by Mitchell Plitnick
April 28 is the day on which Jews all around the world commemorate the Holocaust. It’s an important day, a somber time for obvious reasons. One would think it would be treated with respect, especially by self-defined “Jewish leaders.” And yet, it comes as no surprise [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
April 28 is the day on which Jews all around the world commemorate the Holocaust. It’s an important day, a somber time for obvious reasons. One would think it would be treated with respect, especially by self-defined “Jewish leaders.” And yet, it comes as no surprise that at least one such leader, the Prime Minister of Israel, would cynically use the memory of the Holocaust to further a political agenda that presses for confrontation and uses the Holocaust memory to further the goal of ongoing occupation.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made what was probably the clearest statement of sympathy for the history of Jewish suffering in World War II ever by a Palestinian leader. He called it “…the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history.” Abbas continued by offering his sympathy to the “families of the victims and the innocent people who were killed by the Nazis including the Jews and others.” That is a decidedly clear statement, acknowledging the Jews specifically, but also not forgetting that nearly an equal number of non-Jews were killed in the Nazi camps.
Many Jews around the world welcomed Abbas’ statement, as well we should. But Netanyahu used the opportunity to declare once again that “rather than releasing declarations aimed at soothing international public opinion, he must choose between Hamas and true peace.” Bibi dismissed Abbas’ statement as a public relations move.
Well, yes, it was a public relations move, just like similar declarations by various heads of state and other leaders on this day. Just to hammer the irony home, Netanyahu issued his own public relations statement to Israel’s Druze citizens on the occasion of Nebi Shueib holiday. “Nebi Shueib is known in Jewish tradition as Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, one of the founding fathers of the Jewish People,” Netanyahu said, both co-opting the holiday and, incredibly, misrepresenting Moses’ role in Jewish memory. “This is yet another link between the Jewish People and the Druze community…In recent years I have devoted special attention to continuing the development of Druze villages and to improving their economic and infrastructure situations. It is clear to me that there is more work to be done but the changes may already be felt.”
The brazen hypocrisy of accusing Abbas of acknowledging the Holocaust as a PR stunt and then doing the very same thing with Israel’s Druze community is mind-boggling, but it doesn’t end there. Netanyahu also used the memory of the Holocaust to further his agenda on Iran.
Speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Netanyahu told the crowd, “In this place I have said many times that we must identify an existential threat in time and act against it in time and tonight I ask ‘why in the years before the Holocaust did most of the world’s leaders not see the danger ahead of time?’ In hindsight, all the signs were there. Has the world learned a lesson from the mistakes of the past? Today we are again faced with clear facts and before a real danger. Iran calls for our destruction, it develops nuclear weapons.”
Has the world learned? If too many listen to Netanyahu, the answer is surely “no.” Ha’aretz reporter Chemi Shalev sums up Netanyahu’s abuse of Holocaust memory quite well. “While Israel complains (not altogether accurately) that Abbas is violating the holy of holies by daring to compare Jewish trials with Palestinian tribulations, it’s apparently quite all right for Netanyahu to equate Hamas with the Third Reich and to accuse it of seeking another Holocaust,” Shalev wrote. “And to counter comments in the U.S. media that Abbas’ acknowledgement of the Holocaust is groundbreaking and significant, Israel pits an anonymous “senior official” who tells the New York Times that the new statement is worthless because if fails to condemn the Nazi-collaborating World War II Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini. Seriously.”
Yes, this seems to be desperation on Netanyahu’s part. He seems to have realized that none but Israel’s most myopic and radical backers believe his nonsense about why the peace process has failed. He seems to understand that most of the world, including many supporters of Israel, are fully aware that he has done everything he can to destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state ever coming into existence. And so he presses harder to demonize Abbas, who is without a doubt the most cooperative leader the Palestinians are ever likely to have. What else can Netanyahu do? He has no other tools in his kit.
But as a Jewish man, one who takes pride in his Jewish heritage, I must call foul on this heinous and, frankly, disgusting abuse of my people’s long history of suffering. That persecution has, thankfully, diminished enormously in recent decades, to the point that this is unquestionably the freest era for Jews in two thousand years. The threat remains, however, and it could very well grow again. Indeed, Netanyahu, and far too many of his supporters inside and outside of Israel, seems to be doing everything he can to fan the flames of anti-Jewish hatred. But at this moment this is as good as Jews have ever had it.
That’s why Netanyahu’s actions should be condemned by every Jew around the world. It may be that too much of our cultural character is based on the memory of our suffering, but that suffering is very real and has a long and frightening history. It is a history from which we, and the entire world, must learn.
The lesson is not, however, increased militancy, nor is it that Israel has some special right to hold millions of Palestinians without basic human, civil and national rights. It is not that Israel has some special right to defy international law and treaties or that it is somehow uniquely entitled to a clandestine nuclear weapons program that it maintains as a threat to its adversaries while evading all regulation of it.
No, the lesson is that bigotry, privileging one group of people above another, and reliance on military might do not bring peace or security. The lesson, ultimately, is that the Jews, the Roma, the LGBT folks, the physically challenged, the leftist activists and all the others who the Nazis tried to exterminate are still here, and those communities are growing while the Third Reich has been relegated to history. That is the lesson of the Holocaust.
The ultimate phrase of the Holocaust is “Never Again.” It means we must not allow what happened in Nazi Europe to happen again, to anyone. We must not allow it in Rwanda, in East Timor, in Cambodia, in Sri Lanka, in Bosnia or, today, in Syria. It means not just zero tolerance for genocide, which is axiomatic, but also zero tolerance for human rights violations, for massive dispossession, for reliance on war over diplomacy — yet Netanyahu is using the memory of the Holocaust and the longer history of Jewish suffering to defend and support these policies. That’s not just wrong. It’s obscene.
]]>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.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
The ubiquitous smiling visage of Hassan Rouhani and his seemingly reasonable iterations of Iranian intentions are infuriating some Israelis.
Zvi Bar’el of Haaretz explains that “Israel’s fear of losing its justification for an attack on Iran and the fear that the United States may yet “fall into the [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
The ubiquitous smiling visage of Hassan Rouhani and his seemingly reasonable iterations of Iranian intentions are infuriating some Israelis.
Zvi Bar’el of Haaretz explains that “Israel’s fear of losing its justification for an attack on Iran and the fear that the United States may yet “fall into the trap” set by the “smooth language” of the Iranian president is driving it crazy.”
“Where is Ahmadinejad when we really need him?” asks Chemi Shalev in Haaretz.
The attention, some of it fawning, that is already being bestowed on the so-called “moderate” Iranian president has confirmed the widespread assumption of most analysts following Rohani’s election in August as Iran’s 7th president: that it wouldn’t take long for Israel and other critics of Iran to sorely miss his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
After all, for the past 8 years, Israel’s efforts to convince the world and especially the U.S. to tackle Iran’s nuclear designs head on relied on two main figures: the relentless Netanyahu and the equally adamant, Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad. And with all due respect to Netanyahu’s formidable public relations prowess, it was Ahmadinejad who served as Israel’s number one talking point, its strategic propaganda asset, a poster boy who self-explained Tehran’s sinister designs.
And Y-Net‘s Ron Ben Yishai lays out the four conditions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says should be met in order for the U.S. to ease sanctions against Iran:
Netanyahu specified them as “Halting all uranium enrichment; removing all enriched uranium; closing (the uranium enrichment facility at) Qom; and stopping the plutonium track,” which is being pursued at the Arak reactor. Netanyahu said that “until all four of these measures are achieved, the pressure on Iran must be increased and not relaxed.”
Netanyahu’s words were most likely meant for the ears of the members of Congress, so they will not let Obama get carried away by Rohani’s overtures and urge the president to increase the economic pressure on Iran and impose additional, more severe sanctions. The Israelis are also telling their American counterparts that just like in the case of the Syrian crisis, a credible military threat is needed in order to get results on the diplomatic track.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, characterized Rouhani on Friday as “a master of deceit who has been putting on an all-out charm offensive since he took office, replacing Ahmadinejad” and said any talks with Rouhani was “a fool’s errand.” The staunchly pro-Israel (and defender of the mujahadeen-e-khalq (MEK), even while it was on the State Dept. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations) also shared Israeli nostalgia for Rouhani’s predecessor in a statement that was given prominent coverage by Haviv Rettig Gur in the Times of Israel: “In many ways Rouhani is much more dangerous than [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. At least with Ahmadinejad you get what you see – his hatred for Israel and the United States is not disguised with rhetoric or spurious gestures of goodwill.”
Members of Congress notwithstanding, Raphael Ahrens, the diplomatic correspondent for the Times of Israel, opines that “right now Rouhani is singing a new tune, and Netanyahu risks sounding like a broken record, repeating a song people would much rather not listen to anymore.”
Meanwhile, Yuval Steinitz, a member of Israel’s parliament (Knesset) and of Netanyahu’s cabinet, has scored big time in laying claim to the meme that derisively characterizes Rouhani’s efforts to improve US-Iran relations as a “charm offensive,” which has gone viral since Sept. 8, when Yaakov Lappin of the Jerusalem Post reported:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is about to launch a charm offensive aimed at calming Western fears over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and hopes to “laugh all the way to the bomb,” Yuval Steinitz, the international relations, intelligence and strategic affairs minister, said on Sunday.
Speaking at the Institute for Counter-terrorism’s 13th annual international conference, Steinitz said, “If I read Rouhani correctly, I predict that in [the] near future, maybe at the start of [the] UN General Assembly session next week, we’ll see an offensive of friendliness and moderation toward the West, to influence Western media, public opinion and leadership in Europe and the US and to calm fears over a nuclear Iran.”
Describing Rouhani as “more sophisticated and smarter than his predecessor [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad,” Steinitz warned that the Iranian president plans to deceive the international community to buy his country more time to develop its military nuclear program.
In a recent interview with the Sheldon Adelson-owned daily Israel Hayom, Steinitz reiterated, “Rouhani has launched a charm offensive on the West, but he plans to charm his way to a nuclear weapon.”
But it was Iranian-American Professor Mohsen Milani, writing in Foreign Policy way back in June, who casually used the phrase “charm offensive” in the body of a thoughtful article arguing that Iran’s foreign policy would likely start with a charm offensive toward all of Iran’s neighbors, particularly the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Describing Rouhani as “someone with whom one could do business,” Milani offered numerous policy recommendations, among them that the U.S. invite Iranian engagement on Syria and Afghanistan, and “help the forces of moderation in Iran by trying to work with the new president.”
The next day, the hawkish news aggregation site Real Clear World emblazoned the headline “Get Ready for Rouhani’s Charm Offensive.”
“In my articles and in a number of interviews I have done since June, I have consistently talked about the “charm offensive” by the IRI [Islamic Republic of Iran] in the context of Iran’s strategic decision to settle its nuclear dispute with the West and explore the possibility of normalizing its relations with the US,” Milani explained in an e-mail to Lobe Log. “If we only emphasize the ‘charm offensive’ without talking about the key strategic decision Iran seems to have made, then we could create the impression that what has been taking place is devoid of any substance and is but a sophisticated and sinister public relations scheme.”
In the past two weeks and particularly in the past few days, the meme of Rouhani’s “charm offensive” has been dominating many U.S. news sources. With some exceptions, these pieces have mostly ignored the possibility that the U.S. and Iran have shared interests, and approached the “Rouhani charm offensive” as a tactic for evading progress rather than evidence of a strategic decision made and supported by major players within the Iranian government. Here’s a sampling of major and minor sites: Associated Press; CBS; Center for Security Policy; Christian Science Monitor; CNN; Financial Times; Fiscal Times; Front Page Magazine; Fox News; France 24; Guardian; National Public Radio; PBS News Hour; Time; Washington Free Beacon and the Washington Post.
Rouhani, who left Iran for New York on Sunday, will attend the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, and deliver a speech before the UNGA that afternoon. The following day he is scheduled to address the special session of the Nuclear Disarmament Conference as the current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), of which nearly two thirds of the members of the UN are members. Rouhani will also address foreign ministers of the NAM, and is expected to meet and hold talks with world leaders on the sidelines of the UNGA. He has “not ruled out” the possibility of meeting with President Obama.
According to the Times of Israel, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Friday night that “administration officials have had several conversations with their Israeli counterparts recently to assure them that Rouhani’s outreach — which has seen the new Iranian president give a US TV interview, pen an op-ed in the Washington Post, and send other conciliatory messages to the US — will not prompt a reduction in sanctions pressure designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive.”
If that is all that comes of Rouhani’s so-called “charm offensive,” somewhere in Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be smiling.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
Syria’s declaration that it would accept a Russian proposal to hand over its chemical weapons to an international body was the latest in a string of surprises around international concern over the ongoing, horrific civil war in that country. It is extremely premature, at this point, to declare the [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Syria’s declaration that it would accept a Russian proposal to hand over its chemical weapons to an international body was the latest in a string of surprises around international concern over the ongoing, horrific civil war in that country. It is extremely premature, at this point, to declare the threat of a US escalation over, but the delay this proposal produced does go a long way toward lowering the heat on the crisis and, at minimum, stretching the timetable.
President Obama’s willingness to bring this idea to the U.N. Security Council opens the door to averting a U.S. strike and pushes back the likely strike date and a congressional vote on Obama’s decision. That has led to a collective sigh of relief, at least for the moment, throughout the country. And nowhere has that sound been louder than in the offices of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The debate has been a difficult one in Washington. A hawkish minority see striking Syria as a necessary deterrent, both to Bashar al-Assad reusing chemical weapons and emboldening Iran to pursue nuclear weapons, a decision hawks think will be influenced by a perception that the U.S. is so reluctant to get involved in another military escapade that it will not back up threats of using force. That’s what is meant by “protecting U.S. credibility.” But the majority of the U.S. public and, at least for the time being, the House of Representatives seems to be opposed to Obama’s idea of hitting Syria.
In one of a series of surprises around this issue, AIPAC publicly dove in to the Syria debate in DC, and faced the most daunting challenge they had in many years. One of the things that gives AIPAC its air of invincibility is their astounding record of success on Capitol Hill. One of the reasons they have that record is that they rarely get into fights they are not sure they are going to win. This one was far from that.
A vote held immediately after the president announced he was going to request authorization from Congress would have likely been unsuccessful. Some, myself included, believed that a full court press by the president combined with hard lobbying by AIPAC and the Saudis would, over the course of time, sway enough votes to give the president what he wanted. I’m pretty sure the Senate, in any case, will support Obama. The House is certainly more questionable.
If the vote in either chamber went against the president, it would mean an unprecedented loss for AIPAC. They’ve lost before, but never when they were working with, rather than against, the president of the United States. That they got involved with such an iffy proposition can only be explained by an Israeli desire to see Obama win this one, but also for the Israeli government itself — which, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced unprecedented criticism for interfering in U.S. politics — to remain distant from the debate. In a most unusual development, it is Obama who keeps talking about Israel being a factor in his decision. AIPAC has adamantly refused to name Israeli concerns as a reason for their support of an attack on Syria.
Chemi Shalev, the very sharp Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz wrote:
If AIPAC goes ‘all out,’ as Politico reported on Thursday, and ‘250 Jewish leaders and AIPAC activists will storm the halls on Capitol Hill beginning next week,’ but the House of Representatives nonetheless votes against the President, then the lobby’s image of invincibility, to which it owes much of its influence, will inevitably be jeopardized.
I’m not sure AIPAC’s air of invincibility would be jeopardized so much as it might be slightly diminished, another step on the unfortunately long road to normalizing the U.S. discussion of Middle East policy.
The other, younger and more moderate side of the Israel Lobby, J Street, had its own problems with the Syria issue. Internal debate in the organization had a stymying effect and left them without a position. While some were content with no stance from the “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” lobbying group, their silence can hurt them in the long term on the Hill.
Long-time DC observer Ron Kampeas has it just right when he says:
One of the most effective ways for lobbyists to accrue influence on the Hill is to convey to overwhelmed congresspersons and their staffers that the lobby has the expertise to help them arrive at an informed opinion. And if in addition to expertise, your lobby has a cadre of seasoned staffers who are able to shape a lawmaker’s concerns into legislative language that is likely to attract cosponsors and even achieve passage (the golden ring for a body that passes less than five percent of its proposed legislation), then you have influence.
J Street has been able to make some headway in recent years in campaign fundraising. But they have not been able to establish themselves as a reliable source of expertise on Capitol Hill. AIPAC remains a source for expert analysis, and that has a great effect on how members of Congress and their staffers, except for those few who actually have their own expertise on the Middle East, end up voting on Middle East matters. As Kampeas says, J Street wants influence, “…and answering ‘We dunno’ on Syria is not the way to go about earning it.”
J Street bills itself as the group that “has Obama’s back.” That involves giving him political cover to exert some moderate pressure on Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, which, to date, they really have not been able to deliver (but they’re young — AIPAC also took a good number of years to build the sort of gravitas it has). J Street can also recover from the Syria crisis, as long as it doesn’t have more incidents where its own membership and leadership are so divided on an issue that they can’t take a stance.
But AIPAC has already taken a hit by openly lobbying, and declaring that it will flex serious muscle, in support of a military action that, for better or worse, is opposed by the majority of US citizens. If the issue does come to a vote, which still seems likely, and they lose one or both congressional chambers (which I don’t think will happen, but I hold a minority view), it will be a more serious blow. That’s reinforced by the fact that not only AIPAC, but also a lot of the more mainstream Jewish groups that tend to follow it, like the American Jewish Committee and World Jewish Congress, have come out forcefully behind a strike on Syria, and continued to press the point, even after the Russian proposal.
But I don’t think this will be as damaging as either Shalev or MJ Rosenberg think it will be. There is still no significant opposition to AIPAC’s lobbying power; this question was not directly connected to Israeli policy; and the most powerful tool in AIPAC’s arsenal — the public US misunderstanding of the Middle East, the Arab world and Israel, and especially the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict — is still in place, as is the perception that AIPAC speaks for, not the Jewish community as is often argued, but Jewish donors. US Jews make up a wildly disproportionate fraction of individual political gift givers, but while some large donors like Sheldon Adelson or Haim Saban are very clear about the decisive role Israel plays in where their money goes, it is far less clear how important Israel is in broader Jewish donations, and it’s virtually certain that the issue is not as prominent as is commonly argued.
Still, just by going so public with the Syria issue, AIPAC has suffered a setback, and this has not been lost on Israelis. Leaders and opinion makers in Israel from the liberal Ha’aretz to veteran Israeli diplomats are criticizing AIPAC for their actions on Syria. It’s not a huge hit, but AIPAC will feel it. If only someone, be it J Street or another group, would just take advantage of this opportunity…
]]>AIPAC comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, and ‘then you’ll get 80 to 90 senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters.’
When someone would accuse him of not being pro-Israel because he didn’t sign the letter, Hagel told me he responds: “‘I didn’t sign the [...]]]>
AIPAC comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, and ‘then you’ll get 80 to 90 senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters.’
When someone would accuse him of not being pro-Israel because he didn’t sign the letter, Hagel told me he responds: “‘I didn’t sign the letter because it was a stupid letter.” Few legislators talk this way on the Hill. Hagel is a strong supporter of Israel and a believer in shared values. “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,” but as he put it, “I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator.”
–Chuck Hagel to Aaron David Miller, The Much Too Promised Land
The kerfuffle over Chuck Hagel’s use of the term “Jewish lobby” — and the implication that some members of Congress are intimidated by it — pervades the right-wing media and its echo chamber in the blogosphere. Since Hagel was floated as a possible Secretary of Defense, some American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) representatives, among them former spokesman Josh Block and former Executive Director Morris Amitay, have denounced Hagel’s characterization. Even progressives are not immune to debating its appropriateness. M. J. Rosenberg, also a veteran of the AIPAC but now one of its fiercest critics, writes:
It is true that it is impolitic to use the term “Jewish lobby” rather than “Israel lobby” although the very same people criticizing Hagel for using the former term objected just as vehemently when Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer used the latter in their book on the subject. In any case, the term Jewish lobby is accurate when one refers to organizations like the American Jewish Committee or the Anti-Defamation League, etc. They are Jewish organizations and not AIPAC, the registered Israel lobby.
AIPAC’s rebranding of itself as “America’s pro-Israel lobby” instead of the “Jewish lobby” is also relatively recent. The critiques of AIPAC from both the right and left overlook a long paper trail of AIPAC’s self-perception and self-description, which for much of its history — from the 1950s through the 1990s — has reveled in its role as the voice of “the Jewish community.” In Israel today it still is regarded as such, as Chemi Shalev points out in Haaretz:
The most frivolous of the accusations against Hagel, from a strictly Israeli point of view, is his statement to Aaron David Miller that “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people” in Washington. First, because the term “Jewish lobby” in Hebrew is in common use and is a widely accepted Israeli synonym for AIPAC. Second, because Israelis take pride and comfort in the legendary prowess and influence of the lobby that supports them.
In November 1981, Wolf Blitzer, now a familiar face on CNN but back then the Washington correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, wrote an article titled “The AIPAC Formula” for Moment magazine, then a top quality monthly journal under the editorial aegis of Leonard Fein. In it, Blitzer traced the evolution of AIPAC from its founding in 1954 to “the sexy Jewish organization” whose rising profile could be viewed as resulting largely from the heightened increase in US government assistance to Israel:
…with the exception of South Viet Nam, Israel has received more U.S. governmental assistance than any other foreign country–including all of the Western European nations during the post-World War II Marshall plan…The need to keep up with an escalating arms race in the Middle East guarantees that Israel’s foreign aid requests from the United States are going to continue for the foreseeable future.
…one reason AIPAC has become so much of a force in the American Jewish community in recent years is the fact that the Israeli government itself has come to rely on AIPAC for advice in understanding the complicated U.S. legislative process. “The Jewish lobby” [emphasis added] come to be a well-known phenomenon in Israel since the 1973 war. As Israelis concentrate more of their foreign policy on relations with the United States, they come to understand the critical role played by AIPAC and other supporting Jewish organizations in winning friends and influencing people on behalf of closer U.S.-Israel relations.
Blitzer pointed out that an AIPAC mailing on Sept. 8, 1981 included a quote from the New York Times calling AIPAC “The most powerful, best-run and effective foreign policy interest group in Washington”, and another from the Washington Post that said AIPAC was “A power to be reckoned with at the White House, State and Defense Departments, and on Capitol Hill.” (Much of this was accomplished by the strategy of AIPAC’s new executive director at the time, Tom Dine, according to J.J. Goldberg’s 1996 book, Jewish Power: The Rise and Rise of the Israel Lobby.” “Dine openly trumpeted AIPAC’s clout, boasting about ‘Jewish political power’ to mass audiences, in the obvious belief that an outsized reputation would intimidate the opposition.” [Emphasis added])
A month later, in the December 1981 issue of Moment, Aaron Rosenbaum deconstructed AIPAC’s unsuccessful attempt to block the Reagan administration’s sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia in “The AWACs Aftermath.” However, wrote Rosenbaum, who spent eight years as AIPAC’s Director of Research (1972-80), “every circumstance contains opportunities.” AIPAC had lost a battle, but it would be better prepared for the next one:
The Jewish community emerges from the fight politically cohesive, ideologically coherent, respected, unbroken, better organized than ever. After the F-15, Jewish lobbying power [emphasis added] was materially diminished. Not this time. The AWACS campaign allowed the Jews to recapture politically what had been lost three years ago to build upon it. The AWACS campaign paved the way to broader ties to labor (with the coalition for strategic stability in the Middle East) and religious groups (with Christians United for American Security and the Christian Leadership Conference for Israel) as well to national security types that now have a better appreciation of the value of Israel.
Rosenbaum also outlined what would become an important component of AIPAC’s future strategy:
…The American Jewish community has to avoid a desire for “revenge” and practice pragmatism wherever possible. Simultaneously it must start cutting definitive deals with both congressmen and candidates. Jews are increasingly sick of politicians who pledge their support for Israel yet always seem to vote the wrong way. The best way to channel good intentions is to tie them to some positive act with which the member of Congress feels comfortable. Once done, it becomes a precedent, a hook on which one can hang the encouragement that is lobbying.
One of the means AIPAC developed for “channeling good intentions” is the sign-on letter through which a member of the House or Senate reaffirms his/her support for Israel (and since the 1990′s, opposition to Iran). These letters have, as Rosenbaum foresaw, helped create a near-unanimous consensus on “support for Israel,” even today in an ideologically bifurcated Congress whose members can agree on little else. Hagel was well within his rights as a senator to abstain from signing them and considering them “stupid.”
All in all, according to Rosenbaum:
The Battle Over the AWACS was a good fight. It would have been better, to be sure, had the sale been blocked. The transaction will pose a real threat both to the United States and to Israel. But the opponents of the sale hardly come away empty handed and defeated. They defended a position consistent with the best interests and ideals of the United States.
As we now know, the sale of AWACs to Saudi Arabia was nowhere nearly as damaging to Israel, nor to the interests of the US, as Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon would prove to be. But the claim that AIPAC was defending the interests, not just of Israel, but of the US itself, would catch on and become the organization’s mantra.
“In the next confrontation,” Rosenbaum concluded, “our opponents will act as if those they are attempting to persuade have no memory and historical consciousness. The Jews, a people defined by their money and sense of historical purpose, will have an opportunity and an obligation to show how wrong they are.
“Jews, a people defined by their money…” One can only imagine Josh Block’s response if Chuck Hagel had said that!
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