by Mitchell Plitnick

In his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Steven Salaita, who was “de-hired” quite suddenly after the university’s chancellor faced strong pressure from major donors objecting to Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s massive military campaign in Gaza, issued this warning: “As the Center for Constitutional Rights and [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

In his speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Professor Steven Salaita, who was “de-hired” quite suddenly after the university’s chancellor faced strong pressure from major donors objecting to Salaita’s tweets about Israel’s massive military campaign in Gaza, issued this warning: “As the Center for Constitutional Rights and other groups have been tracking, this is part of a nationwide, concerted effort by wealthy and well-organized groups to attack pro-Palestinian students and faculty and silence their speech. This risks creating a Palestinian exception to the First Amendment and to academic freedom.”

At Ohio University, the disturbing reality of the different treatment accorded to pro-Israel, as opposed to pro-Palestinian views supports Salaita’s statement. Of course, the treatment of Salaita is, itself, rock-solid evidence of this point. That is especially true since the university’s chancellor, Phyllis Wise, has backed off her initial claim that Salaita’s de-hire was caused not by his views but by the allegedly “uncivil” way he expressed them. She has since admitted that she faced pressure from influential figures around the university, i.e. major donors.

But a report today in Ha’aretz on an incident at Ohio University offers an even clearer view. The president of the student senate at OU, Megan Marzec, used the opportunity of taking the ALS Ice-bucket challenge to make a statement about Gaza. She wore a shirt that urged divestment from Israel, stated that the blood in her bucket (which was, of course, fake) represented the Palestinians that Israel had “murdered and displaced,” and dumped the bucket over her head.

The response from the organized Jewish community on the OU campus was swift and quite typical. Ha’aretz quotes the leader of a pro-Israel campus group, Becky Sebo: “Her video has kind of torn the campus apart. My initial response was complete shock. We’ve never had any BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement on our campus, have always had a very open, welcoming community.” Now, she said, “Jewish students in particular are feeling very singled out by the video. Many Jewish students are feeling concerned about their safety and how other students will respond to these accusations against Israel.”

This hyper-sensitivity represents a complete reversal of reality, among other things. There is not a single report of Jewish students being harassed, much less assaulted, as a result of Marzec’s video. But Marzec herself has drawn death threats and hate mail. So much so that Homeland Security has gotten involved on campus. Of course, the pro-Israel groups, no doubt quite sincerely, condemned and called for an end to such acts. But let us ask the question: who has legitimate reason to fear for their safety?

There are also other dimensions to this story. Consider the words of Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism. “The students who want to present a non-biased pro-Israel view have their work cut out for them because there are going to be a lot of efforts to delegitimize their point of view. I anticipate we’ll see more anti-Israel activities than ever before.”

Just read those words, and the thinking is revealed. “A non-biased pro-Israel view.” That is an obvious oxymoron. If the view is pro-Israel, or if it is pro-Palestinian, it is, by definition, biased. What Segal implies here is that any unbiased view would be pro-Israel and any other conclusion can only come about as the result of bias.

And then there’s this whole argument about “de-legitimizing,” whether it is about Israel or of points of view. The working definition of this “de-legitimization” seems to be centered around any argument against Israeli policies, against Zionism, or against any kind of support for the Palestinians. The point of debate, of argument, is to establish that your view has more merit than the opposing one. That should be encouraged (as, indeed, Jewish tradition does), not feared. And certainly, it must not be stamped down.

The shallow arguments get even better. The Director of the OU’s Hillel (a national Jewish student organization), Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, demonstrated just how far the so-called “pro-Israel community” has departed from Jewish traditions and more universal values of open discussion and debating difficult issues.

“Your video marginalizes and isolates students,” Leshaw wrote in an open letter to Marzec published in The Post. “It makes Jewish parents want to bring their kids back home to the safety of the Jewish suburbs …. you need to step down, and give somebody else the chance to lead our Ohio University student population. Somebody that won’t polarize, or divide, or marginalize, or ‘other,’ or cause hysteria, or make students feel unsafe.”

Leshaw, it must be noted, is far from a conservative voice, and she is, herself, no stranger to criticizing pro-Israel programs. She also strongly disagrees with Marzec’s view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Her call for Marzec to resign as student senate president is “Not because of your politics, but because of your lack of awareness, compassion, and mostly, because of your lack of vision.”

Let’s unpack Rabbi Leshaw’s thinking. Just how does Marzec’s video “marginalize and isolate students?” She presents a political statement, at a time when the Israeli military was acting in so brutal a manner that even their American colleagues, who are themselves quite familiar with killing civilians, were shocked. One wonders: If someone had done the exact same video during Russia’s aggression against Chechnya 15 years ago, would anyone have been concerned that Russian students were marginalized and isolated? Of course not, mostly because they wouldn’t have been and because everyone would have been applauding the strong statements against the massive damage being done to civilians, and rightly so.

Marzec’s video, Rabbi Leshaw says, “…makes Jewish parents want to bring their kids back home to the safety of the Jewish suburbs?” That is a familiar and tired argument, one that got badly worn out during the battles for school integration and during the civil rights movement. Just substitute “White” for Jewish, and the sentence says the very same thing. It is irrational fear of the other, something that needs to be confronted, not accommodated.

Rabbi Leshaw also says that Megan’s video makes “alumni want to pull their funding.” I wonder if she thought about that complaint before putting it in her letter. An apparently liberal woman believes that donors should have the ability to stop students from making controversial political statements? Would she have said the same about protests against the Vietnam War or for women’s rights back in the 1960s and 70s? Because surely there were those alumni who took similar offense to bra-burning demonstrations back then. No, it is only opposition to Israeli policies that merits such kowtowing, I suspect.

Rabbi Leshaw also says that Megan’s video “makes people threaten” the university and its programs, a disturbing echo of Israel’s self-serving and unsellable (outside of the US and Israel, that is) claim that all those Palestinian deaths were Hamas’ fault. Defying such bullying is why Rabbi Leshaw thinks Marzec should step down, rather than seeing it for what it is: precisely the sort of action that a student leader must take if they are to ever be leaders for social change outside the university. The same would be true if this was a pro-Israel statement. Those who support Israel’s policies or feel they must defend Israel should also not give in to any attempts to intimidate them into silence. It is not the opinion that matters, and on that point, Rabbi Leshaw claims to agree. So would she have the same objections if the issue was not Israel? Given her professed values, it seems doubtful.

Megan Marzac sees the Israeli occupation and then the shockingly brutal onslaught on Gaza. She believes that these should be opposed and future incidents prevented, and believes that the global Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement is the best way to achieve that. She lacks neither awareness nor compassion. Her statement was one of condemnation of repeated and ongoing human rights violations. That demonstrates considerable awareness and compassion, whether you agree with her views or not.

Is it Marzac’s lack of vision then? Well, it is fair to say that her identification as student senate president gives the impression that she was doing this with some sort of sanction from the senate, which apparently was not the case. That’s an error, but such a mistake is hardly grounds for her removal, especially since she subsequently made it clear that this was her own action.

In any case, the notion that strong support for the Palestinians and even harsh criticism of Israel is somehow threatening to Jews has to be challenged. It is a false accusation, but more importantly, it is one in a long list of bullying tactics that seek to silence support for the Palestinians on campus and more broadly, in the public discourse. Those tactics include attempts to legislate against boycotts of Israel (all of which have failed thus far), manipulating organizations by threatening their funding, harassing media outlets when they give space for pro-Palestinian views, and claiming victimhood when they themselves are the victimizer.

Megan Marzac did what student activists should do: she made a bold statement. The response from the allegedly pro-Israel community has been nothing short of the worst kind of bullying, even aside from the extremists who have threatened her with physical harm. Do these people believe that Israel’s case is so weak that it cannot withstand public debate? It seems so, but that is only true because they are making the wrong argument. They are working to make Israel an exception to international laws of war, and supporting Israel’s regular violation of Palestinian rights through Israel’s occupation regime (as thoroughly documented by many Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Gisha and others). These so-called pro-Israelis are trying to defend Israeli military actions that regularly kill far more civilians than combatants, leave infrastructure devastated and make already impoverished people even more desperate.

What if they tried making the honest case that what is really needed is, quite simply, equal rights for all and a homeland where Jews and Palestinians can flee to if they are facing persecution and where both peoples can express and live their national identity, in whatever political configuration? Maybe then they wouldn’t resort to bullying tactics because they’re so terrified of an honest, open discussion in the public arena.

Photo: Megan Marzec, president of Ohio University’s student senate, at a Sept. 1o meeting.

by Marsha B. Cohen

The results of a new survey released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as deplorable as they are, show that Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the Middle East.

Not that the ADL is doing anything to point this out in their just-released report entitled, Global 100: An Index of [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Marsha B. Cohen

The results of a new survey released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as deplorable as they are, show that Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the Middle East.

Not that the ADL is doing anything to point this out in their just-released report entitled, Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism. This surprising fact can only be uncovered by comparing Iranian responses with those of other Middle Eastern countries.

According to the index scores of the more than 100 countries around the world included in the survey, the most anti-Semitic place on earth is the West Bank and Gaza (93%). Iraq isn’t far behind the Palestinian territories, which are, of course, under Israeli occupation. But Iran doesn’t even make it into the survey’s worldwide top 20 anti-Semitic hotspots.

The first of the eleven statements to which respondents were asked to categorize as “probably true” or “probably false” was Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/to the countries they live in]. While 56% of Iranians responded in the affirmative, in other MENA countries the percentage of respondents agreeing with this assertion were significantly higher:  Saudi Arabia 71%;  Lebanon 72%; Oman 76%; Egypt 78% Jordan 79%; Kuwait 80%; Qatar 80%; UAE 80%; Bahrain 81%; Yemen 81%; Iraq 83%; West Bank and Gaza 83%. (It’s too bad that Israel was not among the countries surveyed. It would be interesting to know what Israelis believe on this point.)

The other indicators of anti-Semitic attitudes were:

Jews have too much power in the business world. Iran  54%;  Saudi Arabia 69%; Oman 72%; Egypt 73%;  UAE 74%; Lebanon 76%; Qatar 75%;  Bahrain 78%;  Jordan 79%; Kuwait 79%; Yemen 82%; Iraq 84%; West Bank and Gaza 91%.

Jews have too much power in international financial markets. Iran  62%; Oman 68%; Egypt 69%;  Saudi Arabia 69%; UAE 71%; Qatar 71%; Jordan 76%;  Bahrain 76%; Lebanon 76%; Kuwait 77%; Yemen 78%; Iraq 85%; West Bank and Gaza 89%.

Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust. Iran 18%; Yemen 16%; Saudi Arabia 22%; Egypt 23%; Kuwait 24%; Lebanon 26%; Jordan 29%;  Iraq 33%;  Oman 42%; UAE 45%; Bahrain 51%; Qatar 52%; West Bank and Gaza 64%.

Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind. Iran 50%; Egypt 68%; Oman 70%; Lebanon 71%; Kuwait 73%; UAE 73%; Saudi Arabia 74%; Jordan 75%;  Qatar 75%;  Bahrain 75%; Iraq 76%; Yemen 80%; West Bank and Gaza 84%.

Jews have too much control over global affairs. Iran 49%; Oman 67%; Saudi Arabia 70%; Egypt 71%; Qatar 73%; UAE 73%; Bahrain 76%; Iraq 77%; Lebanon 77%; Jordan 78%;  Kuwait 80%; Yemen 80%; West Bank and Gaza 88%.

Jews have too much control over the United States government: Iran 61%; Oman 67%; Saudi Arabia 70%; UAE 72%;  Jordan 73%; Lebanon 73%; Qatar 73%; Egypt 74%; Bahrain 77%; Kuwait 78%; Yemen 79%; Iraq 85%; West Bank and Gaza 85%.

Jews think they are better than other people: Iran 52%; Lebanon 61%; Egypt 66%;  Oman 66%; Qatar 67%;  Bahrain 68%; UAE 68%; Saudi Arabia 69%; Kuwait 71%; West Bank and Gaza 72%; Jordan 73%;  Yemen 76%; Iraq 80%.

Jews have too much control over the global media: Iran 55%; Bahrain 61%; Oman 65%; Egypt 69%;  Saudi Arabia 69%; Qatar 70%; UAE 70%; Kuwait 72%; Lebanon 73%; Iraq 77%; Jordan 77%; Yemen 79%; West Bank and Gaza 88%.

Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars: Iran  58%;   Qatar 64%;  Lebanon 65%; Oman 65%;   UAE 65%; Kuwait 66%; Saudi Arabia 66%; Egypt 66%; Jordan 67%;  Bahrain 71%; West Bank and Gaza 78%; Yemen 84%; Iraq 85%.

People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave: Iran  64%; Lebanon 76%; Bahrain 77%;  Kuwait 80%; Egypt 81%; Oman 81%; Iraq 81%: Saudi Arabia 81%; Qatar 82%; UAE 82%; Jordan 84%;  West Bank and Gaza 87%; Yemen 90%.

Iran has a complicated relationship with its Jewish community, and has a long way to go before it can be considered a safe haven for Jews, even if some Iranian Jews may disagree. Still, the ADL’s data makes it clear that Iran is not only the least anti-Semitic country in its region, it also scores far better on every one of the ADL’s eleven survey indicators by a statistically significant margin. That’s something worth thinking about.

Photo: Persian Jews celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in a Tehran synagogue last October. Credit: CNN screenshot.

by Jim Lobe

In a remarkable demonstration of the the increasingly vulnerable state into which AIPAC appears to have thrown itself, the Israel lobby’s premier group released a new statement this afternoon clarifying that it still supports the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act less than 24 hours after announcing [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

In a remarkable demonstration of the the increasingly vulnerable state into which AIPAC appears to have thrown itself, the Israel lobby’s premier group released a new statement this afternoon clarifying that it still supports the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act less than 24 hours after announcing that it no longer supported an immediate vote on the legislation.

The statement came as two hard-line neoconservative (and Republican) groups — Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and the Republican Jewish Coalition — implicitly denounced AIPAC for its retreat. The latest AIPAC statement, issued in the name of its president, Michael Kassen, suggests that it is being whipsawed between its Republican neoconservative supporters, who are used to getting their way in the organization, and its desire to remain in the good graces of key Democrats who have been increasingly alienated and angered by the degree to which Republicans are aggressively seeking to make Iran (and Israel) a partisan issue.

One very interesting question raised by the latest developments is whether AIPAC sought Bibi Netanyahu’s blessing before its statement yesterday opposing immediate action on the Kirk-Menendez bill. That AIPAC should feel compelled to make such a public statement just three weeks before its annual policy conference here will likely add to the impression among its members — 14,000 of whom are supposed to attend — that the group was not only defeated — at least for now — in its biggest legislative fight against a president of the past two decades, but that it also suffers from an indecisive and uncertain leadership typical of large organizations that have grown overconfident in their power when suddenly confronted with a major setback.

Here’s AIPAC’s latest:

I am writing today to correct some mischaracterizations in the press regarding our position on the Senate Iran bill. Some have suggested that by not calling for an immediate vote on the legislation, we have abandoned our support for the bill. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, we remain strongly committed to the passage of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act. This legislation is one important part of a broad strategy that we have pursued over many years to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. As negotiations for a final agreement with Iran begin, we must—and will—continue our efforts on every front to ensure that any deal with Iran guarantees the dismantlement of its nuclear infrastructure and blocks its path to a bomb.

Yesterday, Senator Menendez—who along with Senator Kirk is the lead sponsor of the legislation—delivered a forceful speech on the Senate floor, in which he outlined what such a deal must include. In response, we issued a statement applauding Chairman Menendez’s leadership. We strongly support his assessment of the threat, his commitment to the critical role Congress must play, and his path to passage of the legislation, which includes building broad bipartisan support.

I want to thank you for your hard work thus far in earning the support of 59 senators for the Menendez-Kirk bill. We still have much work to do over the coming months. It will be a long struggle, but one that we are committed to fighting.

We will continue to work closely with friends on both sides of the aisle, in both the House and Senate, to ensure that everything is done to prevent a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.

Sincerely,

Michael Kassen
AIPAC President

Now, I personally didn’t see any press reports that asserted that AIPAC was withdrawing its support for the bill; only that it had withdrawn its support for an immediate vote on it. So what provoked this “correct[ion]?” I assume it was the remarkably hasty way in which AIPAC beat its retreat — less than two hours after Sen. Menendez delivered his floor speech in which he rued the attempt by his Republican colleagues to use the bill as a bludgeon against Democrats even as he himself stood it. While I had assumed that Menendez and AIPAC had choreographed the sequence of statements in advance — after all, Menendez was the Senate’s biggest beneficiary of pro-Israel PACS associated with AIPAC in 2012 — AIPAC’s announcement appeared to leave a number of its critical allies, such as The Israel Project (TIP), United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), and not least the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — all of which have lobbied for immediate passage of the bill, hanging out there with a position that it had abandoned — hanging out to dry. (Remarkably, TIP’s “Daily Tip” — its news digest — completely ignored Menendez’s speech and AIPAC’s statement.)

But while those groups maintained silence Friday, ECI and RJC came out swinging, suggesting that AIPAC’s concerns about maintaining its bipartisan appeal were foolish. Here’s ECI’s statement “on the withdrawal of Democratic support for a vote on the Senate Iran sanctions bill,” issued in the name of Kristol himself:

We commend 42 [Republican] Senators for their strong letter demanding a vote on S. 1881, the bipartisan Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act, which has been cosponsored by more than half of the Senate. The bill is simple and reasonable. It would reimpose existing sanctions suspended under the interim agreement if Iran cheats; it would ensure that a final agreement requires Iran to dismantle its illicit nuclear infrastructure; and it promises to impose additional economic sanctions in the future should Iran fail to agree to a final deal that dismantles its nuclear infrastructure.

As the Senators put it in their letter to the Majority Leader, ‘Now we have come to a crossroads. Will the Senate allow Iran to keep its illicit nuclear infrastructure in place, rebuild its teetering economy and ultimately develop nuclear weapons at some point in the future?’

The answer to this question must be no. The Senate should act now to deliver that answer. It would be nice if there were universal bipartisan support for acting now to stop a nuclear Iran. But there apparently is not. And it would be terrible if history’s judgment on the pro-Israel community was that it made a fetish of bipartisanship — and got a nuclear Iran. [Emphasis added.]

And here’s what the RJC, speaking through the voice of its Congressional Affairs Director, Noah Silverman, put out:

As you know, the RJC has been the most consistent voice urging Congress to enact strong new legislation that will maximize pressure on Iran’s rogue regime to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

When Senator Kirk and Senator Menendez introduced their bipartisan bill to lock in new, crippling sanctions on Iran if the regime failed to follow through on its obligations under the Geneva accord, we launched an all-out effort to win support from Republican Senators.

Within days – thanks in large part to our efforts – 95 percent of the Senate Republicans had signed on as cosponsors of the Kirk/Menendez bill. Considering that the bill (S. 1881) has numerous Democrat cosponsors, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had pledged to permit Senate action soon when he delayed a vote on sanctions last year, success seemed within reach.

What happened next should trouble every pro-Israel American deeply. The Obama administration unleashed an unprecedented campaign to portray Kirk, Menendez and their backers as ‘warmongers.’

And they enlisted Democratic members of non-partisan pro-Israel organizations to work from within to undermine the push for Kirk-Menendez.

The Obama White House’s tactics have been disgraceful. But they’ve clearly had an effect. Democratic Kirk-Menendez cosponsors endorsed delaying a vote on the legislation they ostensibly support. Liberal news outlets attacked Republicans as ‘partisan’ for demanding a vote on bipartisan legislation.

And now the most prominent organization in the coalition of activist groups supporting Kirk-Menendez – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – has reversed itself and is calling for Senate action on Kirk-Menendez to be delayed.

We still believe this legislation is urgently needed if there is to be any hope of convincing the Iranians to alter their course. And the good news is that Senate Republicans overwhelmingly understand this. Earlier this week, 42 GOP Senators sent Harry Reid a letter making it clear that Republicans who support Kirk-Menendez are determined to get a vote.

Now more than ever, Republican leaders in Congress will need our help. We want to thank you for everything you’ve already done – and to assure you that, no matter what others do, we are not going to give up on this effort. The stakes for our national security and for the survival of Israel are just too high.[Emphasis in the original.]

So now we have two hardline neoconservative Republican groups attacking AIPAC, albeit not by name, for mak(ing) a “fetish of bipartisanship,” as Kristol put it. And we no doubt have Democrats, like Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who can’t be happy with the organization due to the kinds of pressure it exerted on them to oppose their own president and the fact that AIPAC had effectively aligned itself with the Congressional Republican leadership for so long. Nor can groups like TIP or UANI or the AJC be happy with AIPAC’s probable failure to consult with them before staking out its latest position. And then there’s the fact that AIPAC, which, as this blog has noted before, prefers to act behind the scenes, had not only been forced into the limelight as a result of its advocacy for the Kirk-Menendez bill, but has, through its back-to-back public statements, moved itself to center stage, even as it finds itself buffeted by both right and left. This can’t be a comfortable place for it to find itself. Indeed, it suggests not only weakness on the part of its leadership, but also the possibility of serious internal conflict.

There’s still the question of what motivated it to change its position so publicly and so ineptly? Was it the fact that the Clintons came out for delaying a vote? After all, it’s one thing to alienate Obama, who will only be around for another three years and may face a Republican majority in both houses of Congress less than a year from now; it’s another to embarrass Hillary who, it may think, has a virtual lock on the nomination with no Republican in sight who can beat her. Or was it that letter signed by the 42 Republicans, thus transforming the bill into a more clearly partisan issue, provoking Menendez, a generally very loyal Democrat (except on Cuba), to change his position, that persuaded AIPAC’s leadership that they had to move if they were going to retain any claim to bipartisanship (in which case Kirk, who appears to have organized the letter, made a very, very serious mistake)? Or did Netanyahu, whose national security establishment appears increasingly reconciled to and comfortable with the possibility of a limited Iranian nuclear program, come to a similar realization? Or did the White House say it wasn’t going to send any Cabinet-level official to the AIPAC conference March 2-4 unless it backed off the bill, as Peter Beinart suggested  in Haaretz last week? Or all of the above?

As everyone knows, prominent neo-conservatives have been spending weeks insisting that Chuck Hagel is an anti-Semite. The most toxic of these charges have, of course, been leveled by the Council on Foreign Relations’ mendacious Senior Middle East fellow Elliott Abrams in his now-infamous NPR interview a few evenings ago (which was [...]]]> via Lobe Log

As everyone knows, prominent neo-conservatives have been spending weeks insisting that Chuck Hagel is an anti-Semite. The most toxic of these charges have, of course, been leveled by the Council on Foreign Relations’ mendacious Senior Middle East fellow Elliott Abrams in his now-infamous NPR interview a few evenings ago (which was taken apart by Lobelog alumnus Ali Gharib and which, I hear, is creating some major headaches for CFR president Richard Haass); the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens in a particularly malodorous column; the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin’s regular rants; and Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard, which launched the campaign almost a month ago with a quote from “a top Republican Senate aide” that warned: “Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite.” (One wonders whether the source could have been Sen. Mark Kirk’s deputy chief of staff and AIPAC favorite, Richard Goldberg.) Of course, it’s long been a strategic neo-con goal to make criticism of Israel and its policies synonymous with anti-Semitism, so it’s no surprise that Hagel, who, for example, has been critical of Israeli settlements, should incur such attacks, as utterly ridiculous as virtually everyone who has worked with Hagel on Middle East issues (including former and current senior Israeli officials) has subsequently testified.

Neo-cons have long made sniffing out (as Stephens would probably put it) anti-Semites a specialty, although that skill has been deployed in a remarkably one-dimensional way, directed, as it has been, almost exclusively at “the left.” Aside from Adolph Hitler and his Nazis and, more recently, paleo-con Pat Buchanan, their olfactory sense appears to be blocked when inhaling through the right nostril. For example, they have largely absolved the Religious Right of anti-Semitism because of its love of Israel. (As Bill’s dad, Irving Kristol, opined about the more-anti-Jewish tendencies in Christian Zionist thought in Commentary back in 1982, “It’s their theology, but it’s our Israel.” And when Pastor John Hagee said in 2008 that the Nazi Holocaust was part of God’s plan to get Jews to move to Israel, neo-cons — and Abe Foxman – accepted his explanation without question.)

Much the same applied on the international front. Indeed, while the elder Kristol was arguing for a Judeo-Christian Zionist alliance at home back in the early 1980s, he and other leading neo-cons, notably Midge Decter, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and, yes, Elliott Abrams, too, were also busy defending really serious anti-Semities abroad. Even as they agitated effectively for the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union, they conveniently averted their view from what was going on inArgentina, whose military junta — which enjoyed normal, even good relations with Israel — conducted its “dirty war” between 1976 until its fall shortly after its disastrous 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict withBritain. That war not only targeted Jews in disproportionate numbers, but was also known for treating those Jews who were “disappeared” into its clutches especially brutally — a fact that was well-documented as it happened but about which the neo-cons for several years had virtually nothing to say.

Consider the headline “Argentina Worried Over Anti-Semitism” that appeared in the July 7, 1977 edition of the New York Times. That article noted that:

[T]he complaints in the Jewish community include the leveling of anti-Semitic insults at and the physical abuse of Jews arrested by the security forces during investigations of subversive activities by left-wing guerrilla groups. In some cases, Jews have disclosed after being questioned and released that there were swastikas and pictures of Hitler in interrogation centers.

Earlier that year, two synagogues — one in central Buenos Aires– were firebombed, while pro-junta newspapers headlined lurid plots about the “Jewish-Marxist-Montonero conspiracy” against the country. In early 1980, Amnesty International published a lengthy report that included interviews of escaped detainees who testified that Jews were singled out for especially harsh treatment. Here’s a Jerusalem Post account quoting from the Amnesty report:

“From the moment they were kidnapped until they were included in a ‘transfer’ [a euphemism for being killed, usually taken by truck to helicopters, drugged, eviscerated, and thrown into the sea] they [the Jews] were systematically tortured. Some of them were made to kneel in front of pictures of Hitler and Mussolini to renounce their origins.”

A watered-down report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that came out shortly afterwards confirmed that Jewish detainees were being singled out for especially cruel treatment by their captors.

Or, read this 1981 account of one prominent Jewish family’s ordeal by the extraordinarily courageous columnist for the Buenos Aires Herald, Mario del Carril, to get some notion of what was happening in Argentina:

“Before he died in exile — stripped of his citizenship — former Peronist economy minister Jose Ber Gelbard reported that his decision to take his whole extended family — 36 persons — out of Argentina in 1976 was prompted by the fact that a distant relative, a nephew that he might encounter once a year, had been tortured for no reason at all — unless the family connection to Gelbard can be considered a reason. This young man was found alive and nude in the street of a provincial city with a sign tied from his neck that read: ‘I am a Jewish pig.’ [Imagine if any of these things were happening in Iran today.]

Jacobo Timerman

The Carter administration, with its new emphasis on human rights, reacted to the repression quite strongly by U.S.historical standards. It downgraded ties with Buenos Aires; it cut bilateral assistance and opposed loans to the country from international financial institutions like the World Bank; and, through the persistent and public hectoring of the first human rights assistant secretary, Pat Derian, it pushed relentlessly for the release of some of the more prominent detainees, notably and fatefully newspaper publisher Jacobo Timerman, who was abducted by unknown assailants in April, 1977 and spent a year in a torture chamber and prison before being transferred to house arrest one year later and finally freed by a Supreme Court order in September, 1979, only to be immediately stripped of his citizenship by the junta which also expropriated his property and newspaper, and bundled him onto a plane bound for Israel. To its credit, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) also spoke out strongly against the treatment of Jews by the regime during this period.

And what was the reaction of the neo-cons at the time to all this? They not only looked the other way; they actively criticized the Carter administration’s efforts, arguing, as Kirkpatrick did in her famous ”Dictatorships and Double Standards” essay in Commentary that Washington’s human-rights policy was dangerously naive, especially in the context of the global struggle between the West and the Soviet Union. In her view, one had to make a distinction between “traditional autocrats” — especially friendly ones — which, in her view, were far less threatening to human rights (they respect “habitual patterns of family and personal relations” as opposed to “totalitarian” regimes, especially of the Communist variety, which deny their subjects all rights and are incapable of internal reform). Pressing “friendly authoritarians” like Somoza in Nicaragua and the Shah in Iran to respect human rights too quickly and punishing them if they failed to do so were ultimately counter-productive in her view, both politically in terms of encouraging internal reform and strategically in terms of the greater contest with Moscow. As Ronald Reagan took power in January 1981, the notion that “friendly authoritarians” — be they the military junta in Argentina, or apartheid South Africa, or genocidal Guatemala — should be dealt with through positive incentives and “quiet diplomacy” became the guiding light for the new administration for which Kirkpatrick would serve as UN ambassador and Abrams initially as assistant secretary of state for international organizations, soon thereafter as assistant secretary for human rights, and ultimately as assistant secretary for Inter-American affairs.

Meanwhile, Timerman had written a book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, which detailed his experience in exceptionally powerful terms. In addition to describing his own torture by electric shock (and the reaction of his torturers as they chanted in glee after each jolt, “Jew…Jew…Jew!…Jew”), he also addressed the fate of other victims, including entire families whose torture he personally witnessed or overheard.

“Of all the dramatic situations I witnessed in clandestine prisons, nothing can compare to those family groups who were tortured often together, sometimes separately but in view of one another. …The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father’s genitals …or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses.” [Recall Kirkpatrick’s defense of authoritarian regimes based on their respect for “habitual patterns of family and personal relations.”]

Unfortunately for Ernest Lefever, Reagan’s first pick for the human rights post and a man who fully embraced Kirkpatrick’s theories and many other highly questionable ideas, the English-language edition of Timerman’s book came out just as his confirmation hearings were about to begin. Until that moment, U.S. mainstream media had paid amazingly little attention to what had been going on in Argentina, but the book made such a splash, and Reagan’s repudiation of Carter’s human-rights policy had been so stark, that when Timerman himself showed up to witness and comment on the hearings, the military junta, its torture chambers, and its anti-Semitic —  not to say neo-Nazi — inclinations, suddenly became front-page news and the focus of long-delayed attention to the nature of the Argentine regime.

To make a long story short, Timerman’s book and the critical acclaim it received posed a major challenge to neo-con worldview both with respect to their cherished authoritarian/totalitarian dichotomy and their conviction that the greatest threat to Jews came from the left, rather than the right. (Indeed, Lefever’s nomination was quickly derailed, permitting the more diplomatic Abrams to take his place.) In more concrete terms, the neo-cons (and the Reagan administration in which they were ascendant) saw Argentina as a critical ally in the fight against the Soviet menace, especially in Central America where they had sent some of their torturers to help train and equip what, with the Reagan administration’s help, would become the anti-Sandinista contra army. Not only that, but the junta enjoyed very good relations with Israel, which, in the words of the Reagan State Department at the time, was “an important supplier of arms and military equipment toArgentina.” (This was cited in a memo to Congress as evidence that the junta could not be considered anti-Semitic and that “those outside Argentina who state that Argentine Jews and Soviet Jews are in the same situation do a grave disservice to Argentine Jews.”) In other words, the military junta was on our side, and here they were being exposed by Timerman as a bunch of sadistic neo-Nazi murderers, who decorated their torture chambers with banners of swastikas and giant photos of the Fuehrer himself.

So how did the neo-cons react, now that the junta’s anti-Semitism — real, Nazi-like anti-Semitism, not rhetorical denunciations about Jewish control of the media and the banks and the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, but serious, sadistic and murderous anti-Semitism that resulted in the most horrific treatment and killings of hundreds of Jewish people — had finally hit the headlines and captured the public attention in a way that it had escaped for the previous five years?

They attacked Timerman, of course. They didn’t accuse him of entirely fabricating his story, at least not publicly. (Chris Hitchens told me a few years ago that Irving Kristol had told him at a dinner party at the time that he really didn’t believe that Timerman had suffered anything like what he had described in the book.) But they — and by they, I’m referring specifically to the elder Kristol (“The Timerman Affair”, WSJ, May 29, 1981); Decter (“The Uses of Jacobo Timerman”, Contentions, August, 1981); another Journal columnist, Seth Lipsky (“A Conversation with Publisher Jacobo Timerman”, WSJ, June 4, 1981); and numerous NYT columns by William Safire — very much echoed what the Argentine regime itself had been saying: Timerman wasn’t abducted and tortured because he was a Jew, but because he had a business relationship with David Graiver, a shadowy financier suspected of funding the Montoneros (a notion thoroughly debunked by del Carril who noted in a 5 July 1981 Washington Post op-ed — “Reflections on Timerman” — that Graiver had a number of other business associates, including an archbishop and the secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS) who were not Jewish and never questioned, let alone kidnapped and tortured). Or that the military consisted of different “factions”, the more moderate of which — supposedly consisting of successive presidents of the junta (both of whom were later convicted of and imprisoned for crimes committed under their command, including the theft of babies of detained mothers who were murdered after giving birth) — had worked tirelessly to secure Timerman’s release and free other Jewish prisoners. Or that it was a chaotic period in which difficult decisions and extreme measures had to be taken. Or that anti-Semitism was never an official policy of the government.  Or that Timerman was a leftist, not just an innocent victim (thus echoing Kirkpatrick’s remarks about the four U.S. churchwomen who were raped and killed close to San Salvador’s airport in December, 1980 — “The nuns were not just nuns. The nuns were political activists.”) Here’s how Kristol, the most influential of Timerman’s assailants, wound up his op-ed in the Journal:

The military regime inArgentina, for all its ugly aspects, is authoritarian, not totalitarian

Now that the Montonero terrorists have been crushed, theUnited Statesis using its influence to try to move the regime gradually toward greater liberalization. …[W]e are doing what we can to strengthen the more moderate and sensible elements in the army. The outlook of far from hopeless.

It would become utterly hopeless, however, were we to “write off”Argentina– excommunicate it, so to speak, from the community of nations. Then the more extreme right-wing elements in the armed forces — the ones who illegally arrested and tortured Mr. Timerman — would surely take total power. One strongly suspects that there are many on the American left who would like to see this happen. The politics of polarization, in which the left crusades against the right under the banner of “human rights,” while the threat from the totalitarian left is altogether ignored, appeals to their ideological bias as well as to their self-righteous passions. One might almost say it is their secret agenda.” [You see: it's all the left's fault. Or, in Kirkpatrick-speak, "Blame the Left First."]

Ronald Reagan

So how did it work out? Well, the Reagan administration, presumably with the agreement of its new human rights czar, Abrams, soon lifted almost all the sanctions that the Carter administration had imposed against Argentina; worked with Buenos Aires to ease scrutiny of its record by the UN and Inter-American Human Rights Commission; cooperated and encouraged the junta to help build up the contra forces that were gathering in Honduras; expressed regret for all the liberal abuse the junta had taken under Carter, reassured Buenos Aires that more goodies would be forthcoming; even talked up the possibility of its inclusion in a South Atlantic Treaty Organization with South Africa,  etc. — all in the service of strengthening the “more moderate and sensible elements” in the army.

And what did those “moderate and sensible elements” do in response? They invaded the Falklands/Malvinas, thus precipitating a war and a major split within the Reagan administration between Secretary of State Al Haig, who argued the U.S. had to provide some support – even if limited to intelligence — to its closest NATO ally, Britain, and the neo-cons led by Kirkpatrick who argued that Washington should remain neutral, presumably to ensure the survival of a “friendly authoritarian” regime whose help in Central America was considered important to the administration’s ambitions there. Indeed, as the Argentines were routed, the administration tried to broker a negotiated settlement that would save the junta’s face, but, as recently declassified British documents have revealed, Maggie Thatcher would have none of it. As for Kirkpatrick’s role in this, the British ambassador at the time, Nicholas Henderson, described the administration’s highest-ranking neo-con as “more fool than fascist” for her support of the junta. Utterly disgraced in the eyes of its public, the junta under which anti-Semitism had flourished, and hundreds of Jews had been tortured and killed, was out of power within months.

Did this experience change perceptions by the neo-cons about anti-Semitism on the right? There is certainly no evidence to suggest that it did, despite the enormous amount of documentation that has subsequently been adduced by Argentina’s 1984 Truth Commission (whose report was entitled, significantly, “Nunca Mas”) and the many subsequent trials against junta officials that followed over the following years – all of which vindicated what the early reports, Amnesty, and Timerman had written about.

Indeed, Abrams and the head of Reagan’s controversial “Office of Public Diplomacy”, Otto Reich (later George W. Bush’s first assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs) worked tirelessly in the mid- to late-1980’s with the help of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and Norman Podhoretz’s Commentary magazine to tar the Sandinista government with the anti-Semitism brush (relying primarily on wealthy Jewish exiles who had strong financial ties to ousted dictator Anastasio Somoza and left the country when or soon after he did), despite the fact that the U.S. embassy in Managua “found no verifiable ground on which to accuse the GRN [the Sandinista government] of anti-Semitism,” according to a July 28, 1983, cable. Their goal was to rally support in the Jewish community, the great majority of which was strongly opposed to the Reagan administration’s policies inCentral America, behind arming the Nicaraguan contras.

Yet the strongest anti-Semitic statement issued by any prominent Nicaraguan figure during Sandinistas’ 11-year rule was unquestionably that of the anti-Sandinista and U.S.-backed Archbishop (later made Cardinal, in part at Washington’s urging, by Pope John Paul II) Miguel Obando y Bravo. In an October 1984 homily that was reprinted in the anti-Sandinista (and U.S.government-supported) La Prensa newspaper, he stated:

[T]he leaders ofIsrael…mistreated [the prophets], beat them, killed them. Finally as supreme proof of love, God sent his divine Son, but they …also killed him, crucifying him… The Jews killed the prophets and finally the Son of God. …Such idolatry calls forth the sky’s vengeance.”

The ADL protested the homily; the neo-cons, including Abrams and Reich, ignored it.

So, if you want to identify an anti-Semite, the last person to consult would be a neo-conservative.

Featured Photo: Pictures of some of the estimated 30,000 people who were “disappeared” during Argentina’s “Dirty War”. By “miss buenos ares” Flickr. 

In an embarrassing moment, Presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Nicolas Sarkozy of France didn’t realize their microphones were turned on as they commiserated about having to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The political backlash, which should be a concern for an Israeli leader, is already starting to hit Obama.

Reuters reports:

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama, unaware that the microphones in their meeting room had been switched on, enabling reporters in a separate location to listen in to a simultaneous translation.

“You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you,” Obama replied, according to the French interpreter.

But rather than Israel being concerned that world powers, the US and France, find their leader an obnoxious presence, it is portrayed even here as a problem for the President.

“Obama’s apparent failure to defend Netanyahu is likely to be leapt on by his Republican foes, who are looking to unseat him in next year’s presidential election and have portrayed him as hostile to Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the region.

Pushing Netanyahu risks alienating Israel’s strong base of support among the U.S. public and in Congress.”

Republican Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann wasted no time in using the gaffe for her campaign purposes.

AP reports that, “The Minnesota congresswoman says Obama is showing his lack of commitment to Israel. Bachmann called on Obama to immediately apologize to Netanyahu and said Obama (backslash)should ‘demonstrate leadership and demand that the French President Sarkozy do the same’” Bachmann said Obama is putting space between the U.S.-Israeli relationship and allowing Iran time to obtain nuclear weapons.”

The issue is likely to gain some traction as well on Capitol Hill, as the Anti-Defamation League, whose mission has expanded to frequent defense of Netanyahu and whose voice carries weight in the halls of Congress, also sharply criticized Obama.

“We are deeply disappointed and saddened by this decidedly un-Presidential exchange between Presidents Sarkozy and Obama,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said in a statement. “President Obama’s response to Mr. Sarkozy implies that he agrees with the French leader.

“In light of the revelations here, we hope that the Obama Administration will do everything it can to reassure Israel that the relationship remains on a sure footing and to reinvigorate the trust between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which clearly is not what it should be,” Foxman continued. “What is sad is that we now have to worry to what extent these private views inform foreign policy decisions of the U.S. and France – two singularly important players in the peace process.”

For both Foxman and Bachmann, the problem is not Israeli policies, nor Netanyahu’s reputation for being an extremely difficult person to deal with, a characterization well known in Israel. All responsibility for the difficulties rests with Obama, and it is only he that has to act to “repair” the relationship between the two countries.

It also, apparently, escaped their notice that the exchange came at the end of a conversation where Obama complained to Sarkozy over France’s support for Palestine’s recent bid to join UNESCO.

Bachmann was quick off the mark, but she was soon joined by a line of Republicans behind her.

Mitt Romney tweeted: ““Overheard conversation at G-20 another sign of Obama’s low regard for Israel and its leader…I will stand by our allies, not tear them down.”

John McCain chimed in with this: ““I happen to be a great admirer of Prime Minister Netanyahu…and that kind of comment is not only not helpful, but indicative of some of the policies towards Israel that this administration has been part of.”

And never mind that Obama said nothing whatsoever about Israel, and neither did Sarkozy. Both men simply remarked about another leader who is well known, even in the US Jewish community for his inability to get along well with others.

With the coincidence that these unguarded comments were made public at the same time as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was releasing its troubling report on Iran’s nuclear program, it might be that Obama will feel even more compelled to give in to Israel demands, given his apparent belief that he must be more beholden to this right-wing Israeli government than any President before him or lose significant campaign backing.

Referring to the 1967 lines as “Auschwitz [...]]]> Amid the array of hysterical reactions to President Obama’s Middle East speech — notable examples include Benjamin Netanyahu and Mitt Romney — one under-reported response came from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which blasted Obama for calling for Israel to return to the 1967 “Auschwitz borders”.

Referring to the 1967 lines as “Auschwitz borders” is an old rhetorical trope that dates back (in some form or other) to Abba Eban in the 1960s. The underlying thought is that Israel’s borders are “indefensible” (as Netanyahu suggested) without large chunks of the West Bank; this claim sits rather uneasily with the fact that Israel has in fact successfully defended the pre-1967 borders on multiple occasions, and that its military advantage over its neighbors has only increased since the Six-Day War. The “Auschwitz borders” line is merely a particularly rhetorically vile and emotionally manipulative way of stating this claim, with its implication that an end to the Israeli occupation would be in some way comparable to the Holocaust.

While the trope is noxious enough coming from your garden-variety Likudnik or American neocon, it is especially rich coming from the Wiesenthal Center, an organization whose mission includes “teach[ing] the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations” and which has taken a leading role in policing the bounds of discourse concerning the Holocaust. The latest Wiesenthal statement raises some salient questions for Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, the center’s leaders. For instance: if fully ending the Israeli occupation would be a calamity comparable to Auschwitz, what other contemporary world events can legitimately be compared to Auschwitz? Is it permissible to compare, say, Guantanamo Bay to Auschwitz? Is it permissible to compare the Israeli blockade of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto? Is it permissible to compare Operation Cast Lead to the Holocaust?

More importantly, who gets to decide what constitutes a legitimate or illegitimate appropriation of the Holocaust for political purposes? Is it only Rabbis Hier and Cooper? If so, by what authority? Was there some sort of election in which they were appointed official custodians of the memory of the Shoah? If so, why is there no record of it?

The Wiesenthal Center has already been in hot water for its plans to build a “Museum of Tolerance” in Jerusalem on the site of an old Muslim cemetery. This latest statement displays a similar tone-deafness, in ways rather similar to the Anti-Defamation League’s self-marginalizing attack on the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” last year. Given this record, one is forced to ask what purpose these Jewish civil rights groups are serving in this day and age. Both the Wiesenthal Center and the ADL seem to think that their mission is first and foremost to serve as enforcers of the Likud line in the international arena. If this is all they have to offer the world, perhaps they have outlived their usefulness.

Others have [...]]]> I was struck by an article by Nathan Guttman in the legendary Jewish Daily Forward about Dennis Ross and George Mitchell jockeying for the position of Obama Administration’s point-person in the Middle East peace process. The whole thing is a fascinating read, but this line really jumped out at me:

Others have also described Ross as more skeptical [than Mitchell] about the chances of peace, based on his decades-long experience with trying to bring together the parties.

I don’t want to get all new-agey, but if you think something is difficult or impossible to do, the chances of being able to do it are greatly diminished from the get-go.

So why does this Ross guy keep getting jobs that he doesn’t think are possible? I picked up Ross’ book off of my shelf here in D.C., and it amazed me how many times he says you cannot make any kind of deal with the Iranians. Then, Obama put him in charge of making a deal with the Iranians. Ross, we now learn, doubts that a peace deal can be reached in Israel-Palestine, and Obama gives him a job making peace in Israel-Palestine.

On the Middle Eastern conflict, Ross’s credentials for the job are impeccable. After all, he’s been involved in decades — decades! — of failed peace processes. Ross has worked at the Washington Institute (WINEP), an AIPAC-formed think tank, and also chaired the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), an Israeli organization dedicated to “ensur(ing) the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization.” (The organization seems to oppose intermarriage with racist-sounding statements like “cultural collectivity cannot survive in the long term without primary biological foundations of family and children.”)

Ross was thought responsible for crafting Obama’s presidential campaign AIPAC speech — yes, the one with the line about an “undivided” Jerusalem that would spike a peace deal if implemented. Ross later reiterated the notion of an undivided Jerusalem as a “fact” in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

Ross was recently in the news following a secret but not-so-secret visit to the Middle East, which was fleshed out on Politico by Laura Rozen. Rozen was the reporter who carried a rather shocking anonymous allegation about Ross:

“[Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn’t seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this administration.”

In an update, Rozen carried NSC CoS Denis McDonough’s defense of Ross:

“The assertion is as false as it is offensive,” McDonough said Sunday by e-mail. ”Whoever said it has no idea what they are talking about. Dennis Ross’s many decades of service speak volumes about his commitment to this country and to our vital interests, and he is a critical part of the president’s team.”

But the new Forward article, as MJ Rosenberg points out, backs up the notion that Ross was extremely concerned with “advocat[ing]” for Israel. The source is none other than Israel-advocate extraordinaire Abe Foxman (who doesn’t negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government):

“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for ‘advocate.’”

Do you get the feeling that Ross advocated for Iran? Or, as the Forward article put it (with my strikethrough), has “strong ties to Israel” Iran? Guttman writes that Ross is considered to have a “reputation of being pro-Israeli.” As for Iran? Not quite: Ross’s Iran experience seems to boil down to heading United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a group that pushes for harsher, broad-based sanctions against Iran (despite a stated goal to not hurt ordinary Iranians) and that has criticized Obama’s policy of engagement. Ross left the gig, as with JPPI, when he took the job with the administration.

The group also launched an error-filled fear-mongering video (while Ross was still there; he appears in the video) and a campaign to get New York hotels to refuse to host Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he comes to town each year for the U.N. General Assembly, which hardly lays the groundwork for good diplomacy.

Oh, and about the Iran engagement designed by Ross: The administration’s approach has been questioned by several leading Iran experts. “It is unlikely that the resources and dedication needed for success was given to a policy that the administration expected to fail,” National Iranian American Council (NIAC) president Trita Parsi observed. In December, Ross publicly defended the administration against charges that engagement was less than sincere from the U.S. side. But it is Ross himself who has apparently long held a pessimistic outlook on engagement.

Ross’s 2007 book, “Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World“, is fascinating in light of where Ross has come from, and where he’s taken Iran policy. I was struck at a five-page section of the first chapter called “Neoconservatism vs. Neoliberalism,” in which Ross writes, “[Neoconservatism's] current standard-bearers — such as Richard Perle, David Frum, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan — are serious thinkers with a clear worldview,” (with my links).

Later, in several long sections about the run-up to George W. Bush’s Iraq war, Ross notes that Paul Wolfowitz was highly focused on Iraq before and after 9/11. He also mentions “political difficulties” in the push for war: “Once [Bush] realized there might be a domestic problem in acting against Iraq, his administration focused a great deal of energy and effort on mobilizing domestic support for military action.”

But Ross never acknowledges that some of his neoconservative “serious thinkers” — such as Kristol and his Weekly Standard magazine — were involved in the concerted campaign to mislead Americans in an effort to push the war… just as the same figures are pushing for an attack on Iran. Frum, who does seem capable of serious thinking, was the author of the “axis of evil” phrasing of Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address. The moniker included both Iraq and Iran, despite the fact that the latter was, until the speech, considered a potential ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. (Marsha Cohen chronicled an Israeli effort to squash the alliance, culminating in Frum’s contribution to the Bush speech.)

Ross never mentions that neocon Douglas Feith, a political appointee in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), was responsible for cherry-picking intelligence about Iraq within the administration, and whose office was feeding cooked information to the public via Scooter Libby in Vice President Dick Cheney‘s office. Through Libby, the distorted information made its way into the hands of the Standard and sympathetic journalists like ideologue Judith Miller at the New York Times. In August of 2003, Jim Lobe wrote (with my links):

[K]ey personnel who worked in both NESA [the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia bureau] and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003. …

Other appointees who worked with… both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud ‘Jerusalem Post’; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.

Ross has personal experience with many OSP veterans, working with them at WINEP and signing hawkish reports on Iran authored by them.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ross was a member of a task force that delivered a hawkish report apparently co-authored by two veterans of OSP, Rubin and Michael Makovsky. (Ross reportedly recused himself as the presidential campaign came into full swing.) Lobe, noting Ross’s curious involvement, called the report a “roadmap to war with Iran,” and added, a year later, that the group that put out the report was accelerating the plan, calling for a military build-up and a naval blockade against Iran.

After taking his position within the Obama administration, Ross released a book, co-authored with David Makovsky, that was skeptical of the notion that engagement could work. Nathan Guttman, in a review of the book for the Forward, wrote:

The success of diplomatic engagement, according to Ross, is not guaranteed and could be unlikely. Still, he and Makovsky believe that negotiations will serve a purpose even if results are not satisfying. “By not trying, the U.S. and its refusal to talk become the issue,” said Makovsky in a June 1 interview with the Forward. “What we are saying is that if the U.S. chooses engagement, even if it fails, every other option will be more legitimate.”

The attitude of Ross and Makovsky seems closer to that of the Israeli government then to that of the Obama administration.

OSP, Feith, the Makovsky brothers, and Rubin are not listed in the index of “Statecraft,” nor have they appeared in the many sections that I’ve read in full.

In his book, Ross does have many revealing passages about concepts that have been worked into the Obama administration’s Iran policy. One such ploy, which has not been acknowledged or revealed publicly, is using Israel as the crazy ‘bad cop’ — a potentially dangerous game. Ross also writes that international pressure (through sanctions) must be made in order to cause Iran “pain.” Only then, thinks Ross, can concessions such as “economic, technological and security benefits” from the U.S. be offered:

Orchestrating this combination of sticks and carrots requires at this point some obviously adverse consequences for the Iranians first.

This view does not comport with the Obama plan for a simultaneous dual-track policy toward Iran — which holds that engagement and pressure should occur simultaneously — and serves to bolster critics who say that engagement has not been serious because meaningful concessions have not been offered. But it does hint at another tactic that Ross references at least twice in the book: the difference between “style” and “substance.” With regard to Iran, he presents this dichotomy in relation to public professions about the “military option” — a euphemism for launching a war. But publicly suppressing rhetoric is only used as a way to build international support for pressure — not also, as one might expect, a way to assuage the security fears of Iran.

But those aren’t the only ideas from the 2007 book that seem to have made their way into U.S. policy toward Iran. In “Statecraft,” Ross endorses the use of “more overt and inherently deniable alternatives to the use of force” for slowing Iran’s nuclear progress. In particular, he mentions the “fragility of centrifuges,” which is exactly what is being targeted by the Stuxnet virus, a powerful computer worm thought to be created by a state, likely Israel, and perhaps with help from the U.S., according to the latest revelations.

Some critics of this website complain that the level of attention given to neoconservatives is too great, but they should consider this: Look at Dennis Ross. He works extensively with this clique, and no doubt has the occasional drink or meeting with them. And, most importantly, he writes approvingly about neoconservatives, noting that their viewpoint affects political considerations of “any political leader.” Because of these neocon “considerations,” he writes, this is how we should view the Islamic Republic: “With Iran, there  is a profound mistrust of the mullahs, and of their perceived deceit, their support for terror, and their enduring hostility to America and its friends in the Middle East. … No one will be keen to be portrayed as soft on the Iranian mullahs.”

This from the man that formulated a policy that has offered “adverse consequences” but so far no “carrots.” Ross’s predictions are a self-fulfilling prophecy — and since he gets the big appointments, he gets to fulfill them. Taking reviews of his book with Makovsky, the Bipartisan Policy Committee report, and “Statecraft” as a whole, I’m not at all surprised that little progress has been made with Iran.

But, at least, that was his first try. He’s a three-time-loser on Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. With Iran, I had to put the pieces together, whereas with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, his record is right there for all to see. Putting Ross in charge of peace-making between the two seems to perfectly fit Einstein’s definition of insanity.

Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– [...]]]> There’s no better way to commemorate a civil war among Jews 2,275 years ago, memorialized by the Jewish festival of Chanuka, than by a little intra-tribe squabbling.

Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– Jewish Senators and organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Noah Silverman, RJC’s Congressional Affairs Director since 2006, may have been moved by the sight of boiling oil when he made his debut as an official RJC blogger. No sooner writ than said, Silverman’s pontifications splattered over to RJC’s e-mail list on Thursday night.

Silverman attacks Jews and Jewish organizations who have come out in support of the immediate ratification of the New START Treaty. Picking up where the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and JINSA left off, Silverman’s rails against “an unprecedented effort to ‘make START a Jewish issue‘ by pressuring Jewish communal organizations to advocate for the treaty’s ratification.”

He’s irate with the ADL and the American Council of World Jewry, both of whom  objected when Senate Republicans made it known that they would use member prerogative to block ratification: “We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the new START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” a Nov. 19 letter from the ADL to all members of the Senate asserted. ”The U.S. diplomatic strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons requires a U.S.-Russia relationship of trust and cooperation.”

Granted that the ADL was speaking from the perspective of its anti-Iran agenda. Nonetheless — and perhaps especially so — it’s bizarre to hear the RJC’s Silverman challenging the right of Jewish organizations to weigh in on issues other than Israel. And Silverman is livid that Senate Democrats would dare to use an argument about Israel’s security to enlist AIPAC in the effort to get START ratified.

MJ Rosenberg — citing Nathan Guttman in the Forward and Ron Kampeas at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — suggests that

AIPAC is in agony. It desperately wants to support the US-Russia START treaty aimed at limiting nuclear warheads because the treaty would greatly advance Israel’s security.

But it is afraid of defying right-wing Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in particular, is telling AIPAC “don’t you dare.” His reason is simple: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has ordered Republicans to block anything the President submits to the Senate except, of course, tax cuts for millionaires. That includes START.

Tight-with-the-right Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is Silverman’s source that the involvement of AIPAC in a non-Israel issue is shocking. Rubin writes,  “An experienced Israel hand tells me, ‘Well, they of course claim there is a direct link to Israeli security. But, no, this must be very rare.’ A Capitol Hill adviser from another office says ‘I’ve never seen this done with AIPAC on a non-Israel issue.’”

But it’s not all that rare, according to Rosenberg:

AIPAC argues that it does not get involved in congressional battles that do not directly involve Israel. Of course, they do. They always have. Even when I worked at AIPAC decades ago, they put their full lobbying weight behind a then-controversial plan to establish a military base on the Pacific island of Diego Garcia.

Why? Because the Republican President at the time asked them to. More recently, AIPAC made sure that its friends in Congress knew that the “right vote” for Israel was supporting both Iraq wars. (Had AIPAC not indicated its support for war, far fewer Democrats would have voted for the second Iraq war.)

Silverman frames the effort to pass START as evidence of  “a panicked White House is scrambling to salvage what it can of its legislative agenda before its influence in Congress is diminished next year.” But the letter to AIPAC which so outrages Silverman was written by two longtime senators who supported arms control long before Barack Obama was elected president.

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin was first elected to the Senate in 1978, where he’s Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s been consistently supportive of conventional forces and basic, reliable weapons systems to protect national security. His support for START is anything but last minute. In a column in the Niles Daily Star on July 9, Levin wrote:

As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described it, New START will “make our country more secure and advance our core national security interests.” This treaty is in keeping with a long tradition of bilateral, verifiable arms control agreements with Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, and it strengthens the U.S. commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

Silverman not only ignores Mullen’s endorsement of START, he seems completely oblivious to the support expressed by Republicans for “resetting” the Treaty. They include what Jim Lobe calls are the “big guns in what remains of the Republican foreign policy Establishment, including five former secretaries of state whose service spanned the last five Republican administrations.” They include Colin Powell, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and Lawrence Eagleburger, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that there are “compelling reasons” for Republicans to approve ratification of START.

Bloomberg News reports that several Republican senators — among them Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, Bob Bennett, John McCain, and Kyl himself, are hinting they could support the reset of START in the lame-duck Senate session if (and perhaps only if) the Senate voted to extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts to cover Americans in all income groups. So it’s domestic politics, not national security, that may determine the fate of START, JINSA notwithstanding. MJ Rosenberg also thinks that “Kyl may come around and then AIPAC can too.”

Silverman, who worked for seven years as a legislative aide in Kyl’s office, also uses his first blogpost to defend Kyl against what he deems to be assaults on his former boss’s reputation. He is no doubt bristling at the thought that his former boss will give in on START out of political expediency. Although the RJC launched some of the most vicious ad hominem attack ads against Obama before the 2008 election, Silverman huffs that “Pro-Obama commentators attacked Kyl in the most demeaning and personal terms — including calling him unpatriotic.”

The “demeaning” attack on Kyl to which Silverman links is a Huffington Post rhymed rant by self-described Ranting Political Poet Jim Parry. The personal attack: a single Tweet by Washington Monthly contributor and blogger Steve Benen. And the accusation of Kyl’s being “unpatriotic”? A tweet by actress Elizabeth Banks, co-star of the frat-boy comedy film Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Does Silverman really consider two tweets and a rant “pro-Obama news commentary”? If so, it explains alot.

Like why, after 25 years of Republican Jewish Coalition activism, there is only one single Jewish Republican to be found in the U.S. Congress — in either the upper or lower chamber.