I’ve failed to blog about something significant I saw nearly 2 weeks ago, at the Israel Policy Forum annual in New York City. Somewhat sore-thumbish in the large crowd was a tall dark-haired square-jawed guy accompanied by his tall blond windswept wife and two adorable blond children. It turned out that the guy was the honoree of the event: James E. Walker III who notwithstanding his initials is not the least bit Jewish. A financier (Kidder, Peabody; Vertical Capital Management) who lives in Pound Ridge, N.Y.
Walker’s speech that night accepting the honor was diplomatic and unremarkable. I don’t seem to have any notes from it. But he began by saying, "You all have the same question I have, what I’m doing up here" and went on to say that in the last few years be had gotten more and more concerned about American policy in the Middle East, for the sake of his children. He couldn’t sit on the sidelines any more. He began to study the issue. He visited think tanks. His inquiries led him to the IPF. He is now on its board–I gather the first non-Jew on the board of the IPF, which describes itself as "an independent, mainstream organization dedicated to mobilizing American Jews."
This is a cause for celebration. First of all, that the IPF would honor this guy, and include this guy, is a testament to the universalist strain in American Jewish life. I.e., we want to work intimately with gentiles on these important issues. It seems to me a recognition among influential Jews of Jewish influence, and an acknowledgment that others, non-Jews, have to be included at the table if the parochialists like Dershowitz and Foxman are to be take on. And from the other side, it represents an open acknowledgment by an establishment gentile of the power of Jewish organizations, and the need to work within one, inside the Jewish community, to shift American policy on these powderkeg issues.
Of course, who knows where this will lead; but potentially it suggests what Walt and Mearsheimer suggest near the end of their book on the Israel lobby, that the lobby itself may be balanced, reformed. That the parochial impulse in Jewish leadership will gradually yield to a more humanitarian approach. I’m hopeful.
