JTA reports a generational shift among Jews: Younger Jews are for Obama, older ones for Hillary, who reportedly has been circulating Rev. Wright's scary statements about Israel/Palestine to superdelegates, many of whom are Jewish, to try and win their support.
The 2008 presidential race holds out the possibility that the Lobby will be orphaned. Yesterday Cato scholar Leon Hadar said to me that John McCain is a "wild card" when it comes to the Israel Lobby because he is an "American nationalist" who is going to do what he thinks is right for the U.S. and not be swayed by our alliance with that perfect democracy, even when Joe Lieberman is whispering in his ear. Obama is of course also highly questionable because he is post-parochial, and making noises about an evenhanded policy. While Hillary is reliable; mainstream conservative Jews know that she is super-responsive. But Hillary's ship may have sailed.
Partly it's demographics, as Hadar notes. Here is that all-important paper of last year showing that increasingly, young American Jews under 35 (most of whom, like Obama's mother, are intermarrying) are distancing themselves from Israel.
Also, the mere announcement that dovish Jews are starting their own lobby was in itself an important blow to the old one. A couple weeks ago I heard Shlomo Ben-Ami in New York, speaking at the behest of those doves, say that he had met with Condoleezza Rice and urged her to press for Israeli concessions in the West Bank. Well, this week Rice got the Israelis to say they were reducing the number of checkpoints in the West Bank--though not their colonies. It struck me as a powerful sign of something that's upon us: the Zionist left is suddenly at the policy table, the Israel lobby is changing before our eyes. When I saw David Wurmser a couple weeks ago, he was another raving old neocon, not a powerful aide in the White House.
Maybe we will look back on the heyday of the lobby as the period from '91 to '07. From the time that James Baker said Fuck the Jews, to the Iraq war and the return of the realists. In that interval, the hardline lobby was supreme. America loves change.
I know I posted this earlier, and I know it's not "on topic," but I'm curious to know what readers here think of the fact that the following excerpt is from a post on a blog hosted by the Minneapolis StarTribune, my hometown newspaper:
'Children’s TV Shows for a New Generation of Terrorists
April 2nd, 2008 – 7:52 AM
A young boy enters the White House and accosts President Bush. He accuses the President of killing his dad in the Iraq War, and joining with “the criminal Zionists” to kill his mom in Lebanon and his brothers “in the Gaza holocaust.” Then, drying his tears, the child laughs as he informs Bush that he and “thousands of children” have turned the White House into a “great mosque for the nation of Islam.”
The show ends with the boy repeatedly plunging a sword into the President, who convulses, screams and dies.
A sick fantasy? Sick, yes, but it’s a sickness broadcast to thousands of Palestinian children across Gaza. The episode above is from last weekend’s kids’ programming on Al Aksa, the Hamas television station that broadcasts to Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.'
It is hard to talk about the pro-Israel lobby dying when we (the USA) are trying desperately to engineer a strike on Iran.
Mr Blaine, you are laying red herrings.
Phil & co. – Rosner on Yoffe vs.Hagee:
As we assess the promise of a "new politics", from Obama, lets ask ourselves this question:
Do these contributors to Obama donate this much money without expecting anything in return? And while its obvious that the finance folks like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros want to continue government bail outs and oppose any real regulation, does anyone think they want a radical change of policy in the Mideast??
BARACK OBAMA (D)
Top Contributors
Goldman Sachs $522,228
UBS AG $327,302
JPMorgan Chase & Co $316,892
Lehman Brothers $302,697
National Amusements Inc $293,022
Citigroup Inc $290,146
University of California $275,046
Sidley Austin LLP $271,857
Harvard University $264,941
Google Inc $259,010
Skadden, Arps et al $248,743
Exelon Corp $227,661
Morgan Stanley $225,976
Time Warner $221,878
Jones Day $212,525
Latham & Watkins $187,208
Kirkland & Ellis $181,976
University of Chicago $179,147
Citadel Investment Group $175,900
Microsoft Corp $167,990
Do these contributors to Obama donate this much money without expecting anything in return?
i want an ambassadorship for my $150. avg obama contribution last month = $96. # of obama contributors > 1M.
the israel lobby is part of jewry. jewry is not dying. it is getting more totalitarian
Bondo is right, I think Hannah Arendt would agree. Or, you could say, more biblical. Hence the importance of Israel's declared narrative of world history, announcing its license as a state. The USA governing elite is a true believer, just like Eichmann. No thought, just thoughtless will. We have a trailer park ethos, fig leave, our ivy league institutions.