Last night Ari Fleischer was on Hardball speaking up for Freedom’s Watch, a new organization that is buying ads to support George Bush’s war "plans" in Iraq. Fleischer warns that if we don’t stay the course, the whole region will "explode."
According to the Washington Post, two of the three leaders of Freedom’s Watch, including Fleischer, are associated with the Republican Jewish Coalition (the third is involved with the Holocaust Memorial). Its donors, per the Post, include three other members of the Rep. Jewish Coalition and Gary Erlbaum, a leader of the conservative Jewish community in Philadelphia. That’s a lot of right wing Jews.
I talked to Erlbaum a year ago. Israel is front and center for him. Three years ago I heard Fleischer talking to a Jewish audience in Cincinnati, urging them to vote for George Bush in the upcoming election. Fleischer made explicit pro-Israel appeals. He said that his mother was a Democrat who opposed Bush but had softened because the Iraq war had been good for Israel’s security. He said that he was proud of the fact that in all his statements on Israel/Palestine while White House press secretary, he had never used the term "cycle of violence." I.e., he masked the endless brutalization there, as if Israel is getting somewhere by bulldozing houses and performing messy assassinations that kill little children, too.
There is nothing wrong with rightwing Israel-centric Jews getting involved in American politics. Let 100 flowers bloom. But I want their agendas explicit. It’s clear to me that several members of the new group care about Israel’s security as a reason for American military engagement in the Middle East. They should say so upfront. As it is, the Freedom’s Watch website has imagery of the eagle wrapped in a flag; its big new ad shows an Iraq War veteran who continues to support the disastrous war because of 9/11, and no one on the site is talking about Israel. Fleischer didn’t mention it last night in his analysis of the regional fallout if we left Iraq. This is dangerous dishonesty. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in A Tragic Legacy, the U.S. might well be willing to fight to defend Israel’s security; but the people have a right to know that.
[I]f Americans are being induced to support wars not in American
interest but in Israel’s, and if American lives and treasure are being
squandered in wars justified by false premises, by a hidden agenda,
they will realize that at some point…When the realization begins to
dawn that at least one substantial factor as to why America waged
Middle Eastern war(s) is because influential individuals with an
overarching devotion to Israel pushed for war against Israel’s enemies,
then an anti-Israeli backlash is highly likely to occur.
Last night Mike Barnicle played the Freedom’s Watch ad with the soldier’s appeal to stay the course; then asked Fleischer who the soldier was. Fleischer said he didn’t know. But he said that when a soldier dies in Iraq, everyone in America grieves with the family. This is b.s.; there is a real difference between supporting the war from armchairs and going to Iraq. The next guest on the show, a veteran opposed to the war, said that Fleischer’s lack of sincerity was exposed by the fact that he didn’t know the soldier’s name. I agree. And smell a rat. Fleischer’s group ought to be upfront about its concerns. Rather than manipulating public opinion.
