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."

Citing Israel and Obama, Chicago's Daley Quashes Anti-Iran-War Resolution

In '68, Mayor Daley's police force brutally broke up the antiwar demonstration in Chicago so as to preserve the dignity of the Democratic convention...

Forty years on, and Daley's son, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, has quashed a City Council resolution opposing war with Iran saying that it hurts  native son Obama. "Passing a resolution like that puts a... burden upon his candidacy and injects something that should not be injected” into the presidential campaign, Daley said. What's being injected? Daley brings up Israel. "Let's be realistic. The U.S. did [create Israel]," he says. I.e., we're joined at the hip. The resolution came after a hearing featuring realist John Mearsheimer and Scott Ritter. The Sun-Times account of course fails to point out the importance of Jewish votes in FL, let alone Jewish money to Obama...

Bush's Jewish Guest List to Israel Bash Feels a Little Throw-Backy

Here's Bush's guest list at the 60th birthday party in Israel. I'm still learning my way around the politics of the Israel question, but here are my scores in the free-skating competition:

Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor, a Netanyahu guy, Iran/Iraq guy, very scary, now quizzed in the Olmert investigation. Kenneth Bialkin--his firm, Skadden, Arps hosted Ambassador Gillerman when the ambassador said Jimmy Carter had blood on his hands, an establishment CFR and ADL guy, I believe, and don't you ever dare impose a solution, while the settlements continue. Matthew Brooks of Freedom's Watch, neocon. Tony Gelbart of Nefesh b'nefesh and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Jewish nationalist, make sure the kids don't marry non-Jews. Rabbi Marvin Hier. Scary. Believes Jews to be "endangered," as Elie Wiesel does, who's here too. Michael Oren, military intellectual (by which I mean, military justice is to justice as military music is to music). Mort Zuckerman, Conference of Presidents, along with Malcolm Hoenlein. Abe Foxman, say no more. Leslie Wexner of the Limited, giving fellowships to build Israel's leaders and Jewish leaders here, too. Ethnocentric. Dan Senor, a neocon, allied with the Republican Jewish Coalition crowd, but also a little unfriendly to the Iraq bitter-enders. Leonard Sands and Matthew Brooks, more RJC people. Sands has moolah. Bill Safire, former Times columnist.

There are a lot of names, and maybe I'm reading this wrong, tell me who I'm missing, but it seems like the Iraq bitter-ender Zionists aren't here. No Richard Perle or Dore Gold. What we have are mostly donor base and ethnocentric Jews like Gelbart, along with the U.S. and Israel are joined at the hip Jews, the Michael Oren types. Neocons by another name. I wish there'd been a few progressives. Why not a surprise or two, a Dem, an Ambassador Kurtzer. A Nakba Jew, just to shake things up. Guess I gotta wait for President Obama. Have fun, guys.

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.

Obama Vs. Goldberg (Or, Why the Jewish Experience of the U.S. Civil Rights Struggle Is Israel's Only Hope)

Yesterday Richard Silverstein offered a criticism of Times reporter Ethan Bronner's comments on the Nakba:

[Ethan] Bronner has done a good job of channeling a certain Israeli nationalist perspective on the necessity of retaining Jewish dominance within the State of Israel. But what he hasn’t done is allow for the transformation of such attitudes over time. Look at the racial attitudes of white America toward African-Americans before 1954...

Can anyone now imagine an Arab running for president or prime minister of Israel? Perhaps not. But it will happen as surely as Barack Obama is now running for president. Time heals wounds as long as people really attempt to grapple with the issues that divide them. In my heart of hearts, I believe that they, and Israel, will find a way to realize the deepest aspirations of Arab and Jew within Israel.

...[F]or Israel to realize the full meaning of its democratic nature and its Declaration of Independence, developments must gradually move toward Israel becoming a state of all its citizens. Otherwise, Israel will be an ethnocracy with truncated rights for its Arab minority. [All emphases mine]

Prophetic. Now flash back nearly 20 years, the most important moment in the making of Barack Obama, the Harvard Law Review's presidential election of 1990. From the Boston Globe:

In the fall of 1989, when Obama returned to campus for his second year, students were protesting the lack of minority law school faculty. They staged sit-ins in the law library, camped outside the office of Dean Robert C. Clark, and carried signs that read "Diversity Now" and "Homogeneity Feeds Hatred."

[In February 1990, the election lasted] until just after midnight, when only Obama and a 24-year-old Harvard graduate named David Goldberg remained  contenders .

At about 12:30 a.m., the editors called Obama into the room, told him he had won, and broke into applause. [Kenneth] Mack, another black editor, pulled Obama in for a hug.

"It was a hard hug, and it lasted a while," Obama told the Harvard Law Record, the school newspaper, at the time. "At that point, I realized this was not just an individual thing. . . but something much bigger."

A few additions to this important parable of American life: Obama's presidency put him on front pages around the country and led to his book deal. The Globe's fine reporting was done by Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman, who I assume are like myself, upper-middle-class Jews drawn to journalism.  David Goldberg is, I believe, a progressive lawyer specializing in public law in New York, working for poor women denied health care.

The Declaration of independence that Silverstein cites promised that Israel would " ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex..."

The lesson of this story is a simple one. After World War II, Jews in America and Israel set out to guarantee civil rights to all, even in the wake of horrors like the Holocaust and slavery/segregation. In America, we also were a minority, and Jewish activists in the David Goldberg tradition succeeded beyond the world's wildest dreams. In Israel we have utterly failed. Homogeneity breeds hatred. Diversity now.

And McCain Is Dukakis

George Will agrees that Obama is like Reagan:

McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness -- the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

Will says "cotton candy" because this great communicator is coming from the left! While I'm on the subject, here's a line from page 3 of Obama's first book, Dreams From My Father:

I was... prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.

This is still true of Obama, and also very Reaganesque. RWR was aloof, impossible to fathom. So's Obama, a weird, wonderful cat.  Check out his wild, wild signature.

More Evidence of Obama's Post-Racial Appeal

A month or so back I said that Obama was going to pull racists into his coalition. Today's dailykos has proof, a poster describing how his/her mother in Kentucky said she wasn't "ready for a colored man to be president," and changed her mind in the last couple of weeks, because of the war, because of Hillary: 

"Well, you know, he’s half white," she pointed out, as though that was some special revelation.  "Maybe that’s a good thing, to have someone who can see things from the point of view of black people and white people."

Identity meant more when a mountain range--or a quota, or a color ban-- separated you  from the next tribe. The world's too small for all that. And identity is evolving before our eyes. Black, white, southern, Jewish, Catholic. Just watch the kids, it's fluid...

Yes, He's an Intellectual (Obama Uses the Word 'Signifier' to Describe Bowling)

Today Brian Williams interviewed Barack Obama and asked him about bowling in Pennsylvania, wearing a tie and rolling (is that the word?) the ball in the gutter. Obama smiled and said that he had dropped by a bowling alley to talk to "folks," and everyone was having a good time, so they urged him to bowl a couple rounds. He had, for the first time in many years. Then the media got a hold of it and suddenly it became a "signifier," he said, of his being out of touch with working-class people.

I remember when hipster intellectuals in New York, influenced by Lacan or the Frankfurt School, or Leo Strauss, for all I knew, began using the word "signifier" instead of "symbol" 20 years ago. They slipped it into fancy conversation, sometimes they even slipped it into fancy journalism. I still don't understand exactly what it means. I'm sure Obama does. He's a Harvard intellectual. And no that doesn't mean he can't represent working-class people. 

Pastel-Pantsuit Populism Pasted as Pander

The worst I felt the whole campaign was over the weekend, when the conventional wisdom had it that Hillary, a rich suburban woman, had successfully remade herself as a populist, and her gas-tax holiday was going to give her momentum out of Indiana and North Carolina.