's Not that Zionism Is Racist, It's that It's Selfish

This morning Michael Oren was on NPR's "Morning Edition," speaking of Israel's achievement, and Renee Montagne asked him what he hoped for in the next 60 years. Oren said, he wants an Israel at peace with its neighbors and at peace with itself. By peace with itself, he said he meant that it contained considerable diversity and that he hopes that it can reconcile that diversity with its own identity as a Jewish and democratic and Middle Eastern state. (That's pretty close; I'm paraphrasing because I don't want to have to listen to him a second time.) Montagne asked whether that meant a Jewish state. Oren said, Well I would "prefer" a Jewish state, as would most Jewish Israelis.

Two things leap out at me from the interview. First, Oren, who works at the Shalem Center in Israel, said he preferred a Jewish state, i.e., he was not absolute on this score. This seems to me a significant reflection of where things are going today. Even this Zionist, who moved from the U.S. to Israel, who has fought for Israel, as has his son, who has helped confuse the borders between Israel and the U.S. with all his work, and who has distorted U.S. history with a superficial book claiming that the U.S. has been religious and pro-Israel from the start, thereby claiming that these two countries are joined at the hip--even Oren is reduced to saying, I prefer. This is the Obama Effect. The world is moving past tribal distinctions, the western world is.

The other thing that leaped out was, Not a word about Palestinian self-determination in all his hoping. Not a word about a Palestinian state, not a word about the dignity of the Arabs under occupation, not a word about the futures of the people living in Gaza. No, Israel has not had peace for "a nano-second" since its founding, Oren said; and so presumably anything that befalls these people is their own fault. His indifference to Palestinian statehood was so stark in these comments it suggested that he still hopes for a Greater Israel. 

The other day a pro-Israel paper (Canada's National Post) likened Israel/Palestine to India/Pakistan in historical terms--partition and bloodletting--and then stated that, Ha!, there was far more bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in India/Pakistan than during the Nakba.  Maybe this is true; I should study that question. But as I have said before here, for 60 years Pakistanis have had a state, and for 60 years since the U.N. called for statehood, the Palestinians have had none. They've been disqualified for countless reasons, even as Israel gobbles land. What do I hope for? I hope that a stateless people who have no meaningful political representation be represented democratically, in a state that respects minority rights. Without that, there will be no peace.

More Mainstream Voices Declare, Israel Can't Survive as Jewish State

I'm easily amazed. Maclean's Magazine has published a huge piece headlined "Why Israel Can't Survive" as a Jewish state if it wants to be democratic. (Chris Varley , who pointed the piece out to me, notes, that Maclean's is Time-magazine like, and "home to cranks like Barbara Amiel and Mark Steyn, and edited by Ken Whyte [very mainstream, formerly of the National Post], so publishes the usual agit-prop.") Christopher Hitchens in Slate is saying the same thing: Israel can't survive as a Jewish state. And I notice that Maclean's has a respectful interview with John Mearsheimer here too.

I'm sure the Israel lobby is watching this as closely as I am. The conventional wisdom is solidifying. What was once radical when Tony Judt proposed it five years ago is now a real option. Some day soon the Times and Washington Post will fall into line, and from there the networks, and then, finally, the politicians will question apartheid policies in the West Bank. Mearsheimer will then be embraced, because he is for a 2-state solution.

Why is this happening? You can blame Iraq, you can blame the bankruptcy of the peace process. But I say it's the zeitgeist. The times are changing; the left and its answers are coming in. And the Obama effect is going to change the air we breathe. I remember when a questioner at NYU challenged Judt, How can you oppose a Jewish state when we see the primacy of tribe at every hand.... Well, that feels like a long time ago; and we will soon have a postracial president.