by Marsha B. Cohen
Barak Ravid of Haaretz has been asking who attended Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer’s seder (the festive meal eaten by Jews on the first two nights of Passover) at his Washington residence. (The last time I wrote about Dermer, he was breaking with diplomatic tradition by speaking at this year’s Republican Jewish Coalition’s [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Barak Ravid of Haaretz has been asking who attended Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer’s seder (the festive meal eaten by Jews on the first two nights of Passover) at his Washington residence. (The last time I wrote about Dermer, he was breaking with diplomatic tradition by speaking at this year’s Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) Spring Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas.) Neither Dermer nor the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry have been willing to give Ravid any answers, but I can. Indeed, we now know at least one important guest who was in attendance despite Dermer’s attempts to keep his list secret, but before revealing that information, let’s back up a bit.
Ravid, the foremost diplomatic correspondent of Israel’s most literary (and some even claim “leftist”) newspaper, takes issue with Dermer’s contention that it is none of anyone’s business who attends private events hosted at his home:
The home of an Israeli ambassador is not a private home, it is funded and maintained by the taxes of Israeli citizens. The flag waving outside, the security guards everywhere and the state seal on the china all underline that everything that goes on there is an official function. Or, as one veteran ambassador told me, “Even when it’s your in-laws coming to visit, it’s not a private event at the ambassador’s house.”
It’s no secret that Secretary of State John Kerry was in attendance. Ravid writes, “On the day of the first seder, Kerry issued a Pesach greeting, which was sent to hundreds of journalists and posted on the State Department. In it, Kerry noted that the following evening he would be attending the second seder at Dermer’s home.”
But when Ravid contacted the Israeli Embassy in Washington for more details about Dermer’s seder and who else was on the guest list, the embassy’s spokesperson, Aaron Sagui, declined to respond. This piqued Ravid’s curiosity further: “If Dermer doesn’t want to divulge who came to the seder, then maybe he has something to hide. Maybe there’s a story here.”
When Sagui remained silent in spite of Ravid’s repeated requests, Ravid said he would file a formal Freedom of Information application. The embassy’s spokesman then claimed that Ravid wasn’t getting the information he wanted because of his “negative attitude.” Ravid, who is usually the first reporter to break news — and occasional leaks – emanating from the Israeli prime minister’s office, turned to his contacts at Israel’s Foreign Ministry to discover why such a minor matter was being treated as though it were a secret:
The Foreign Ministry officials said Dermer was refusing on the grounds that his seder was a private event, not an official state function, and as such he owes no one an account. It seems Dermer is confused. Perhaps it’s a side effect of too many years in the orbit of Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem.
I’m willing to take a chance and guess that the cost of the holiday meal was billed to the ambassador’s official budget, or to the embassy’s hospitality budget, and not to Dermer’s private account. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how it should be. But it means the seder was not a private event.
Ravid has gone ahead and done what he said he would. He has filed a request with the Foreign Ministry under the Freedom of Information Law and paid the Israeli equivalent of $6 as a filing fee. His request is being processed, and the official responsible for the law’s implementation now has 30 days to get back to Ravid with the information he’s requesting or a better explanation of why he’s not getting it.
While he is waiting, this LobeLog blogger has uncovered at least part of the answer for Ravid, thanks to the self-promotional bluster of Gary Bauer, a Christian Zionist, social conservative and one-time presidential hopeful who lost the GOP nomination to George W. Bush in 1999. Bauer is the director of two far-right advocacy groups, American Values, and the Campaign for Working Families. Bauer is also on the boards of two ultra-hawkish pressure groups, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), both of which are harsh critics of the Obama administration. On April 16, Bauer let it be known that he and his wife were among Dermer’s seder guests, while taking a swipe at Kerry.
Carol and I were deeply honored to participate last night in the Passover Seder at the home of Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and his lovely wife, Rhoda, and their five children. Also attending the small, private gathering were members of their extended family and a number of Washington insiders, including journalist Andrea Mitchell. Secretary of State John Kerry represented the Obama Administration. I was gratified to be there representing the millions of pro-Israel Christians who stand with Israel…Carol and I were honored to be part of this important night with Ambassador Dermer and his family. I pray that Secretary Kerry was as deeply moved as we were by the message of the Seder and God’s promises to the Jewish people that they would be rescued from slavery and given their own nation. That covenant cannot be broken by Secretary Kerry, the president or any other man.
So Dermer’s seder was not just an intimate family gathering to celebrate a Jewish holiday. Israelis have a right to know what other “Washington insiders” were at Dermer’s seder. Go for it, Barak!
]]>by Jim Lobe
Anyone who has followed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) knows it’s a neoconservative organization whose central purpose since its founding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 has less to do with democracy than with promoting the views of Israel as defined, in particular, by [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Anyone who has followed the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) knows it’s a neoconservative organization whose central purpose since its founding in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 has less to do with democracy than with promoting the views of Israel as defined, in particular, by Bibi Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. It is no wonder that Sheldon Adelson, who casually called this week for the nuking of Tehran if Iran doesn’t abandon its nuclear program, provided the group with more than $1.5 million in donations between 2008 and 2011, as we reported yesterday.
Now, it just so happened that was in the news this week on another front: Jofi Joseph, the White House staffer who worked on the proliferation file on the National Security Council and who was outed as the tweeter known as @NatSecWonk, served as a fellow at FDD in 2011. Here’s how the New York Times first reported his association and characterized FDD:
According to Mr. Joseph’s biography on the Web site of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative group where he was a fellow for 2011, “between his stints on Capitol Hill, Jofi was a senior consultant with a professional services firm, facilitating strategic planning and policy analysis for the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts on critical infrastructure protection.” (Emphasis added.)
The succeeding paragraph named FDD associates, including John Hannah, former national security adviser to Dick Cheney, House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (whose SuperPac, incidentally, received at least $5 million from Adelson in the last election cycle), Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Gary Bauer, the Christian Zionist leader who serves on the boards of the Christians United for Israel and the Emergency Committee for Israel — all neoconservatives.
One day later, the Times published a follow-up article on Joseph, but this time, the characterization of FDD changed rather remarkably. Here’s the new paragraph:
In 2011, Mr. Joseph also held a national security fellowship with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, which has a generally conservative bent. “Clearly, he had risen up through the Democratic ranks,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the foundation, where fellowships are designed for “young and upcoming national security people in D.C.” of all views, Mr. Dubowitz said.
Well, all one can say is that the Times nailed it on the first go-round, but really blew it the second time. What does “a generally conservative bent” mean when attached to an organization whose principal purpose is the advocacy of the Likud Party’s foreign-policy views in the U.S.? I understand “generally conservative” as meaning someone like Brent Scowcroft or Robert Gates. Moreover, “neoconservative” as a description of FDD is not only accurate, it’s also very concise in contrast to “has a generally conservative bent,” which is quite vague and verbose in a way that newspapers try to avoid.
We can, of course, speculate as to why the change occurred. It could have been the decision of a copy editor who may have felt uncomfortable with “neoconservative” and thought that “generally conservative” sounded better. Or it could’ve been that Dubowitz strongly objected to the word “neoconservative” attached to his organization because it has taken on a rather pejorative meaning in popular parlance due to the critical role the neoconservatives played in promoting the Iraq war (which FDD actively promoted from the “get-go” after 9/11, running a TV ad produced by a former Israeli Embassy press official, for example, that suggested that Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were all part of the same threat.)
Indeed, I suspect that’s one very good reason why some readily identifiable neoconservatives who featured so prominently in promoting the Iraq war — people like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Doug Feith — have been keeping such a low profile on Iran over the past year. They’re the ones who gave neocons a bad name, while Dubowitz wasn’t even on the scene back then.
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The right-wing pro-Israel lobby group the Emergency Committee for Israel launched an ad campaign attacking President Barack Obama for his record on Israel. The ads, featured on billboards, public transport and with a web ad on the New York Times website, go after Obama’s pro-Israel bona fides, accusing him of, as the campaign’s tagline goes, being “Not Pro-Israel.” In a television spot, ECI — led by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (with Noah Pollak as a mere figurehead) — shows a few clips of hardline pro-Israel hawks from both parties decrying Obama’s Israel policies, whereupon the narrator says:
- Democrats. Republicans. It seems everyone agrees President Obama is not pro-Israel.
The campaign, which features a smiling handshake between Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (not unlike the one pictured upper right), got picked up at all the usual places, including by Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post. Rubin previewed the 60-second cut of the ad on Friday. But between her post and the ad’s scheduled runs today and tomorrow on local New York stations and cable news channels, something remarkable happened. A very important person to the neocons — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — came out and contradicted the ad. Speaking after Israel’s embassy in Cairo was nearly overrun by Egyptian demonstrators, Netanyahu gave a brief speech during which he said:
- Immediately at the beginning of the incident, I ordered that all the Embassy staff and their families in Cairo be put on a plane and returned to Israel. At the same time we worked together with Egypt and the American government [sic] to assure that our remaining staff at the Embassy would be rescued without harm.
I would like to express my gratitude to the President of the United States, Barack Obama. I asked for his help. This was a decisive and fateful moment. He said, “I will do everything I can.” And so he did. He used every considerable means and influence of the United States to help us. We owe him a special measure of gratitude. This attests to the strong alliance between Israel and the United States. This alliance between Israel and the United States is especially important in these times of political storms and upheavals in the Middle East.
As it turns out, not everyone agrees that Obama is anti-Israel. Perhaps Netanyahu had in mind the international diplomatic cover the U.S. gives — and has pledged to continue giving — to Israel. Or perhaps it is Obama’s work within U.S. policy and international diplomacy to slow Iran’s nuclear program — a top priority for Netanyahu’s government. Maybe it was Obama’s close cooperation with Israel to reportedly develop and deploy the Stuxnet computer virus against Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, a broader part of the program that prompted Netanyahu himself to comment this May at the AIPAC summit that “our security cooperation is unprecedented.”
While Netanyahu thanks Obama and praises his pro-Israel record, ECI and Jennifer Rubin choose to ignore that reality for one that better suits their hardline partisan worldview. Funnily, you won’t find the last two sentences of the above block quote in Jennifer Rubin’s write-up of the speech, in which she lavishes praise on the right-wing Israeli prime minister. No – Rubin cut those two sentences to interject a short introduction to the immediate next lines of the speech. She can’t seem to bear to tell her readers that someone — and someone quite important at that — actually thinks Obama is pro-Israel.
]]>ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), [...]]]>
ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), sent a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI), slapping them on the wrists for asking AIPAC to take a public stance on the New START treaty (for it).
Several Jewish groups recently came out in favor of New START because they think a rocky U.S.-Russia relationship is bad for putting pressure on Iran. According to Laura Rozen at Politico, AIPAC has even reportedly been pushing for the treaty behind closed doors (with Republicans, and maybe even successfully).
But ECI, which was birthed at Sarah Palin advisor Randy Scheunemann‘s shop, says that for Schumer and Levin to ask AIPAC to go public with their support of New START is “unSenator-like conduct” — “public bullying,” as the ECI directors put it in the letter.
Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative blogger who just moved from Commentary — where she worked with now-ECI director Noah Pollak — to the Washington Post, wrote from her new perch that Kristol, Bauer and Abrams “would no doubt claim, the actions of these two senators…would set a dangerous precedent.”
First of all, I’m not exactly sure it’s even sure it’s “unSenator-like conduct.” Aren’t politicians supposed to play politics to make what they think is good public policy?
Secondly, don’t you wonder what a pro-Israel group is doing defending its turf against the evils of the New START if it’s “a matter far outside its expertise and area of concern,” as ECI put it?
Well, the letter has a hedge that says, “needless to say, the Emergency Committee for Israel takes no position” on New START. But, hey, why is the Emergency Committee for Israel weighing in on Senate ethics?
Furthermore, the notion that AIPAC — or other Jewish or Israel lobby groups — shouldn’t support Congressional action (in this case, Senate ratification of a treaty) is ridiculous. For years, groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) worked against Congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide because Turkey was considered a strategic ally of Israel (the support ended when the relationship went icy over the Gaza War of Winter 2008/09).
It’s not as if the legitimacy of the Armenian genocide is exactly within the scope of “pro-Israel” activity. But, before the Israeli-Turkish alliance fell apart, a happy Turkey was good for Israel. Just like how the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) supports New START because a happy Russia makes it easier to confront the “Iranian nuclear threat.”
AIPAC and other Jewish groups also joined the Greek lobby to support a Congressional resolution about Cyprus (also to stick it to Turkey). So this really is business as usual for Israel lobby groups — they play geopolitics in ways they think will be good for Israel.
The mysterious part is why ECI felt compelled to jump into this at all. Was it to protect the purity of “pro-Israel” advocacy? A partisan shot against two powerful Democrats to pry AIPAC away from them? Or could it be because the faltering opposition to New START (which the, needless to say, don’t oppose)? Or was it just to weaken Obama to make room for anti-START Sarah Palin (who was pushed onto the national stage by Kristol)?
What’s funny — though predictable — is the charge of “public bullying” from a group that employs the likes of Kristol, Bauer, Abrams, Pollak and another Scheunemann employee, Michael Goldfarb.
]]>A new poll commissioned by J Street—an organization which identifies as “for pro-Israel, pro peace Americans”—showed that Jews continued to vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates by a 66 to 31 percent margin. In a list of issues, Iran ranked as least important. Israel was identified as the most important issue by only seven-percent of respondents. Issues such as the economy, health care and government spending polled as the most important issues for Jewish voters. Thus Israel related issues remained a relatively low priority for Jewish Americans who, as illustrated in the poll, decided whom to vote for based on issues that closely mirror the entire electorate.
The poll (PDF) reads (my emphasis):
Below is a list of issues facing our country today. Please mark which TWO of these issues are the most important for you in deciding your vote for Congress in November.
Total
The economy ……………………………………………………………………… 62
Health care…………………………………………………………………………. 31
The deficit and government spending ……………………………………. 18
Social Security and Medicare ……………………………………………….. 16
Taxes…………………………………………………………………………………. 14
Terrorism and national security…………………………………………….. 13
Education…………………………………………………………………………… 12
Israel ………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
The environment………………………………………………………………….. 7
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…………………………………………… 6
Illegal immigration ………………………………………………………………. 6
Energy………………………………………………………………………………… 4
Iran…………………………………………………………………………………….. 0
Separation between religion and state ………………………………………-
(Other) ……………………………………………………………………………….. 2
(None of these) ……………………………………………………………………. 1
(Don’t know/refused) ……………………………………………………………. 0
In the hotly contested Pennsylvania Congressional race which pitted J Street backed Democratic candidate Joe Sestak against the ECI backed Republican candidate Pat Toomey, the results closely mirrored the national poll.
The Pennsylvania poll (PDF) asked a similar question (my emphasis again).
Now, I am going to read you a list of issues facing our country today. Please tell me which TWO of these issues were the most important for you in deciding your vote in the Senate race between Joe Sestak and Pat Toomey.
Total
The economy ……………………………………………………………………… 53
Health care…………………………………………………………………………. 35
Education…………………………………………………………………………… 15
Social Security and Medicare ……………………………………………….. 15
The deficit and government spending ……………………………………. 14
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan………………………………………….. 11
Taxes………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
Israel ………………………………………………………………………………….. 8
The environment………………………………………………………………….. 7
Terrorism and national security……………………………………………… 7
Illegal immigration ………………………………………………………………. 2
Iran…………………………………………………………………………………….. 1
(Other) ……………………………………………………………………………….. 5
(None of these) ……………………………………………………………………. 2
(Don’t know/refused) ……………………………………………………………. 4
If the ECI’s attack ads against Sestak had any impact, it’s very difficult to tell from the polling data. Instead, it looks like Jews, both nationally and in Pennsylvania, voted on the same issues that face all Americans. These were the issues that dominated the midterm elections last night. Despite the best efforts of the ECI to make the unconditional support of Israel and confronting Iran’s nuclear program an issue for Jewish voters, their efforts have met with remarkably little success.
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For those who forget, the ECI – which Kristol describes as the, “pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community” — has derived plenty of negative attention in the blogosphere for its links (first mentioned here) to the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) and Fox News contributor Margaret Hoover. The ECI appears be a letterhead group designed to narrow the acceptable discourse about the U.S.-Israel relationship and, much like the CLI, push the U.S. into further military adventurism in the Middle East.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” J Street organization, issued the following statement responding to the ECI‘s latest attack ad.
The latest attack ad from the Emergency Committee for Israel is a frightening example of how pro-Israel advocacy as practiced by far-right neocons like Bill Kristol and right-wing Christian Zionists like Gary Bauer has come unhinged.
According to their ad, it’s apparently “anti-Israel” for a member of Congress to sign a letter urging that Israel do exactly what the Prime Minister of Israel has now done — namely, ease the terms of the closure of Gaza so that weapons are kept out, while humanitarian and other supplies are allowed in.
What’s next for the Emergency Committee? An attack ad against Prime Minister Netanyahu?
The tactics of the Emergency Committee will win no friends for Israel. By increasing the fear and ill will around Israel in American politics, they are doing far more to undermine Israel’s security than to save it.
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One figure who has received less attention is the group’s fourth principal, Rachel Abrams — wife of Elliott Abrams, daughter of Midge Decter, stepdaughter of Norman Podhoretz. This is a shame, because she is almost certainly the craziest of the lot.
I must confess that when I began reading her blog, I was primarily looking for evidence of her Revisionist Zionism. And, to be sure, such evidence is not in short supply — e.g. this poetic ode to the Israeli landscape, which concludes “I know why we cannot let go of any part of this land.” She also constantly adopts the argot of the Israeli settler movement by referring to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”. Her sympathy for the settlers is not terribly surprising; the only question is how much it is shared by her husband, who as the Bush administration’s top Middle East advisor was supposedly in charge of implementing a two-state solution. Certainly, Elliott Abrams’s disastrous tenure at the National Security Council raised the strong suspicion that he was doing everything he could to destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, but unlike his wife he is always careful to couch his arguments in the pragmatic and bureaucratic language of Washington peace process-ese rather than the ideological language of Revisionist Zionism.
But as I continued reading Rachel Abrams’s writings, what jumped out at me was not so much her predictably crazy views about Israel, but her strange obsession with (and apparent hostility to) homosexuality. This first jumped out at me in her response to Peter Beinart’s New York Review of Books essay, a long rant in which Abrams pretends to write in Beinart’s voice. While most of her Beinart “parody” is devoted to accusations that he is insufficiently devoted to the state of Israel, a large chunk of it is spent on rather bizarre and gratuitous insinuations that Beinart is gay. Thus she has fake-Beinart complaining, about a focus group of Jewish students, that “an insufficient number were gay and too many were broads,” and espousing his support for “open debate that of course excludes those who would advance anti-feminist or anti-gay or pro-Israel argument”. (It’s striking that she equates “pro-Israel” with “anti-feminist” and “anti-gay” arguments.) Then she has fake-Beinart condemning Orthodox Jews for homophobia before defensively reasserting his own heterosexuality: “they condemn gays, though I want to reassert that I have children,” a trope that she repeats throughout the piece. One has to wonder why she is so intent to insist that Beinart is gay, as if this fact would have any relevance whatsoever to the content of his piece.
I was initially inclined to dismiss Abrams’s homophobic attack on Beinart as simply a failed and sophomoric attempt at humor, but the more of her writing I read, the more I noticed that this strange obsession with homosexuality seems to be a recurring feature of it. For instance, in a post claiming that Christopher Hitchens is “giving homosexuality a bad name,” and professing disinterest in the sexual pasts of “old Tory buggers,” Abrams writes:
Wherever one stands on the homosexuality question—I’m agnostic, or would be if the “gay community” would quit trying to shove legislation down my throat—there can be no denying bisexuality’s double betrayal—you never know, whether you’re the man of the hour or the woman, when the ground on which you’re standing is going to turn to ashes—nor any denying the self-admiring “nourishment” its promiscuous conquests afford.
I’m not entirely sure what it means to be “agnostic” about “the homosexuality question”. (Agnostic about whether it’s natural? Whether it’s moral? Whether it should be legal?) The upshot seems to be that Rachel Abrams would prefer not to think about “the homosexuality question” except that the dastardly gays and their quote-unquote community keep “trying to shove legislation down [her] throat”.
Similarly, Abrams is deeply offended by the Obama administrations’ human rights policy, but her complaint goes beyond the standard neocon one that Obama is not aggressive enough in pushing regime change against Israel’s rivals — what’s really galling is that the administration has identified LGBT rights in the U.S. as an important human rights issue. She froths that it’s Hillary “Clinton’s fawning speech in honor of ‘Pride Month,’ which she delivered the other day to members of the ‘LGBT community’ who have fanned out from the mother-ship of state, as it were…that’s the truly breathtaking expression of this perversion of a policy.” For telling this quote-unquote community such wildly controversial statements as “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights,” Clinton is responsible for this “perversion” — I can’t imagine the word choice is accidental — of a policy.
I could go on. There’s her speculation, for instance, that the problems of the Afghan war originate in the rampant homosexuality of Pashtun males, which leads Abrams onto a long tangent about homosexuality among the ancient Greeks, concluding: “those ancient elitist pedophiles and narcissists, disturbingly fascinating as they are, will seem to many in our armed forces to have been people doing and suffering things that are very ‘base’ indeed.” There’s yet another rant about the Obama administration’s focus on LGBT rights, which she excoriates as an abandonment of America’s traditional “embracing of the rights of ordinary men and women,” (as opposed to perverts, presumably). There’s the way that Abrams throws a gratuitous warning about “a profitable surge in gay-couples-therapy sessions, as gay marriage, and divorce, become commonplace—nay, even humdrum” into an article on a completely unrelated topic. But you get the picture.
Conclusion: Rachel Abrams is a real piece of work, and seems pathologically incapable of hiding her obsession with (and distaste for) homosexuality. Perhaps it’s not surprising given her parents: Midge Decter was the author of the notoriously homophobic 1980 Commentary article “The Boys on the Beach,” while Norman Podhoretz’s particular brand of wounded, insecure, obviously-compensating hypermasculinity will be familiar to readers of essays like “My Negro Problem — And Ours” [PDF].
Israel’s defenders often contrast the state’s record on LGBT rights to those of many of its neighbors, and frankly this is one area where I think they have a point. Something tells me, however, that we won’t be seeing many of these arguments coming from Rachel Abrams.
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