by Marsha B. Cohen
Last Tuesday (Oct. 29) administration officials met with what the Israeli daily Haaretz describes as a ”coterie of Jewish leaders.” Only four Jewish organizations were represented: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); the American Jewish Committee (AJC); and the Conference of Presidents of Major [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Last Tuesday (Oct. 29) administration officials met with what the Israeli daily Haaretz describes as a ”coterie of Jewish leaders.” Only four Jewish organizations were represented: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); the American Jewish Committee (AJC); and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.
Speaking for the administration during the one hour “off the record briefing” were White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice, her deputies Ben Rhodes and Tony Blinken, and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman. Sherman is the senior State Department official representing the U.S. at ongoing talks over Iran’s nuclear program. The next round of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany) are scheduled for Nov. 6-7.
The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations issued a news release that evening: “Leaders of several Jewish organizations participated in an off-the-record discussion with senior Administration officials about issues of the highest priority for the U.S., for our community and for America’s allies, halting Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”
“We had a constructive and open exchange and agreed to continue the consultation to enhance the prospect of achieving a transparent and effective diplomatic resolution,” the release said. “We welcome the reaffirmation of the President’s commitment to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear capability and that all options remain viable to assure that end.”
Numerous Jewish groups that are usually invited to Israel-related get-togethers — including representatives of the Orthodox and Reform movements and the younger “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group, J-Street, which has been very supportive of Obama’s foreign policy agenda — were not on the guest list. According to the Times of Israel, the White House had postponed a meeting scheduled for Monday with a broader range of Jewish groups. Instead, a meeting was set up for Tuesday with attendees from “organizations that had challenged the administration’s policies on Iran.”
The attendees included the Conference of Presidents Chairman Robert Sugarman, Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein, and former Conference Chairman Alan Solow. Abraham Foxman, who accused Secretary of State John Kerry the other day of having made “inappropriate” remarks about the use of “fear tactics” to undermine diplomacy with Iran, represented the ADL. Also attending were AIPAC’s Executive Director, Howard Kohr, and Jason Isaacson, the Director of Governmental and International Affairs at the American Jewish Committee.
Speaking for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan said in a statement that the purpose of the meeting was for the administration to reassure the Jewish organizations that “the United States will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that our preference is to resolve the issue peacefully through diplomacy.”
Pro-Israel groups have been supportive of congressional determination to impose new and stiffer sanctions against Iran even as the new Iranian administration of Hassan Rouhani has stated its determination to resolve the nuclear issue. Pro-Israel groups are supporting the congressional push for more crippling sanctions while the White House is arguing that any new sanctions should be put on hold for at least the duration of the next round of talks.
If the White House entertained the hope that an intimate and “off the record” gathering of pro-Israel, Iran policy hardliners who purportedly represent the views of American Jews would be kept quiet, there was a major miscalculation. Citing “sources familiar with the meeting,” Chemi Shalev of Haaretz initially reported early Friday morning that the pro-Israel Gang of Four had agreed to tone down their demand that new Iran sanctions be enacted immediately, without waiting to see whether the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 will reveal any signs of progress.
According to Shalev, the Jewish organizational leaders had agreed to grant the Obama administration “a limited ‘grace period’” of 60 days only after the administration assured them that no current sanctions would be eased and that no Iranian funds frozen in banks around the world would be released. By Friday afternoon, however, Shalev had found an anonymous source affiliated with an organization represented at the meeting who categorically denies that any commitment was given for any such moratorium. “In fact,” the source told Shalev, “we will support it.” Furthermore, according to Shalev, “Sources in the Jewish establishment emphasized that they did not make any commitment to refrain from supporting new sanctions in their private dealings with the U.S. lawmakers.”
The Jerusalem Post‘s Michael Wilner also reported on Friday afternoon that the organizations at the meeting had not agreed to desist from their efforts in support of new Iran sanctions. “I can tell you, within AJC, no decision has been made to revisit support for the Senate measure,” David Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, told the JP. “There’s no process in place to reconsider our decision.”
Christians United for Israel (CUFI) is also mobilizing its million-plus Christian Zionists to urge their members of Congress to “support legislation to tighten the sanctions on Iran and to do everything in your power to ensure the prompt final passage of this measure.”
Although mainstream pro-Israel organizations have always insisted that U.S. support for Israel is bi-partisan and have been very reluctant to turn support for Israel (which includes staunch opposition to any improvement in relations between Israel and Iran) into a “wedge issue,” the neoconservative Washington Free Beacon turned to its own anonymous sources to accuse the Obama administration of having repeatedly “screwed pro-Israel groups.” Alana Goodman quoted “a senior official at a top pro-Israel organization” who claimed “the pro-Israel community has helped the White House out of several political binds recently and has only received problems in return…Now the administration is demanding favors, to say nothing of trust.”
Update (Nov. 3): In response to Chemi Shalev’s reports on Friday, Abraham Foxman of the ADL confirmed to Haaretz on Saturday that the four major pro-Israel groups had agreed to abide by a limited “time out” during which they would not push for stronger sanctions on Iran.“That means that we are not lobbying for additional sanctions and we are not lobbying for less sanctions,” Foxman told Haaretz as well as other U.S. media outlets. A few hours later, however, a statement by AIPAC’s president, Michael Kassen, contradicted Foxman’s claim, insisting there would be “no pause, delay or moratorium” in AIPAC’s efforts to seek new sanctions on Iran.
]]>Though I don’t subscribe to Commentary, I read its “Contentions” blog daily. “Opinion”? Definitely. “American intellectual life”? Keep dreaming.
I certainly don’t respect any intellectuals who can’t realize that journalism requires some basic disclosures. This is [...]]]>
“COMMENTARY is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life.”
Though I don’t subscribe to Commentary, I read its “Contentions” blog daily. “Opinion”? Definitely. “American intellectual life”? Keep dreaming.
I certainly don’t respect any intellectuals who can’t realize that journalism requires some basic disclosures. This is not about a list of Commentary‘s top private donors (though I’d love to have a look). It’s a matter of simple journalistic ethics, which might be too much for the flagship neoconservative rag.
A publication cannot have a writer cover a letter from an advocacy organization to a U.S. government official by another contributor to the publication without somehow saying so. This is patently obvious. (I’ll floss here, and say that Ethics was the only class I got honors in at Columbia Journalism School.)
What’s more, not only did Alana Goodman cover the letter by Noah Pollak, on the letterhead of his Emergency Committee for Israel, she didn’t even name him. Pollak, who is the letter’s only signatory, wrote often for Commentary before last summer, when he launched ECI, a right-wing Israel lobby organization. Now he writes less frequently, but has contributed to “Contentions” as recently as Monday, 21 February.
The letter was to Dennis Ross, a senior White House adviser for the Middle East, expressing “surprise” that the official would be speaking at the upcoming conference of the liberal Israel lobby group J Street. Pollak asked Ross to use his speech to counter potential criticisms of Israel from other conference speakers.
As for attributing the letter in her post, Goodman wrote only:
The Emergency Committee for Israel has outlined some of the troublesome statements made by other conference speakers in a letter it sent to Ross today. …
The Emergency Committee for Israel has rightly asked Ross to “seize this moment to explain why the Jewish State is not just one of our closest allies, but a country that fully deserves the admiration and moral support of all Americans.”
Naturally, the post was picked up by the neoconservative Washington Post pundit Jennifer Rubin, who used to work with Pollak at Commentary. Rubin recently traveled on ECI’s dime to Israel and the Occupied Territories (where she made a swell case for the one-state solution). I wouldn’t put Rubin on the hook for having worked with Pollak, but this is where the one-time disclosure gets problematic. How much wining and dining was done on this trip anyway?
Rubin’s bit on the ECI letter, in her morning round-up, was simply this:
Awkward: Middle East adviser Dennis Ross is asked why he’s going to a J Street conference with so many anti-Israel characters.
Ross’s attendance is especially cringe-inducing in light of this: “Four Kadima MKs who accepted an invitation to speak at this weekend’s J Street conference in Washington faced criticism on Wednesday from colleagues in their faction who said they should not be supporting the left-wing American lobby.”
The “awkward” link goes to Alana Goodman’s Commentary post. Why? Surely Rubin has enough of a relationship with Pollak that he forwarded her the letter yesterday when it appeared online. He’s an advocate, and she has an opinion blog at a mainstream outlet, and they just took a long trip overseas together.
The “anti-Israel” comment is a label Rubin has a penchant for slapping on any even mild critic of the Jewish state, so I won’t bother with that. But why would the astute Jennifer Rubin think that it’s “cringe-inducing” that members of Kadima, a center-right Likud spin-off, would have a problem with a liberal lobby group? Isn’t that politics as usual?
Oh yeah, Rubin doesn’t think “liberal Zionism” exists, having declared the term an oxymoron. That’s the kind of rigid ideological neoconservatism I would expect from this triumvirate of Commentary zealots. I don’t know why I’m surprised that the journal has sunk to such low journalistic — let alone intellectual — standards.
]]>Both Rubin and Goodman reported that HSBC CEO Niall Booker met with Jose Fernandez, assistant secretary [...]]]>
Both Rubin and Goodman reported that HSBC CEO Niall Booker met with Jose Fernandez, assistant secretary for economic energy and business affairs, on Monday.
Neither of the bloggers had any great insight about the closed door meeting—which could have touched on any number of topics—but that didn’t stop them from citing anonymous sources and continuing to make unsubstantiated accusations about the bank.
Goodman wrote on Thursday:
The bank’s controversial advertisement was discussed at a private meeting between HSBC CEO Niall Booker and Jose Fernandez, assistant secretary for economic energy and business affairs, at the State Department on Monday, a source familiar with the conversation told me.
It seems unlikely that the State Department was concerned about HSBC’s rather innocuous ad that called attention to the high number of women in the Iranian film industry, but Goodman nonetheless raised the same regulatory order cited by Rubin in her initial post:
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin reported on Dec. 26 that the bank has recently “drawn the attention of various regulators” and is currently “being probed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.” Regulators at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago also reportedly “found that the bank’s compliance program was ineffective and created ’significant potential’ for money laundering and terrorist financing. This opened HSBC to the possibility that it was conducting transactions on behalf of sanctioned entities.”
While making these accusations, neither Rubin nor Goodman have proven the existence of any business transactions with “sanctioned entities” or, indeed, given any concrete description (innuendo aside) of any business HSBC conducts in Iran.
On Friday, Rubin was quick to follow up with her own source:
… [A] senior administration official only authorized to speak on background told me that “we were previously told by HSBC that they were out [of Iran] entirely, but recent statements suggest they are still in the process of unwinding their business in Iran. We are seeking to clarify exactly where things stand.”
But even Rubin is willing to admit that all of her tough talk about sanctions—and even tougher talk towards HSBC for calling attention to Iran’s female filmmakers—is really just a stepping stone to “stronger measures.”
She concludes:
It is precisely this difficulty [in enforcing sanctions] — and the Iranian regime’s determination to plow ahead with its nuclear program despite sanctions — that has convinced skeptics of sanctions that stronger measures are needed to disrupt the Iranians’ nuclear plans.
Her conclusion is noteworthy in two ways.
First, it’s far from clear that HSBC has violated sanctions in any way, shape, or form. All the bank is publicly known to have done is to publish an advertisement–which was later withdrawn–calling attention to the accomplishments of female filmmakers in Iran. From this, and a heaping dose of speculation, Rubin concludes that HSBC is an example of a regime-enabler and the epitome of the problems with sanctions enforcement? Some serious logical leaps are required to come to that conclusion.
Second, Rubin admits that none of this really matters for “skeptics of sanctions,” such as herself. She has already convinced herself that sanctions and diplomatic outreach are wastes of time and effort. HSBC might not have violated sanctions but, for Iran-hawks, any occasion to call sanctions a failure is an opportunity to inch the U.S. towards “stronger measures.”
]]>