Marty Peretz and Jeffrey Goldberg are powerful journalists; Obama lately talked to both of them about Israel. Peretz had a "longish" conversation, Goldberg did an interview. Why did Obama go to them? He obviously believes that they have the keys to the Jewish leadership, or a large segment thereof. Maybe they do. Joe Lieberman is inaccessible to Obama, so are Malcolm Hoenlein and Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner and Anne Lewis. Go where you can get it, as my guru likes to say.
I find the Goldberg conversation with Obama weird. There’s a general atmosphere of Goldberg, a former Israeli soldier, vetting Obama in his capacity as a representative of Jews who are outsiders in American society and who "feel Jewish worry." No other people’s interests or worries are invoked in this interview. Not the American interest, not a word about the life and suffering of the Palestinians (though yes a question about settlements). This is surely a sincere reflection of Goldberg’s parochial concerns, but it makes you wonder why he gets to write for the New Yorker and the Atlantic about Middle East matters. Two years ago at Yivo, J.J. Goldberg, the Forward editor, said that Jeffrey Goldberg had distorted an aspect of Palestinian politics in a piece to serve a rightwing agenda. (Bill Kristol stood up for Jeffrey Goldberg, and no wonder; these guys as much as anyone produced "the mindset" that gave us Iraq, which Obama is sworn to change.) I wish the Goldberg boys would have this out; it’s the Iraq soul-searching the Jewish community needs.
Goldberg says here that Jimmy Carter said Israel was turning into an "apartheid" state. No, Carter only made this claim with respect to the West Bank. Goldberg says at the top that Obama is fighting to win over Jewish voters in Florida. Is that really why Obama is making obeisance to Jews? It’s much broader than that. It’s about money and media and cultural power; "Jewish voters in Florida" is now the media’s euphemism for this larger sociological reality, and it’s a form of disinformation.
Then there’s Goldberg’s requirement that politicians respond to Jews in their "kishkes," or guts:
if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.
This sounds like a tribal shibboleth. Goldberg is basically saying, So long as you say you love Israel, you can say whatever you want about Israel. Can he point to one politician or official who says whatever he wants about Israel? I don’t know what world he’s living in. Jimmy Carter says whatever he wants and he’s vilified by among others Goldberg. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel ventured recently that the Israel lobby "intimidates a lot of people" on Capitol Hill. Will that comment disqualify Hagel from being Obama’s VP?
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"So long as you say you love Israel, you can say whatever you want about Israel."
So as long as you say you love Israel, you can say every single Jewish settler must be immediately removed from in and around East Jerusalem?
And they call it a Democracy?
Putting aside just who speaks for the Jews,
why does an ethnic group that represents 2+%
of the population set policies for the other 97+%? Especially when said policies can mean war for the nation, and very possibly for the world with all the death and destruction that will follow?
Why is a conflict between Iran and Israel,and even between Israel and the Palestinians determine the fate of the American people…
It seems to me that Bush and all those who support his embrace of this disgusting situation are going down the road of treason,if they aren't already there.
as long as they say the right thing as approved by israel/aipac.
here's John J. Mearsheimer, co-author, with Stephen Walt, of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, interviewed by Macclean's magazine:
"Imagine a situation with a Palestinian state where there's now the state of Israel. Instead of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, you have Jews living in the Occupied Territories, with the Palestinian state taking land away from the Jews, treating them in brutal ways and denying them a state of their own. There would be a huge outcry in the West, especially in the United States and Canada. We would go to enormous lengths to put pressure on the Palestinian state to stop exploiting and brutalizing the Jews, and to allow them to have a state of their own. But here we have a situation where the roles are reversed, and the United States and Canada support Israel."
When it comes to the subject of Israel, a strange double-standard is applied by policymakers and pundits alike. Another example: If the citizens of any other country harassed and assaulted an American envoy – as happened in Hebron, Israel, the other day – you can bet we'd all have heard about it by now, from irate American officials and the news media. In this case, not a word.
i hate the fact that these bastards are here in america living as americans and intimidating our elected politicians into obeisance to israel over the united states constitution.
jewsagainstzionism.com
Rabbi Klaussner
After the war, a Zionist “religious” leader, Rabbi Klaussner, who was in charge of displaced persons presented a report before the Jewish American Conference on May 2nd, 1948 :
"I am convinced people must be forced to go to Palestine…For them, an American dollar appears as the highest of goals. By the word "force", I am suggesting a programme. It served for the evacuation of the Jews in Poland, and in the history of the 'Exodus'… To apply this programme we must, instead of providing 'displaced persons' with comfort, create the greatest possible discomfort for them…At a second stage, a procedure calling upon the Haganah to harass the Jews."
Call an American President a bigot? I challenge the boil on the UN's ass, the Israeli Ambassodor to a dual.
Liberal White Boy Challenges Apartheid Israeli U.N. Ambassador To Dual
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2008/05/liberal-white-boy-challenges-apartheid.html
Well liberal white boy, in regards to Carter. Like the saying goes, "if the kaffiyeh fits…"
(from Digby)
Chris Matthews' brutal takedown of some robotic wingnut yesterday was notable simply for how easy it was. Apparently asking a conservative to define the words ("appeaser") coming out of their mouth is a question on par with the final round of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Of course, what the wingnut is referring to above is the President's comments yesterday in Israel, trying to stick it to the Democrats by calling them Nazi-appeasers. He used the artful phrase "an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ in discussing the times in 1939, aware but unwilling to admit that he was alluding to Republican isolationist Senator William Borah of Idaho. What he appeared blissfully unaware of was the collaboration of his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, who reaped financial reward for him and his family (including his son Bush 41 and grandson Bush 43) through sitting on boards of companies who did business with the Nazis.
(By the way, this is the biggest gift George Bush could have given the Obama campaign, so much so that I almost believe it had to have been staged.)"
—
That last comment certainly struck me as odd, and the writer did not elaborate. Anyone else think this was a "gift" to Obama, unintentional or no?
Krauthammer was on tv yesterday saying it will hurt Obama to the extent people think Obama's foreign policy is to ASAP sit down with terrorists unconditionally, thereby pumping up the terrorist's prestige and giving him cred; but it will hurt McCain if the incident is taken as revealing McCain as a Bush clone, advocating no-talk policy, which has been an utter failure with Iran, etc.
At one point they showed a recent clip of McCain talking exactly like Bush, but then showed a clip some years old, showing McCain saying we do have to talk with Hamas–the latter was
part of an original which had been cut out when inititally broadcast…
Let's hope brzezinski is in a bit of trouble.
"In July 1980, Zbigniew Brzezinski LINK of the United States met Jordan's King Hussein [LINK] in Amman to discuss detailed plans for Saddam Hussein to sponsor a coup in Iran against Khomeini. King Hussein was Saddam's closest confidant in the Arab world, and served as an intermediary during the planning."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nojeh+nsa+lawsuit
cheers
http://www.prosefights.org/nmlegal/fbifoia/fbifoia.htm#towayne
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