"We need to end the mindset that got us into war," Obama said last night in Wisconsin–a clear indication that, as Malcolm Hoenlein warned yesterday in Jerusalem, American politics are about to change with respect to Israel.
The signs are everywhere. Ron Paul lately hired realist Robert Pape and Leon Hadar; he understands that the demonization of radical Islam is fostered by Israel’s experience with the Palestinians; and that’s not our war. The recent NIE giving Iran a pass on nuclear weapons arose from institutional resistance to the Israel lobby inside the intelligence agencies (as Marty Peretz shrewdly asserts). Annapolis and the Rice initiative are George Bush’s "No mas" to the neoconservatives. In his appearance at Yivo, neocon duke Bill Kristol seemed like a hunted man, and said that Israel must seek other sources of support in America than American Jews. That is because the American Jewish left is wandering off the reservation, and young Jews are said to be "alienated" from Israel. This new Jewish migration has been spurred by the landmark books by Jimmy Carter and Walt & Mearsheimer, books that have given us permission to speak out–and provided a kind of cover to Jacob Heilbrunn’s now-he-does/now-he-doesn’t sell-out of the neocons as a rightwing, resentful Jewish movement building a "parallel establishment."
As Hoenlein groused in Jerusalem, things that weren’t "allowed" to be said before are now being said.
When I first read Hoenlein’s complaint against Obama and change, I thought he was deluded. But having watched Obama’s amazing and purely-symbolic victory speech last night–the guy is never concrete, it is all about mood–I realize that Hoenlein is dead on. Obama is stirring people by saying that the establishment must change. The affluent whites who are behind him are enraged about the Iraq war, and will not care if he brings up the Israel relationship. Now that he is reaching out to independents (Ron Paul and John Edwards’s crowd), Obama is talking about lobbyists with an intensity that is sure to open the door on the one lobby he refuses to mention, the Israel lobby.
Hoenlein is right to be anxious because the old Jewish establishment has everything to lose from a change in the status quo. My parents’ generation, and mine too, have prospered from the establishment we helped build. Our children are not serving in Iraq thanks to "meritocracy", and globalism has lined our pockets as members in good standing of the American elite. Why change anything? As Hoenlein said, it will only invite "mischief." That has been the energy behind Hillary, whose change is merely the status-quo in a pants suit. Hoenlein and the Hillaryites have missed the mood of the country. The groundswell voters feel that their country is on the wrong track. They are hungry for, angry for change. They will seize on a change agent who seems genuine. And that is Obama; notwithstanding his vagueness, he is all about a new mood. I understand Hoenlein’s anxiety, but what has that old establishment gotten us? They all signed off on this disastrous war, many of them because they were enraged by Palestinian suicide bombers. Not our war.
The bottom line is that some time in the next few months, or year, something will happen that the progressive, alienated critical-of-Israel forces in American society never believed possible: There will be a robust debate in this country of our relationship to Israel. Yes in the Mainstream Media. Yes on "60 Minutes." Yes on the floor of the Congress. We are coming inside.
